I've had both uba tuba and blue pearl in baths for counters, and never had trouble staining- the dark granites are supposed to be more impervious to that stuff, so perhaps trying a different color could help.

Lots of Corian shower pics on Houzz, and yes, you can do a Corian shower pan. Check this shower out: https://www.houzz.com/photos/rain-cloud-shower-contemporary-bathroom-sacramento-phvw-vp~5477929

Less expensive than Corian but definitely not as snazzy looking would be something like Onyx Collection, which can be used for shower bases/walls as well as sink tops and bathtub surrounds. Just Google it for their website.

With regards to the advise to squeegee then wipe it down. That is too much. All you need to do is have a microfiber detail towel made of quality material and wipe it daily. You will never have to clean the shower except the floor on occasion. I do this daily and my shower and glass are always spotless. I tried the squeegee and it was too hard. The towel dry, takes 60-70 seconds, and you never have the awful task of "cleaning" the shower walls and glass. My shower is going on 4 years I think and I haven't "cleaned" it once. There is no mold in the caulking, no scum build up. Its clean. I do have a cast iron pan and love it. I have cleaned it several times a year and if there are guests. When I wipe things down I wipe all the chrome too. I hang the towel over the shower door and it dries by that evening. It is a 20x40" towel and very thirsty. I got it online at The Rag Company specializing in auto detailing.

What ever you go with, maintaining a dry shower is very important.

At the 2017 Kitchen and Bath Industry Show this past January, Caesarstone introduced a thinner quartz that can be used for shower walls. They actually had a shower display at the show that was beautiful. Quartz is one of the most maintenance free materials out there.

We remodeled our bathrooms 9 years ago. They look like like the day they were installed. We've got a quartz countertop for the vanity. It needs nothing other than an occasional wipe down. We used porcelain tile with Laticrete's epoxy grout for all tile surfaces (including the showers). Epoxy grout doesn't stain, doesn't need sealing and isn't porous, so doesn't discolor when wet, no. maintenance needed.

The only large-panel showers I've seen that don't look cheap/dated to me were built with thin slab Neolith. Very expensive, though. If you like the marble slab look, that would be the way to go. Otherwise I'd save the money and go with porcelain tile/epoxy grout.

Good luck!

So, maybe the cheapest way to get want I want would be to just regrout the shower one more time, this time using epoxy grout and hope it lasts the life of the tile,

For the rest of the bathroom, I could replace the toilet with a one-piece skirted model to make the toilet and area and round it easier to clean and then replace the coutertop with some kind of quarz/Caersostone with undermount sinks or just get a fully seamless Corian-type one piece counter with built-in sink.

If I want to do full remodel, I could completely gut the shower and replace it with a seamless Corian enclosure and shower pan, replace the toilet with the skirted one-piece and just rip out the vanity and start over with something new that floats and gives foot space under it. I think I might also like getting rid of that tall step over curb at the shower or at least getting one much lower and thinner..

The bathroom is small and has dual sinks, so I could go with a single sink counter that would give more counter space.

Corian, quartz, Dekton/Neolith shower walls and counters. I stayed in a hotel with quartz walls/counters/floor and absolutely loved it.

Search GW for a bunch of threads (also recently in the kitchen forum)

I would have to wonder why the grout is always having such problems. I have 1970s era bathrooms with white 4" tile and white grout and it's all still fine. The fact that you are having problems in spots and not all over makes me wonder if perhaps something is going on behind the wall that should not be. :(

We were having the same problem. A specific area in my children's shower would consistently turn dark. 2 months ago we had the tile ripped out and found out that the builder used regular drywall behind the tile, and there was a small leak that resulted in mold. That area kept discoloring because the problem was behind the tile. Just a thought. If I were you I would consider having someone come in and just remove a few tiles in the problem areas. You will be able to diagnose the problem immediately, and if there is no mold, then you can replace the tiles. No harm, no foul. Good luck!

Koehler choreograph is a wall surface; they make terrific cast iron pans, swanstone also makes pans and walls. Corian counter with integrated sink (no seam to keep clean), toilet with smooth skirt, Sheet vinyl flooring, waterproof and no grout. Lots of great patterns, textures. Frameless mirrors, less to dust; cleaner than walls.

I have also been researching the absolute easiest to clean/lowest maintenance bathroom ideas. I would agreed that a single unit Corian shower would probably be absolute lowest maintenance, but it is not a look I care for. So with aesthetics in mind, not considering price limitations, here is what I am considering.

Wall-hung toilet - no caulk line at the floor.

Floating vanity.

Corian vanity top with integrated sinks. These can be quite beautiful in a solid white, especially a very thick countertop over floating drawers. But there are conflicting reports about the maintenance and longevity of the Glacier White. And the speckled surface is not in line with my aesthetics. Which would drive me to another surface - quartz and Neolith are both low maintenance - but I would lose the integrated sink, which is a big draw with Corian. Again - no gunky edges.

