Our rain showerhead will be installed this week so I'm still waiting to find out if we made a good choice but here are my thoughts... 1. I need help deciding if 8 inch is wide enough to enjoy the rain shower experience. I am concerned that if I go larger, I will have an issue with less pressure causing it to be less enjoyable. Besides the diameter of the head, there are also varying numbers of nozzles and also the GPM rating to consider. I would look for the highest GPM, which seems to be 2.5, from what I found. 2. I also don't know whether to ceiling or wall mount it. 3. If I do wall mount it, how long should the arm be? I also prefer the look of a ceiling mount but agree with nycbluedevil. 4. If I ceiling mount on 8 foot ceiling, how long is the arm? It will depend alot on the height of the rainhead that you choose because I found that they vary quite a bit. We have a tiled 8' ceiling and just had to choose a different rainhead because we decided to go with a shower door that went right up to our soffit. The door cleared the 5" stub left by the plumbers but none of us realized at the time that our rainhead was unusually tall. We ultimately found a rainhead with a lower profile and won't be using an arm at all. 5. Is there a disadvantage to a arm with a hook rather than a straight design w/wall mounting? I can't think of a disadvantage other than any limitations (outside walls, etc) you might have on where you could run your plumbing. Can I mix other vendor hardware - is polished nickel the same across vendors? It's not the same across vendors but it can still be mixed in many cases. We have all Sigma faucets but will use a Jado rainhead in place of the Sigma rainhead. Jado calls their polished nickel "platinum nickel" but it goes just fine with my Sigma faucets. Sitting side by side with my Sigma rainhead, it might look ever so slightly cooler in tone but that would never be noticeable once it's installed. If you decide to mix vendors, I'd just make sure that one (or both) have a return policy if you don't like how they match. Here is a link that might be useful: My previous thread about rainheads

You are right, that is the best solution-if you are going to mostly store the shower curtain inside the tub. I'm only going to be using this for an occasional shower at, if at all so the shower curtain will usually be hanging on the outside of the tub. Even I even keep it hanging; I may just have the contractor install the rod and skip the curtain for now. Can anyone who showers with a rain shower help me??? Does the water splash less towards the back wall???

Rainhead. The term "rainhead" has sort of been corrupted over the years. You really need to feel the output yourself and figure out what type you prefer. In my own shower I wanted a traditional rain head. Simple water droplets, so to speak. Mine is a 12" head, and I do consider that to be the smallest size for a decent rain shower, and without a doubt, that is my personal opinion. You want the head away from the wall, so if you have a large rainhead, consider a bracketed or support arm of some sort, the added support can come from the wall or from the ceiling. Something along the lines of this: For your hand shower, have a hose long enough so you can spray down the corners of your shower. Body sprays. The same. Good showrooms have spray displays where you can feel the spray of water. Once upon a time I was intrigued by body sprays, Then I tried them and thought them to be the silliest thing ever. Some folk put in two heads, stacked vertically, one one wall. It's a little more common to want four body heads. Usually on two opposing walls, stacked vertically. You don't want them spraying towards the door. Usually chest and waist height, so figure that out when plumbing. You will have to figure out flow and hot water supply issues, from your water heater to the shower drain. Shower supply valves allow a certain amount of "pass through". You need to make sure each valve can actually supply the water needed to feed the heads that you want it to supply, or you could end up with insufficient flow. With body sprays, I recommend a "loop" supply to feed them, so the last head has pretty much the same flow as the first head. For your shower drain, it needs to be sized to the number of heads you have in the shower. Doesn't matter if only a few of them can or will be on at one time. It's a simple counting of the shower heads. A 2" drain can accomodate a shower with up to three heads. With four or more heads, plan on two 2" drains or a single 3" drain. If your plumber says you don't need to upsize to a 3" drain with four or more heads, he's not complying with code. If you want a "car wash" shower with five or six heads going at once? Your half inch pipe may not be adequate. Sure, with adequate feed pressure behind it it might be able to feed all those heads. But high water velocities through the tubing can actually erode copper from the tubing, potentially resulting in leaks. It's not just a matter of the 1/2" tubing being able to supply the needed water volume. You can crank up the water pressure and get volume. But cranking up the pressure to get the volume increases the water's velocity through the tubing, and again, too high of a "feet per minute" flow through the tubing can actually erode the tubing away. So do be wary if your "contractor" tries to soft talk away all of your concerns. Half-inch supply tubing can work. But it should work because your shower was designed to work with 1/2" tubing, not because, as your contractor told you, "everybody else is doing it". You can help yourself by drawing out a diagram of your shower. Doesn't have to be fancy. Each body spray and each shower head will have a GPM rating. Same with each valve. Make sure the valves and/or diverters that feed those heads can pass through the needed volume of water. Very basic numbers here, but 1/2" can comfortably flow about 5gpm. For hot and cold, that's 10gpm combined. For a comfortable temp out of the shower valve, that gets derated to about 7.5gpm of shower-temperature water. If your body sprays are 1.8GPM, four sprays is 7.2gpm for the body spray set only. You can figure different GPM combinations. Then figure that GPM out of your water heater to see how long your heater can maintain shower temperature. Oh lord. I need coffee...good luck! Edit: I never proof read this after posting it. Egads. Edited to clean up the weird formatting too. This post was edited by mongoct on Tue, Oct 21, 14 at 17:47

well, good idea but here's the problem - the faucet for the main shower head is just inside the shower door and I can turn that on and not get wet when the cold water comes down and wait for the water to warm up. But to turn on the rain shower head (or the hand shower - each water source has its own faucet), I have to be standing at the end of the shower where the three water sources are located - so I'd get doused with cold water turning on the rain shower head. In fact, even after the water coming out of the main shower head is warm, the rain shower spits out cold water at first. So what I've been doing when I can't stand being dripped on by cold water is endure a dousing in cold water in order to have those incessant drips be warm. Not a happy solution. It drips all the time once it starts. It doesn't start until a couple of minutes have elapsed. It drips even if I've not used the rain shower head in weeks (I tried not turning it on for awhile yet it dripped cold water on me daily). I guess I do have a diverter (sorry, I don't know all the technical lingo) - I know that I just inside the shower (imagine a long shower with the door at one end and the bathing area at the other end) I have a faucet that turns on the regular shower head. At the other end on the wall, there's the faucets for the rain shower head (on the right), the hand held (on the left) and to set the temperature for all of them (in the middle).