How to install a shower head

What you need, which is almost nothing

• PTFE plumber’s tape. A dollar or two, available everywhere, and the one item worth having. It seals the threads; without it, a slow drip at the joint is likely.
• An old towel or a cloth. For grip if the old head is stiff, and to wipe the threads.
• Optionally, an adjustable wrench or pliers. Only to loosen a head that has been on for years. Wrap the cloth around the fitting first so the jaws do not mark the chrome.

What you do not need: a plumber, a shut-off, or any tool to fit the new head. Every pick on this page hand-tightens, and over-tightening with a wrench is how plastic fittings crack.

The five steps

1. Turn the old head counter-clockwise. Looking at it from below, that is left. Hand pressure first; add a cloth and pliers only if it has seized.
2. Clean the arm threads. Old tape, scale and sealant all come off with a cloth and a thumbnail. This is the step people skip, and it is why the joint leaks.
3. Wrap the threads two or three times, clockwise. Clockwise as you look at the end of the arm, so screwing the head on tightens the tape rather than unwinding it. Pull it snug into the thread grooves.
4. Screw the new head on by hand. Clockwise until it stops, then about a quarter-turn more. Hand-tight is the specification — not wrench-tight.
5. Run it for a minute and look at the joint. A drip means one more wrap of tape. Nothing else can be wrong at this point.

Will it fit? Almost certainly yes

The flow-rate line is the one worth knowing before you buy rather than after. The federal ceiling is 2.5 gallons per minute; EPA’s WaterSense label covers heads at 2.0 gpm or below that also meet spray-performance criteria, and several states set their own lower limits. If your water is metered, the efficient head is also the cheaper head to run — see the low-flow picks.

Four things that go wrong, and the fix

1. It drips at the joint. Not enough tape, or tape wrapped the wrong way. Take it off, clean the threads, wrap two or three turns clockwise, refit hand-tight.
2. The old head will not budge. Years of scale. Wrap a cloth round the fitting, use pliers on the nut rather than the body, and hold the arm still with your other hand so you are not twisting the pipe inside the wall.
3. Pressure got worse, not better. Check the new head’s filter screen for debris knocked loose during the swap, and check you have not fitted a rain head on a weak supply — a wide face needs pressure to feel like anything. That is the one genuine mismatch in this category.
4. The arm itself leaks at the wall. Now it is plumbing, and it is the landlord’s. Stop, photograph it, and report it — a leak inside the wall is a moisture problem, which EPA guidance treats as something to fix at source rather than manage.

The renter rules

• Keep the original head. In a bag, with the lease. Refit it before the final inspection and the swap never happened.
• Do not remove a flow restrictor. Several heads ship with a removable restrictor and it is tempting; it can push the head over the legal flow rate where you live, and in a metered building you are paying for it.
• Nothing here needs drilling. Handheld brackets that mount to the wall do; the ones that hang on the arm itself do not, which is the version to buy in a rental. More of that thinking in renter-safe bathroom upgrades.

Which head to fit

• Weak pressure, or you want to rinse the tub: the handheld. The single most useful shower head in a rental.
• Cheapest real improvement: the five-mode fixed head. Silicone nozzles rub clean of scale, nothing to break.
• Fitting it permanently in a first house: the brass-jointed fixed head.
• Good pressure and you want it to feel better: the six-inch rain head — but only with good pressure.

For the full rankings: best shower heads for low water pressure, best shower heads for hard water and best low-flow shower heads.