A shower head's packaging sometimes says how many litres per minute it uses. But what your shower really lets through at home also depends on your tap, hose and water pressure. With a bucket and a stopwatch you'll know within a minute. And then you can see straight away what a shower costs you.
In short
- Catch the water for 10 seconds, read how many litres it is and multiply by 6. That gives you your litres per minute.
- Milieu Centraal, the Dutch independent advice organisation, calls a shower head water-saving at a maximum of 7.2 litres per minute.
- With a gas boiler, most of the cost is in heating, not in the water: in our worked example around four fifths.
- In that example, a 12-litre-per-minute shower costs about 12 cents per minute, an 8-litre one about 8 cents.
The bucket test in 4 steps
- Take a bucket or measuring jug with a scale and a stopwatch, for example on your phone.
- Set the shower to your usual mode and temperature and wait until the water is warm.
- Hold the bucket under the spray for exactly 10 seconds. Is your bucket big enough? A full minute is even more accurate.
- Read how much water is in it and multiply by 6. 1.3 litres? Then your shower uses about 8 litres per minute.
Does your shower head have several modes? Measure them all: the difference between a rain mode and a massage mode can be large.
What does the result mean?
| Litres per minute | What it means |
|---|---|
| Up to 7.2 l | Water-saving according to Milieu Centraal |
| 7.2 to 10 l | Average: there is still something to gain |
| 10 to 15 l | Generous: a more economical head makes a big difference |
| More than 15 l | Often a large rain shower |
What does a shower cost?
Showering costs water and energy to heat that water. With a gas boiler, the second is by far the larger part. We calculate with Dutch prices; with your own tariffs the result will differ.
- Water: €1.82 per m³. That is the Vitens tariff for 2026 (€1.34) plus the Dutch tap water tax (€0.477). We leave out fixed charges.
- Gas: €1.80 per m³. According to Keuze.nl, that was the average variable gas price in the Netherlands in October 2026; a fixed one-year contract cost about €1.71 on average. Feel free to use the tariff on your own contract.
- Heating: with 1 m³ of gas you heat roughly 220 litres of shower water. That is a rule of thumb; in practice your boiler and pipes make it a little better or worse.
| Shower head | Per minute | 9-minute shower | Per year* |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7.2 l/min | €0.07 | €0.65 | €236 |
| 8 l/min | €0.08 | €0.72 | €263 |
| 12 l/min | €0.12 | €1.08 | €394 |
| 16 l/min | €0.16 | €1.44 | €526 |
*One person showering for 9 minutes every day. Our own calculation with the assumptions above, October 2026 prices.
Why 9 minutes? According to Milieu Centraal, people in the Netherlands shower for about nine minutes on average. Going from 12 to 8 litres per minute saves about €130 per person per year in this example. If you shower for less time, the saving is smaller. Do you have an electric water heater or a heat pump? Then you calculate with electricity and the amounts are different.
Older boiler or gas water heater? Watch the minimum flow
Older boilers and gas water heaters sometimes need a minimum water flow to fire up. If the spray is too economical, the water stays cold. According to Milieu Centraal, modern condensing boilers work fine with a water-saving shower head, and a storage water heater has no minimum flow.
Showering more economically without giving anything up
- Shower for less time. That remains the biggest saving.
- Pause while soaping up. A pause button stops the water for a moment. Read how the pause button works.
- Keep the head free of limescale. Blocked nozzles give a weak spray, so you unconsciously shower for longer.
- Choose a more economical head. Especially if your bucket test comes out above 10 litres.
And the Besjaar shower heads?
The Besjaar Luxury Hand Shower and the Besjaar Rain Shower with Hose use a maximum of 8 litres per minute, with air in the spray for a full shower. That is more economical than many standard heads, but just above Milieu Centraal's 7.2-litre threshold. Go ahead and do the bucket test: then you see in black and white what your head does. The Besjaar Shower Head with Filter has a pause button to save water while soaping up. More calculations in water-saving shower head: how much do you really save?
Frequently asked questions
How many litres of water does a shower use per minute?
It depends on the head. A water-saving head uses at most 7.2 litres, many standard heads 8 to 12 litres and large rain showers even more. Measure it yourself with the bucket test.
What does a 10-minute shower cost?
With a head of 8 litres per minute, gas at €1.80 per m³ and water at €1.82 per m³, about €0.80. At 12 litres per minute, about €1.20.
Is showering more expensive with a rain shower?
Usually, yes. A large rain shower uses far more water per minute, and every extra litre also has to be heated.
Besjaar makes shower heads and filters for Dutch bathrooms, from Assen. Better water, every day.