Roll Top Bath Materials
Cast iron always used to be the material of choice for the manufacture of baths but the arrival of more modern alternatives has meant cast iron losing popularity.
Interior designers would often look for period features in a house with the aim of making that feature the focal point of the room and basing the rest of the design around it. Cast iron roll top baths would often catch the eye of thse designers and the advent of television home makeover shows helped raise the profile of this "old fashioned" design. They would often have the bath re-enamelled which would involve sending the bath away to a specialist. his could prove a costly and lengthy process so manufacturers cottoned on to this demand and started to provide alternatives to this type of client. They kept the look and sizes of the baths similar but started to make them in acrylic, cast resin or steel. Although these were not cheap baths they were still cheaper than equivalent cast iron baths and readily available.
The materials used by manufacturers in the production of the bath, legs, feet, framework or plinth include:
- cast iron
- enammeled steel
- stone resin
- acrylic sheet
- cast acrylic
- brass
- stainless steel
- chrome plated tube
- hardwood
- softwood
Demand for roll top baths continued to increase but this coincided with an increase in demand for modern, minimalist design bathrooms so manufacturers looked at ways of incorporating the basic bath shell into a more modern setting, which resulted in roll top baths with cradles, plinths, and chrome pipe framework - all variations on the initial bath.
One of the reasons that cast iron baths declined in popularity was due to the weight of the bath. Acrylic baths offered a hard wearing surface (though not has hard wearing as enamel) but were considerably lighter, making maneouvering the bath through the house and into place in the bathroom much easier. Freestanding baths have to be very solid by design as they have no walls to steady them and hold them in place. Cast iron and stone resin baths tend to the heaviest followed by steel and then acrylic.