If you live in a cold climate it can be nice. The electric kits can be pretty cheap. Just depends on how much you use that bathroom and how important a feature like this might be.

I would do it. I put electric heat in my open plan kitchen/family room when we remodeled and I love it. The electric mats would be very inexpensive for your small area. I imagine hydronic would be much more expensive for such a small area, but more cost efficient to operate if your were heating the whole house that way.

Thanks so much for the replies.

Its a hall bathroom on the first floor (btw 2 bedrooms) We have another bathroom that we use as our primary shower since it was built as the equivalent of a car wash for humans lol.

We are still keeping a heating element in the room so we aren't looking for it to warm the room. I wish we could, i would love to eliminate the baseboard. Speaking to people in the industry we were advised to keep the heating element. and that we won't get enough heat from the floors. It will be more the novelty of not stepping on a cold tile floor.

I'm also thinking of value in a resale. Seems everyone wants radiant these days so when doing a gut reno it makes sense to just have it. We plan on being here for 5 isn more years.

I have a tiny master bath (10.25 x 5.5) and will do it when we remodel. Of the three baths, this is the one I stand in every day, so why not?

If it's one versus the other, this should help you make the choice. Hydronic radiant heat is for heating the room. Unless your basement ceiling is unfinished, it might be difficult to install after the house is occupied, but that's not to say it can't be done. Only that it might be a bit more costly. If you're just looking to warm up the floor, then electric radiant heat can be installed prior to tile installation. Know that it may cause a transition problem at the door, because the heating system will add another 1/4" to the thickness of the floor, but that can be easily alleviated with a threshold of some sort, whether it be wood, or stone.

We put it in our master and love it. I wish I could convince DH to rip out the tile in the hall bath that's barely 5 years old. For whatever reason that room has always been the coldest. North facing small room small vent. We always had supplement heater because it would easily be 7-10 degrees colder than the rest of the house. With the radiant floor the room is now warmer than the other rooms. We still have central heat but I keep the house on the cold side for better sleeping. We close the door to the bathroom and the room is now 5 degrees warmer than the bedroom. One of my favorite parts so far.

Definitely add floor heat if you can. Well worth it! Both our main (upper) floor bathrooms are very small and we love our warm floors during the colder months.

YES! I'm doing it a 2nd time, it's wonderful.

"Would you do electric or hydronic? "

As a guess, your baseboards are probably being sent water from the boiler that's in the vicinity of 160-180 degrees. That's too warm to circulate in a floor.

It would make sense to put the RFH loop on it's own isolated system. You'd probably want a mixing valve to drop the temp from the 170-ish boiler temp to 120 degree water which is more suitable for a RFH loop. You'd probably want a circulating pump to move the water through the loop. To make it all happen you'd need a few valves, t-stat, relays, etc, etc.

Or you could buy a small water heater, set it at 120 degrees, and use that to heat the loop with a t-stat to kick it off and a circulating pump to move the water. As well as a few more obligatory bits and pieces. That secondary system would be completely independent of your boiler and whole-house baseboard system.

To warm the tile floor, you need a RFH mat wired on its own circuit. A t-stat.

Which is easier?

Which is less expensive?

When you wrote this:

"We are still keeping a heating element in the room so we aren't looking for it to warm the room."

I'd recommend electric radiant; mat or cable style. It's easier to type and easier to install.

We did what you are considering. A small hall bath with a rad. We upgraded rad to a nice looking myson one that fit room style and added electric radiant flooring under tile. No regrets and it is a nice feature to warm the toes in winter.

Our bathroom's smaller than your bathroom (sung to the tune of the playground taunt). :-) It's only 5x7, and the only bathroom in the house. And we put heating wires in the floors. I am too spoiled to ever live without heated tile floors in the bathroom again. A small bathroom doesn't make it "not worth it." It makes it a relatively inexpensive upgrade.

Unqualified YES to your question.

@weedyacres, when you say "relatively inexpensive" for a 5x7, what do you mean?

@weedyacres that's along the lines I was reading, but 2 contractors estimated $2K, so that's materials only right?

Yes, that’s materials only. We always DIY, so you’d need to add labor to that.