Vinyl keeps that whole depth manageable and copes with the water; a lower flat with a solid base can carry porcelain more comfortably.
Upstairs in a Tyneside flat the bathroom floor is the neighbour’s ceiling, so it is built as a resilient layer, a tanked deck and a surface, in that order. The BML rigid vinyl tile keeps that stack shallow and light, and the tile itself is listed as waterproof. Downstairs, on joists over a levelled void, the floor is stiff enough for porcelain from the tile range, and the grout lines stay whole.
The Berry Alloc panels are the wall answer for the upper flat, interlocking boards with no grout to crack when the building moves. In a small NE6 bathroom with an extractor doing all the work they are also the surface that stays clean. At Lower Callerton the new-build bathroom is on a slab with tanking as part of the build, and porcelain is the plain choice there.
Semi-detached houses are 35% of the Newcastle upon Tyne stock, and the semi's bathroom is upstairs on a timber floor, often over the kitchen. The floor over joists is checked for level and stiffness before a tile goes on it, because a tile over a floor that flexes cracks at the grout; the rigid vinyl floats over it and is the more forgiving of the two on timber.
Flats are 32% of the homes in the Newcastle upon Tyne district, and a bathroom in a flat is the room a leak from matters most, because it is someone else's ceiling. The rigid-vinyl floor over the slab with the edges sealed to the instructions, and the panels on the shower walls without a grout line to fail, are the two choices that keep the water where it belongs.