Wall mounted faucets. No cleaning around faucets on the countertop, just a smooth surface to wipe off. And perhaps a single piece tap with lever attached, like Dornbracht 36803885

Curbless shower entry - again, reducing your caulked areas and (with the others) allowing for a floor with no impediments to a quick sweep around the room.

Strongest bathroom exhaust fan you can get - suck all that moisture out of there as quickly as possible.

Slab surfaces, such as Neolith and Caesarstone, for vertical surfaces.

Large format porcelain tile with epoxy grout for the room floors.

The shower floor - there is a lot of discussion on threads here regarding the need for smaller tiles on the shower floor to prevent slipping. So if you were to go with porcelain tile, it could not be overly large format. But again - epoxy/silicone/whatever-is-recommended-best-now grout with a smaller tile goes a long way to help with the cleaning issue. Someone has also posted here about Soapstone slab shower floors, which are more non-slip. You could also do a regular shower pan with a teak grid overlay.

Shower fixtures - again, I lean towards keeping all the controls as sleek and minimal as possible, decreasing the number I have to keep clean. So extra handhelds and multiple showerheads are unlikely.

Toiletries - I use a wall mounted dispenser for my toiletries. I would LOVE to find a more attractive solution, but thus far, all I have ever seen are similar items in faux chrome, which is even uglier imo. This version at least blends and almost disappears into a white wall. With my razor and poof attached to the side of it, I have no other toiletries in the shower. I don't like niches - they create more edges and crannies to clean.

I have been very interested in QuickDrain's wall drain, which would eliminate the grout around a floor drain. But there is so little info/experienced-reviews out there to assure me it will be the lower maintenance choice.

Just putting it out there, I have no idea what the tradeoff (if any) between easier to clean wall mounted toilet and faucets, vs. having to open the walls to make repairs if needed. Totally in favor of easier to clean, though!

I like the idea of wall mounted toilet, but I think it will be too large of a project to convert the existing plumbing and drain to work with a wall mounted toilet and then have to tear the walls up again whenever it needs a repair.

I think a skirted one piece toilet would be the next best thing.

If your grout is sound, you want to keep the tile, and it's simply cleaning the grout that you don't like, take a look at a grout colorant.

Aquamix Grout Colorant is an epoxy-based colorant. It WILL be tedious to apply, especially on 4" wall tiles. You'll likely be painting it on with a small artist's paintbrush or something similar. But it (or an equivalent product from another manufacturer) might help you out.

Definitely read through the material description and I'm sure there are youtube videos out there.

For low maintenance, I can vouch for epoxy grout. Mine's been installed for 6 years now and is totally bombproof.

And for ease of cleaning, I opted to forgo glass shower doors and go back to a shower curtain. I have plain white fabric (poly, I think) that just goes in the washer a few times a year, looks brand new, doesn't blow or cling. After years of cleaning glass and the goo in the tracks, I decided I love the ease of the curtain.

Another thing I love is my wall mounted faucet. No matter what I did, it seemed like there would always be crud in the caulk around a counter faucet. Or hard water stains. I love that there is none of that with my wall mount.

Wall hung toilets have been standard in Western Europe residences for at least 25 years. There are wall access panels.

The shower was completely regrouted a year ago and still looks fine for now. I never had a mold problem with grout, but it kept wearing and receding.

I also tried squeegeeing for a while and purchased a very high quality metal squeegee and hung it on a suction hook in the shower. A few months later, the suction failed and the heavy squeegee came tumbling down in the middle of the night and put cracks in a few of the tiles on the shower floor. The cracks look like black hairs sitting on the beige tile that won't wash away.

Not sure these cracks can be fixed and I don't want to replace these tiles and then not have the tile or new grout match the rest.

We recently used Caesarstone's thin quartz to do our tub/shower walls. They have a number of their colours available in 1.2 cm thickness. We also looked at some Cambria ones and I believe Silestone also makes a thinner quartz when required. We used our granite fabricators who supplied and installed it along with our quartzite bathroom counter that doesn't need any maintenance. They can cut all the holes required for the plumbing and for niches as well. Here are a few photos of our modest bathroom using Caesarstone Dreamy Marfil quartz. It is hard to get the colour correct in there when I take photos. The fabricators used some of the scraps from our Fusion quartzite countertop to fit into the niches to carry that colour thru the bathroom.

I have also been researching the
absolute easiest to clean/lowest maintenance bathroom ideas. I
agreed that a single unit Corian shower would probably be absolute
lowest maintenance, but it is not a look I care for. So with aesthetics
in mind, not considering price limitations, here is what I am
considering.

I've been kicking around this idea, but I haven't made a list! Bathrooms are high-maintenance rooms, so this is an exercise worthy of some time.

