I LOVE, LOVE our Grohe shower system. It's very simple: the head is not rain style (I don't like that either) but it has multiple settings and is very strong. It slides on a slide bar if needed to adjust height, it swivels up and down to adjust angle of water stream, but it stays put when you set it. It's also a hand held, though I only use it as hand held when cleaning the shower walls. One showerhead for both functions. Works like dream, we're very happy with it. All our faucetry in the house that we have installed is Grohe, and we've never had issues. The chrome is a good value in Grohe, typically much less spendy than their other finishes.

I feel your pain, elle3. We had a very hard time with selecting our plumbing fixtures as well. The thing we found that helped was to look at fixtures online first to help narrow down the choices then find out which plumbing supply houses had those fixtures in their showroom for us to see in person.

For our master shower, we went with the Delta Lockwood in Aged Pewter with a slide bar in Delta's Addison line for the handshower & absolutely love it. The spray out of the shower head is the perfect pressure & size. The handshower is on a slide bar & has the different massage settings on it (you can select a different handshower without the massage feature if you like). We were worried about water spots with using a dark finish (we have well water), but those worries turned out to be unfounded. In contrast, our chrome fixtures in the kids' bathrooms are a whole other story--I'm constantly in there scrubbing away at the water spots! The aged pewter finish was just discontinued by Delta so you might be able to find it at a really good price if you like it. Here's a pic of our shower (4'x7')...

Another thought on this would be to look into one of Delta's In2ition showerheads. It's similar to the Grohe posted above, but without the slide bar and is VERY cost effective. We installed the Delta Madison In2ition showerheads in our last house and LOVED them. The only reason we didn't use them in the current house is because we were going for a different look.

Hope this helps!

We have all Hansgrohe fixtures, they aren't cheap but I love them

All of these pictures are sooo helpful--thanks so much! These bathrooms are so beautiful....I haven't nailed down the tile choices yet either, and your pics are giving me inspiration:)

We went with Kohler. One thing to figure out is if you want separate temperature and volume control knobs. I prefer that because it minimizes how much time I spend fiddling with the mixer valve.

There are some styles that have the 2 knobs together and others separate that function into 2 knobs that use different backplate things (the decorative thing that goes between the knob and the tile, escutcheon? )

I've heard great things about Grohe as well, I think any valves that are really heavy is a good sign of quality and most of the brands mentioned here are nice and heavy.

Good info and feedback on this topic. I have a new shower in the future, but after I get the first BR started and finished. I will definitely use these suggestions.

OT, Lynneblack, what a great tile job, so nicely centered around the nook.

thanks enduring, we are real pleased with the tile work too.

Good advice about the separate volume and temperature controls--makes sense. Thank you!

we have a hansgrohe handheld which works well. and a cifial thunderstorm fixed head which gives a heavy spray which i wanted for my very thick hair- i love it, tho it's definitely not a water saving head...

have a hansgrohe hand shower which doubles as a shower head. it's a chroma C 100 i think. shower is great, BUT the pressure control valve doesn't work, and the hand shower just broke off. so thumbs down.

@phylhl...you say that the pressure control valve doesn't work. Do you mean the valve that you installed in the wall??