Walk-In Shower vs. Tub: What Are DFW Homeowners Actually Choosing Now?

Most DFW homeowners remodeling a primary bathroom right now are replacing the tub with a larger walk-in shower, but keeping at least one tub somewhere else in the house. National surveys show replacing a bathtub with a walk-in shower as the single most requested bathroom update over the next few years, and that trend is showing up clearly in the primary suites we work on across Plano, Frisco, Allen, and McKinney.

Why the Primary Bath Is Losing Its Tub

Most adults simply don't use the tub in their primary bathroom. It sits there collecting bottles of bath products nobody opens, while the shower gets used daily. Once that pattern is obvious, homeowners start asking why they're dedicating 15 to 20 square feet of their primary bath to a fixture that gets used a handful of times a year. Converting that space to a larger walk-in shower, often frameless glass, a bench, and a rain head, turns dead space into the feature of the room.

The One-Tub Rule

Here's the part that keeps this from hurting resale value: as long as the home has a tub somewhere, a hall bath, a secondary bathroom, a guest bath, removing the primary tub doesn't scare off buyers. Families with young kids still want a tub in the house, they just don't need it in the primary suite. Homes with only one bathroom, or where the primary is the only bath with a tub, are the exception. In that situation we typically recommend keeping some kind of tub, even a compact one, to keep the home marketable to the widest range of buyers.

• Primary suite with a second full or hall bath elsewhere: converting the primary tub to a shower is low-risk for resale
• Single-bathroom homes: keep a tub, since it's often a non-negotiable for buyers with kids
• Homes marketed toward downsizers or empty-nesters: shower-only primary baths are frequently a selling point, not a drawback
• Multi-generational households: a curbless, no-threshold shower is often the higher priority than tub removal alone

What a Tub-to-Shower Conversion Actually Costs

A straightforward tub-to-shower conversion in the DFW metro typically runs $6,000 to $15,000 depending on shower size, glass type, and tile selection, with simpler surround-and-pan jobs on the lower end and full custom tile showers with frameless glass on the higher end. Expanding the footprint (pushing into a closet or adjacent space for a genuinely larger shower) adds to that, but the conversion itself, without moving walls, is usually the more budget-friendly bathroom project homeowners take on.

What to Prioritize If You're Making the Switch

A curbless or low-threshold entry is worth the extra framing cost, it looks cleaner and works for aging in place without looking clinical. Frameless glass reads as more current than a framed enclosure and tends to make a smaller bathroom feel larger. A built-in bench and a handheld shower head alongside a rain head give the space actual function, not just a design upgrade.

What If You Want to Reclaim the Space Instead

Some homeowners take the tub-to-shower conversion a step further and reclaim square footage rather than just resizing the shower. Pulling the shower wall back toward where the tub used to sit can open room for a linen cabinet, a second shower entry, or a slightly larger vanity footprint, especially in primary baths built in the 1990s and 2000s where the tub and shower were boxed in as two separate small fixtures. This kind of reconfiguration costs more than a straight swap since it usually involves moving the drain and sometimes the supply lines, but it produces a noticeably different feeling room rather than just a bigger version of the same layout.

If you're on the fence about losing the tub, walk through how often it actually gets used first. Lonestar Kitchen & Bath Co. can also show you what a shower-only primary looks like against keeping a tub in a secondary bath, so the decision is based on how your household actually lives, not just what's trending.