I have 8' ceilings in my house ... and a 1' dropped soffit over my shower, so essentially I have the same thing you're planning.

The one complaint I have about this set-up: I just under 1' of open space between the glass doors and the shower ceiling; thus, I have less space for condensation to escape the small area. As a result, I regularly end up with mold on the ceiling; however, if this is your only option for your renovation, it's not the worst thing in the world. It is clean-able.

Thanks for your thoughts mrs pete

Depends on the height of your family members. Two things to consider: will they be able to stand upright in the shower and how high is the spray.

My basement is roughly 7' 4" from the concrete floor to the bottom of the floor joists. There was only one location for the shower which is under the pipe run for my heating system. (Fortunately hot water heat; forced air ducts would have required a much larger drop.) The resulting height of the shower stall is roughly 6' 8". The top edge of the spray head is about at 6' 1". A taller person has to duck to rinse hair/head/face. At least for me, I don't keep my head/face constantly in the spray even when showering in a regular height shower. I'd consider it a minor nuisance but not something I'd bother to put a spray head in the joists. I wouldn't like that anyway, because my head/face would be in the spray constantly (only have a 3'x3' shower stall). A larger stall would get around that.

What Mrs Pete says is true about a smaller gap between the ceiling and shower door top. I had the walls in the bath tiled from floor to ceiling. The ceiling in the shower is also tiled to make cleaning easier.

Good points wishiwereup. Tallest person using it will be 5'10. Based on both of your comments I will tile the shower ceiling and perhaps the majority of the bathroom. Shower will be about 3x4. So I guess will have to think about whether recessed in joists will be comfortable, i.e. allow face to be out of water. When I say recessed, I'm still thinking about a "tiltable" shower head, as opposed to a rain shower head, which I'm not sure would work well in this situation (although I guess rain head could be fully recessed for extra height but would only be straight down water stream).

Shower will be about 3x4

Not bad but try getting a larger shower if you can, because of the height. Add a bench as well if possible. And get good ventilation. It won't be too bad, should be workable.

My basement shower is 7 feet high too. It’s a guest room shower and works fine even with the low ceiling. My son is 5’5” and uses it daily because its bigger than the shower next to his bedroom (it’s 35 inches by 65 inches with a bench in the back).

it does get steamy, but we have a good fan plus a lot of floor space in the bathroom so we keep a dehumifier plugged in and run it on a timer after each shower. I have never seen any mildew in the bathroom with that setup.

I did go with a handheld shower head on a bar so a taller person could bump it up a little or at least remove the head and shower while sitting on the bench.

Our basement shower is set up identical to above photo. We have 7’ ceilings - minus about 2 inches in the shower due to the floor (mud job I think it’s called). Seems fine. We painted the ceiling but I would tile it if did it again. The contractor installed a Panasonic fan, vented to outside and it is fine.

Thanks for all the comments and ideas. Based on others experiences it seems like it should perfectly workable even if it’s not ideal

For the mold issue, there are shower lights that have a ventilation fan built in. Put the light on a dimmer and make sure the vent pipe actually goes outside.