How to Tell if Your Shower is Leaking (and What it Costs to Ignore)

Most shower leaks announce themselves quietly. There's a small damp mark on the ceiling below, a skirting board that looks slightly swollen, or a smell in the bathroom that never fully clears. Individually these seem minor. Together they mean water is escaping the shower and reaching something it shouldn't.

The clearest way to check is to walk around the outside of the shower wall after use. Damp skirting on the opposite side of a shower wall is the most reliable indicator that water is tracking through. If the wall backs onto a wardrobe, check the wardrobe base. If the shower is on the second storey, look at the ceiling below.

Not every leak is the shower's fault. Plumbing leaks — from taps, mixer bodies or the drain — produce similar symptoms. A basic test is to run the shower without water hitting the enclosure walls (a hand under the rose, water diverted) and see if the leak still develops. If it does, the leak is plumbing, not the enclosure.

The reason to act early is that the cost curve is steep. A grout or silicone repair caught early is straightforward. Left alone, the same failure can cause damage to the wall cavity, the substrate under the tiles, the floor structure below and the ceiling of the room underneath. What was a joint repair becomes a partial rebuild.

If you can see any of the signs above, a photo assessment is a low-friction first step. Send photos of the shower base, the failed joints and any damp marks; that's usually enough for us to say whether a repair is likely to hold or whether a larger scope is needed.