I am 5'7" and we have an 8' tiled ceiling in our shower. I really like it. It seems tall but not out of proportion to our shower which is 57" x 51". We have a 6" soffit that goes around the front perimeter and our glass goes full height to the soffit. Our previous shower was closer to 48" x 36", I believe, and had a 7' ceiling that was not tiled. The combination of the lower ceiling and the untiled surface meant that it always got wet and needed cleaning constantly. I find the higher ceiling height is easy because it really doesn't get wet so cleaning isn't needed regularly. Having 8' walls does mean that when we squeegee after each shower, I can't quite reach to the top. That hasn't caused any issues though because the upper 6" or so is out of the splash area. I just put little step stool in the shower when I'm doing a full cleaning. I hope that makes sense. I linked pictures below if that makes it easier to visualize. Here is a link that might be useful: My master bath photos

All the slide bars that I have seen or looked up on line come with a bracket/clip to hold the shower head. They are all described as for use with a handheld shower head. The wand or arm part of the handheld shower head is what fits into the bracket whether it is on a slide bar or a stationary bracket attached to the wall. You stated that you are using a regular shower head attached to a hose. I am confused as to how a regular shower head on a hose will fit into either a slide bar bracket or a stationary wall bracket. It seems it would just flop over or fall out of the bracket without a wand/arm part to sit in the bracket. Why are you not just using a handheld shower head which is designed to be used with slide bar or wall bracket?

Thanks to all who replied. We want a doorless shower because it is so much cleaner than either glass doors or shower curtains. We will have radiant heated floors. We have this in our current house and it is excellent. I would prefer not to go back to either squeegeeing or curtains. We do not have a baffle and the floors do not get wet. (You and me both, Missi!) Sophie, good point about the pocket door behind the plumbing. We’ll fix that. Our current shower is 3‘ wide, with the shower head on the side, not the end wall. It has not been a bad design for us. We had almost this same layout, with tub instead of shower in our previous house. The part I didn’t like was insufficient room for towel bars. Mark, our current house has quite a few pocket doors. I prefer a swing door on the bathroom, but otherwise like the pocket doors for the room they add. What is your objection to them? We have another bath that will have a larger space and curbless entry for wheelchair access. This will be the guest and public bath. The two front bedrooms will, for our purposes, be offices. So the shower will not get daily use. Kristin, you are right about storage, although we will have a linen closet in the laundry room. So, the plan shows a pedestal sink, but I want a vanity for storage underneath. i was thinking we could shorten the shower and add shelves where it’s shorter. This is why I was asking for advice about length of a doorless shower. The shelves would be stupidly deep, but I think we could just frame the back shorter. I’m still interested to know if anyone has other layout thoughts.

Thanks for the input. I just measured my master shower door and it's 28.5". I think I will plan for a 26" door, swinging inward and outward. I like the idea of the pony wall being a little bit longer and just leaving the 26" space for the future door. My contractor is very thorough and will be sure to block for a door and grab bar to be installed in future if desired. Definately will put the controls in the pony wall like we did in master. The depth of the room right now is 64" from the current finished shower tile to the wall. So without encroaching on the 30" space for the toilet, we could get a 34" depth shower. That's still pretty small, but don't see a way to make it deeper without expanding the scope and $$ by stealing space from adjacent attic. If money were no object we would look into doing that. I'll ask the contractor about it, but I don't think budget will allow.