Thoughts on your comprehensive list:

- While it's practical, I don't care for Corian. One way to go with tile and avoid the cleaning problems is to choose your COLOR wisely. I have white tile in my bathroom, and it's essentially never clean. In my girls' hall bathroom I have builder-basic tan/brown mosaic from Lowes ... it always looks clean ... we have 2x2 multi-color on the floor and 12x12 mottled tan on the walls:

While it's not the most exciting color scheme, you can use any color towels and accessories. I'm considering going with something similar in our new house ... but maybe with a little more blue for a little more personality. Think it would be as user-friendly?

- I'm totally into the idea of a wall-mounted sink faucets, but I was at Lowes today, and they had NONE from which to choose. I know they can be ordered, but it would be more trouble.

- Ditto for a floating vanity ... but do think through your storage needs.

- In addition to the good exhaust fan, I'm planning to get a Tornado Body Dryer -- https://www.amazon.com/Tornado-Body-Dryer-Shower-Electric/dp/B00AR0050I . It eliminates the need for towels (except for your hair, I assume), and avoiding washing towels is a time saver. One of our big reasons for buying this expensive item is that it'll be useful for aging-in-place, but it'll also dry the shower.

- As for toiletries, one of my plans is to put the niche in a pony wall so that it won't be visible from the main bathroom. Yes, the bottles may still look like a mess, but it'll only be visible from inside the shower.

Just
putting it out there, I have no idea what the tradeoff (if any) between
easier to clean wall mounted toilet and faucets, vs. having to open the
walls to make repairs if needed. Totally in favor of easier to clean,
though!

I'm thinking the same thing. While I love the idea of an easier-to clean floor, I am afraid of a wall hung toilet. I'm thinking of going middle-of-the-road in terms of maintenance and using a smooth-sideded toilet.

In all the homes we have lived in, honestly the one with the lowest
maintence bathroom, had a Kohler acrylic shower unit and laminate
counter top. The master bath was 'really fancy' with a cultured marble
counter! ;-) Not today's, style, but it cleaned with soap and water.

Yeah, we had that in our first house, and I agree it was NOTHING to clean. I think it's not so much that those are "not today's style" as they're cheap, builder-basic items ... and things that're discussed on this board are a bit more upgraded.

Still, I want something more stylish ... and I have to admit it'll be more cleaning.

And for ease of cleaning, I opted to forgo glass shower doors and go back to a shower curtain.

I'm considering the same thing, but I haven't decided yet. I don't mind shower curtains, and it's so easy to wash them or just replace the shower curtain liner (they're available at the dollar store). Another benefit: No need to splurge on fancy tile for the shower.

Other thoughts:

- Windows in showers will need replacing ... well, not the windows, but the frames. Water will always win.

- While clawfoot /freestanding tubs are lovely, cleaning around them would be more work.

- Two sinks means twice as many sinks to clean.

- Running tile behind your toilet is a work saver in two ways: It's easier to clean than drywall (anyone else have a husband who pees by sound?) and when you re-paint, you don't need to paint the tile.

- Toilets in closets are more difficult to clean: you have more baseboards, and if you try to run a mop behind the toilet, you'll end up banging the handle against the wall ... which means you'll end up cleaning the floor on your hands and knees.

- A small linen closet IN the bathroom is the best thing ever. Mine is only 2' wide, but it's perfect: It holds a hamper in the bottom half and has shelves on the upper half.

- Do not waste your time folding wash cloths. Buy a pretty basket and just throw them in.

- Think twice before you buy anything with deep carving /crevices. These aren't bathroom vanities, but consider which of these items would collect less dust -- the same holds true for doors and light fixtures:

-Consider where you're going to store your cleaning supplies. Personally, I'm planning a small cleaning closet with space for the vacuum and shelves for cleaning products.

- Final thought: Reconsider over-sized. A modest-sized shower takes less cleaning than an oversized model. A standard-sized soaking tub requires less cleaning than a large jetted model.

Re: wall hung toilets: Of course they don't necessitate "opening the wall" for repairs. The flushing buttons are located on the removable wall panel. Jeez...

You cannot access everything through that little panel door. At some point, a repair may be needed that's going to require reopening the wall.

It also doesn't look practical to convert an existing floor drain to a wall drain needed for a wall hung toilet.

White colored shower enclosure sounds fine to me. The problem isn't white tile; it's the white grout and caulking.

One of the pieces of advice I heard from a builder is to use your exhaust fans frequently. It may help with the moisture in the room and solve a lot of these problems.

Fans won't solve the problems I had because the problems were not mold related. It was grout wearing away over time leaving cavities with missing grout and getting discolored with soaps and water.

