Most bathrooms have one. A bathtub that gets used a handful of times a year, if that, while taking up the largest footprint in the room. It collects cleaning products, gets wiped down periodically, and mostly serves as a reminder of a bathing habit that doesn’t match how the household actually lives. If that sounds familiar, a tub to shower conversion is worth a serious look. It’s one of the more impactful changes you can make to a bathroom without a full remodel, and the difference in daily usability is immediate.
Designers Marble has been handling tub to shower conversions across the greater Puget Sound region since 1984, licensed, insured, and working directly with homeowners from start to finish. We manufacture our own cultured marble, cultured granite, and TruStone™ surfaces in-house, which means the shower you end up with is built to your space, installed by the people who made it, and backed by a 5-year warranty.
The basic concept is straightforward: the existing tub is removed, the space is reconfigured for a walk-in shower, and new surfaces are installed. But the details matter. The floor needs to be properly sloped and waterproofed. The drain location may need to shift. The walls need to be surfaced correctly so water stays where it belongs. And the finished shower needs to look like it was always part of the room, not like something that was retrofitted into a tub-shaped hole.
Done well, a conversion opens up the bathroom noticeably. Even in the same square footage, a walk-in shower reads as more spacious than a tub enclosure. The room feels lighter, easier to move through, and more intentional. Done poorly, you end up with a shower that leaks, looks awkward, or requires constant maintenance. The quality of the workmanship and the materials make all the difference.
Tub to shower conversions tend to happen for a few different reasons, and understanding which one applies helps shape the right approach to the project.
For households where nobody is using the tub regularly, the conversion is simply about reclaiming the space for something that actually gets used every day. A well-designed walk-in shower is easier to clean, faster to use, and more pleasant to step into than a tub that’s just collecting dust.
For homeowners thinking about aging in place, a curbless or low-threshold shower entry is a meaningful safety and accessibility upgrade. Stepping over a tub wall becomes a real hazard as mobility changes, and a properly designed walk-in shower eliminates that risk while still looking sharp and modern.
For those with an eye on resale, a clean, well-finished shower tends to read better to buyers than an aging tub, particularly in a primary bathroom. The conversion doesn’t have to be elaborate to be effective; it just needs to look and function the way a buyer would expect from an updated bathroom.
The walls of the new shower are where Designers Marble’s manufacturing background makes a direct difference. A tub alcove that’s been converted to a shower needs surround walls that are properly sealed, tightly fitted, and built to handle daily water exposure without grout maintenance becoming a recurring chore.
Our cultured marble shower surrounds are the most popular choice for conversions. The surface is nonporous, sealed, and easy to clean, and because we manufacture to spec rather than pulling from standard stock, the panels fit the space cleanly without gaps or awkward transitions. For homeowners who prefer a stone-look aesthetic, cultured granite and TruStone™ offer that character with the same practical performance. Designers Marble is the exclusive licensed manufacturer of TruStone™ for Washington State.
A tub to shower conversion involves more moving parts than a simple surround replacement. There’s demo, plumbing coordination, waterproofing, and surface installation, all of which need to work together cleanly for the finished shower to perform correctly. When those pieces are handled by separate companies, accountability gets fragmented and small details fall through the gaps.
Designers Marble manages the surface side of the project with the same team that manufactured the materials. We know how everything fits together, what the critical details are, and how to handle the transitions that determine whether a shower holds up over time. That continuity between what we build and how we install it is one of the reasons our work holds up and our warranty means something.
If your tub has been more of a fixture than a feature for a while, now is a good time to put that space to better use. Designers Marble serves the greater Puget Sound region with tub to shower conversions built around custom manufactured cultured marble, cultured granite, and TruStone™ surrounds, all installed by our own team and backed by a 5-year warranty. Let’s turn that unused tub into a shower you’ll actually use every day.
