Home › Custom Bathrooms › Steam-Shower Master Bath
Central Florida · Primary Bath
Master Bathroom Remodel with a True Steam Shower
A corner-tub-era primary bath, rebuilt around the one fixture its owners would actually use every day — a full-height glass steam shower — by KBF Design Gallery, the design-build remodeler serving Orlando and Central Florida from our Maitland showroom.
The Remodeling Story
The steam shower earned the square footage.
This primary bath began the way so many Central Florida primary baths of its era did: a corner platform tub in beige tile holding the prime window position, brass fittings, a framed shower stall in the corner, and warm-toned wood flooring that belonged to the bedroom more than the bath. Nothing was broken. It was simply a room organized around a tub its owners rarely filled, with a shower — the fixture they used twice a day — treated as an afterthought.
The remodel inverted that hierarchy. The platform tub and its tiled deck came out, and a clean drop-in tub took a quieter position under the plantation-shuttered window — still there for the long soak, no longer the monument. The reclaimed presence went to the new steam shower: a fully enclosed, full-height glass volume finished in a vertical-stack marble mosaic, with a rain-style shower head, a slide-bar handshower, and the steam control mounted at hand height inside the enclosure.
A steam shower is not a regular shower with a gadget added. The enclosure closes completely, every surface lives in wet-sauna humidity, and the waterproofing behind the tile has to be built for vapor, not just splash.
That is the one design decision this page is really about. Steam changes the construction underneath: vapor-rated waterproofing behind the stone, an enclosure engineered to close completely rather than vent over the glass, and materials chosen to take heat and humidity for decades. It is exactly the kind of scope where design and construction cannot be separated — the look of the glass and the mosaic only works because the assembly behind it was planned for steam from the first drawing.
Around the shower, the room settled into calm: a gray double vanity flanked by two full-height storage towers replaced the old open counter runs, oil-rubbed-bronze fittings carry the dark accent from the shower hardware to the tub filler, and a single orb chandelier centers the room. Storage that used to live in a closet now lives in furniture-grade cabinetry — and the whole bath reads as one composed room rather than a collection of fixtures.
The Plates
Before · After
Both photographs show this project’s tub position — the corner platform tub and its deck before, and the streamlined drop-in that replaced it. Room-level pairing; the two frames were not shot from the same camera position.
The Record Behind the Room
Questions We Hear
Does a steam shower need a special enclosure?
Yes. A steam enclosure closes completely — glass runs to the ceiling or to a transom that seals, so vapor stays in the shower instead of condensing through the room. It’s one of the first things we design, because it changes the glass, the door, and the framing behind the wall.
How is a steam shower waterproofed differently?
Behind the tile, a steam shower is built with vapor-rated waterproofing on every surface — walls and ceiling, not just the pan. Ordinary shower membranes manage water that falls; steam construction manages humidity that penetrates. That assembly is invisible in the finished room, and it’s most of the work.
Can a steam shower fit in an existing master-bath footprint?
Usually, yes. This project kept its original footprint — the space came from re-balancing the room, not enlarging it. The corner platform tub gave back enough floor area to let the shower become the room’s primary fixture.
Do I lose my tub if I add a steam shower?
Not necessarily. Here the tub stayed — it simply moved out of the starring role, to a drop-in under the window. Whether a tub earns its space is a per-family decision we work through in design, not a rule.
Does KBF handle the design and the construction?
Yes — one team, from the first drawing through the last inspection. Steam scope is a good example of why that matters: the enclosure, waterproofing, and finishes have to be decided together, so the designer and the builder need to be the same firm. Our process is on one page at how we work.
Does the five-year warranty cover the shower system?
Our five-year craftsmanship warranty covers the work we build, including the shower assembly we install. The details are published at our craftsmanship warranty.
More Like This
Your bathroom works this hard, too.
Bring us the room you have. A design consultation is where every one of these projects started.
Book Your Complimentary Consultation