Same wood as the wall, with triple coat of varnish to prevent problems. Around the faucet, a solid piece of material, perhaps a solid porcelain tile drilled for the taps. Keep it very simple.

Hi Nic, I've been stuck with shower-over-baths in a few rentals and they can be slippery death traps! They also get grotty in summer with bare feet, post beach showers etc which limits usage as a bath anyway. If your kids are old enough I'd go for just a nice big shower area or a separate shower with a compact freestanding bath if you can fit one. If your kids are little or the above won't work for you here's some tips to make a shower over bath safer and easy to use: - Pick a bath with an absolutely flat bottom and anti slip texture at the shower end (those suction anti-slip mats are worse than useless). - Position the shower screen so that you can step straight onto the anti slip part. - Make sure the bath edge is low enough for the kids to enter end exit easily. - A hand held shower head that can move up and down would be a nice addition. Hope that helps! Good luck with the new bathroom :)

I can't help but wonder how a freestanding bath looks after a year or two of trying to clean behind and under them. Also we have large trees and a lot of spiders. They often hang out in the bathroom. Nuff said!

The freestanding bath fillers are vulnerable to being knocked. When you think about the physics of it, it is asking a lot of a small fixture to resist that amount of leverage. Talk to your architect. They should be able to come up with a support that fits with your design and is a bit more robust than the long and thin proprietary bath fillers. Also how far is your bath from the wall? If it is closer than 300mm I would still be waterproofing the wall, and with young children around I would waterproof it even if further away.