Yes, wall hung toilets are made to be repaired through the access panel. This works, as the whole flushing mechanism can be removed through the access panel, once removed, lime deposits can be cleaned off, any o-rings replaced etc.

Watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwbpNpvGVAg

What happens with there is a leak with connections at the bottom of the tank buried in the wall?

The easiest vanity counter to clean in my house is the IKEA white ceramic vanity-top with built-in sink. I also have a vanity with a marble top, and one with a quartz top. The simple IKEA ceramic is absolutely the winner. http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S59903530/#/S99186037

What happens with there is a leak with connections at the bottom of the tank buried in the wall?

The water supply connections are all designed to be within reach of the access panel at the top. A leak at the bottom would be at the gasket where the toilet connects to the wall. At which point, the bolts could be undone, and the toilet removed from the wall to access the gasket. Just as with a floor-mounted toilet, you would undo the bolts and lift the toilet up to access the gasket below.

The risk of leaks in a wall hung toilet does not come from them being difficult to repair. It is because the leak is hidden in the wall, and you may not know it is happening before it has caused a great deal of damage At which point yes, you may have to rip out all the drywall behind the toilet. But as so many people with standard floor-mounted toilets can attest, a leak there can occur and go undetected with just as much ease when you are away from your house for the day, and lead to horrific damage, such as leaking to the floor below, require the entire space below to be gutted. Which is why I am a fan of leak alarms, regardless of the mounting system.

I would absolutely agree that a wall-hung toilet would not be the easiest or most economical to install, given a floor toilet was already in place. But it was brought up in the context of the original question, which implied a full remodel and asked for the easiest to clean bathroom ideas.

Check out the Swanstone and Corian colors before you dismiss them out of hand. HB has a beautiful Swanstone shower in the color "Ice" that I hope he will post a photo of. The only seam for a shower up to 60" per side are on the corners, and there is a cove molding that you may purchase if you do not like the butted look.

There is also an online company called Grifforms from Oregon that will make you a custom solid surface Corian shower pan.

Did anyone mention that liquid soap is easier on the walls than bar soap? I switched some years back and it is remarkably easier to clean. Its now a non issue with me because I wipe my shower out daily. But before the remodel I could really tell a difference in soap build up.

DH's basement shower, down there with the spiders, is hardly ever cleaned. He uses liquid soap and it really makes a difference with keeping the walls cleaned.

The only draw back to liquid soap is that all the ones I've used leave a gray stain on the clothes. I use gray washcloths because of this.

Fans won't solve the problems I had because the problems were not mold
related. It was grout wearing away over time leaving cavities with
missing grout and getting discolored with soaps and water.

No matter what choices you make, a bathroom is a heavy-use space, and you're going to have periodic maintenance. Impossible to avoid. I'm interested in how to avoid week-to-week work in cleaning.

Yes, wall hung toilets are made to be repaired through the access panel.
This works, as the whole flushing mechanism can be removed through the
access panel, once removed, lime deposits can be cleaned off, any
o-rings replaced etc.

Problem is, toilets include moving parts and water -- things that like to break, and your toilet may or may not break in a way that would necessitate opening up the wall. I think a smart person who installs this type of toilet would do two things:

- Put a wall of tile behind it ... really, you know you're going to need to clean that thing ... who in the world chose to put drywall behind it in the above picture?

- Buy /store an extra box of tile as "insurance" against a future repair the requires destroying part of that tile.

And if you REALLY want to be safe with a wall-mounted toilet, take one more step:

- Position it so that the wall behind it is a closet and place a removable panel in that closet ... this would allow you easy access to your toilet pipes simply by removing items from the closet.

Even if I do a full remodel of this bathroom, I can't imagine how I would change an existing floor mounted toilet to wall mounted.

If it would add thousands in labor to convert the toilet drain to work with a wall mounted toilet before even adding the cost of the toilet itself, then I would rather just get a nice one-piece skirted toilet and call that good enough.

http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/2281794/cost-to-convert-to-a-wall-mount-toilet

"You cannot access everything through that little panel door. At some
point, a repair may be needed that's going to require reopening the
wall."

In Europe, interior walls are made of cinder block, mortar, and plaster.

Jaxo,

I converted a floor drain toilet to a wall mount as part of a remodel. It cost approximately $350 in the D.C. Area. It took the plumber less than 1 hour to do and that included placing the water line in a better location the wall. The wall was already open as part of the remodel.

Ask your plumber for an estimate first before eliminating it. In my situation, the floor mounted toilet needed to be moved anyway.

Since the wall-hung toilet is designed to be serviced from the front, through the service panel, I don't see how having an access panel behind the wall tank (say in a closet as suggested above) will be helpful. You will be looking at the back of the unit where there is nothing you can do. Look at the Gerberit wall tanks and see how they are designed before dismissing the idea of a wall-hung toilet. I would bet you could get an image of one at Builddot com or another site.