Walk-in Shower vs. Freestanding Tub – Which buyers prefer more?

General
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Walk-in Shower vs. Freestanding Tub – Which buyers prefer more?

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Walk-in shower is better I think

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The previous one i guess

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Freestanding tub is the best

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will work on this friend

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Toronto tradesperson view on this one since it comes up in almost every bathroom consult we do.

For resale in the GTA, the data has shifted over the last 3–4 years. What we actually see at listing time:

  • Primary bath with no tub at all still scares a subset of buyers — families with young kids, buyers from cultures where a soaking tub is a default expectation, anyone with mobility concerns. If the house only has one bathroom or this is the only tub in the home, pulling it for a walk-in shower can quietly cost you at offer time.
  • Primary bath with a walk-in shower PLUS a freestanding tub is the sweet spot on anything 2,000+ sqft and on any home targeting move-up buyers. The freestanding tub does more work as a visual anchor in listing photos than it does in actual weekly use.
  • Secondary bath as shower-only is totally fine if any other bathroom in the house has a tub. This is where the resale math flips.

A few things homeowners keep getting wrong here:

  1. Undersizing the walk-in. 32×48" is a closet with a head in it. 36×60" minimum for anything you want to feel like an upgrade. Curbless if the floor framing allows the drop — we use Schluter Kerdi-Line with a linear drain on almost every one of these now.
  2. Buying a freestanding tub before checking the floor. Cast iron and stone resin tubs land around 350–600 lb filled. In a pre-1970 Toronto house with 2x8 joists at 16" OC, you may need sistering or a blocking plan before the plumber shows up. Ask your GC to confirm.
  3. Forgetting the filler spec. Freestanding tub filler means a floor-mounted faucet on its own rough-in. That’s roughly $1,500–$3,500 added to what looked like a straight swap.

If the bathroom is big enough to fit both comfortably (roughly 10×8 or bigger), put both in. If you have to pick one, pick for how you actually live in the house, not for resale — a tub that nobody uses reads worse in person than a well-executed walk-in.

— BuildersLTD

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Totally fair — but the freestanding-tub-as-default answer depends a lot on who’s actually using the bathroom. Two angles worth flagging for the next person reading this thread.

Aging-in-place: if anyone in the household is 55+, or you plan to stay in the home 10+ years, the deep freestanding tub becomes an accessibility liability fast. 23" from floor to rim is a hard step-in for anyone with knee, hip, or balance issues. We’ve ripped out more “dream tubs” for 60+ clients in the last 3 years than we’ve installed. A curbless walk-in with a fold-down teak bench, grab-bar blocking behind the wall, and a hand shower is the forward-compatible pick.

2026 GTA pricing reality-check on a curbless walk-in: floor buildup with Kerdi-Line + pre-sloped tray is running $1,800–$2,600 in labour/materials before tile, assuming the joists don’t need sistering. Tile adds $12–$28/sqft installed for midrange porcelain, more for large-format. If you’re pricing out both, budget the curbless walk-in at roughly 1.3–1.6x a standard tub-and-shower combo on the reno side — the payback comes from resale photos and long-term usability, not day-one cost.

Small market, big ripple: whatever you pick, spec the rough-in wide. Moving plumbing later is where the real money goes.