Comforting warmth

If you’ve ever renovated a bathroom, then you’ll know that finding a matching heated towel rail to tie in with your fixtures and tapware can be a nightmare. Whether it’s brass mixers that you want to match or a blush pink tiled shower, heated towel rails that complement the bathroom can be elusive.

Elite Bathroomware director Josh Burkhead says in addition to aesthetic challenges faced by renovators, restrictions around voltage in wet areas mean not all towel rails are suitable to be installed in all locations.

“As soon as you have a wet area next to a bath or a slip prone area, you can’t fit a normal 240V heated towel rail—it has to be 12V.”

Josh says customers often come to Elite Bathroomware with this problem, or alternatively, they have a very tricky space they need to fit with a rail.

“We manufacture and supply a vast array of sizes and configurations ranging in size from 600mm to 1600mm in height and 500mm to 1050mm in width. Also horizontal and vertical towel single rails single heated rails in a vast number of sizes, ideal for a contemporary look.”

Each product comes in both 12V and 240V options, so that they can be installed wherever the customer needs.

The towel rails come in a range of seven colours and finishes, from matte white to brushed copper, brass and gunmetal grey. It means if you’ve got copper or brass tapware, you don’t have to compromise on your choice of towel rail, says Josh.

“And if we don’t have the exact colour a customer requires, we often direct them to the matte white towel rail, as almost every bathroom has a white element, and we find that the white towel rails tend to tie in nicely.”

For customers who have the tricky problem of having a half-wall height of wall tiles, but want to fit a heated towel rail across both wall and tile surfaces, Elite Bathroomware has also developed a solution.

“Typically, the thickness of the tiles is 12mm, so we have extended top feet available that are 12mm long, so that you can seamlessly fit the ladder across both wall and tile surfaces.”

Finding solutions to these types of common problems is something Josh relishes and Elite Bathroomware is actively developing new products and options for the market, including a new slimline profile range, which is due to become available in the middle of this year.

The slimline range is a very contemporary horizontal ladder look and will be available in all of the current colours and finishes.

In addition, a hand towel rail is being developed, which Josh says will be the smallest heated towel rail available on the market.

“I think people will like to have them as a luxury element in their laundries, powder rooms or kitchens —where they don’t want to use a damp hand towel or tea towel.”

Elite Bathroomware is also addressing the power usage of heated towel rails and has reduced the wattages on a lot of their products to align them with their customers’ desire for greener living.

The towel rails also come with a programmable timer, which comes on for ‘heat saver periods’; four hours, twice a day. It means towels are dry for the twice daily shower routine, but heavy power usage is avoided.

Improvements have been made to the look of the timers too. They are now entirely concealed from view, including the cord—which can be easily switched to either sit on the left or right of each towel ladder—a vast improvement on past models where the wiring was on display.

Josh says Elite Bathroomware isn’t afraid to develop new solutions for the market and put them into production, because he thinks there’s no reason why customers should still be grappling with limited heated towel rail options, plus, “nobody wants to use a damp towel!”

Learn more about incorporating a heated towel rail solution into your next bathroom project.