Planning a new bathroom? This is how you’ll want it to look
Boring bathrooms, designed with only practicality and functionality in mind, are a relic of the past. Today, our bathrooms can be whatever we want them to be, whether that is a sanctuary from the world outside or an opportunity to bring hotel vibes to our everyday life. But with this kind of freedom comes an overwhelming amount of choice and ever more alluring trends. If you’re planning a whole new bathroom this year, or just a bit of a glow-up, where should you begin?
Think comfort
Start by ridding yourself of the notion that bathrooms require a different aesthetic from elsewhere in the house. When interior designer Leanne Kilroy (@goodboneslondon) recently remodelled the bathroom in her Victorian home, her whole approach – very much the mood of the moment – was to make sure it flowed with the rest of the house. “I wanted it to feel like a real room, with dignity, not just a bathroom,” she says. For Kilroy, this meant avoiding “the cold feeling that bathrooms can have when they have too much porcelain and tiles”, and injecting warmth via details such as floor-to-ceiling linen curtains and unlacquered brass hardware, and keeping the original wooden floors. “It makes the room feel more like any other room in the house, rather than this closed-off space,” she explains.
Add fabrics
One way to make a bathroom feel softer and cosier is to introduce as much fabric as possible – ventilation permitting (a window that is regularly opened or a good extractor fan is vital). Interior designer Octavia Dickinson predicts that bathroom fabrics will be a big trend this year: “We’ll see a lot more fabric panelling and gathered fabric on bath skirts, on the basin pedestals or on the doors of bespoke bathroom cabinets.” She says that using fabric in this way “can add depth to spaces that can often suffer from the flattening effect of artificial light”.
In terms of window fabrics, simple café curtains are also an easy way to add texture (and easy to make if you like a simple sewing project); or for drama, introduce full-length curtains. Textile designer Tori Murphy says that if you can include them, curtains with lots of folds and pleats allow you “to create a boutique hotel feel, perfect for those increasingly important ‘me time’ moments”.
Consider ways with wallpaper
Wallpaper’s popularity continues to soar and is another way to stamp your own taste on the bathroom. Before you paper the entire place though, do think about how regularly that particular bathroom is going to be used and who is using it, advises interior designer Nels Crosthwaite Eyre, whose clients have been known to refer to her as the “crusher of dreams” when she has had to remind them of this.
The general message? If you’re decorating a family bathroom for splashy children, maybe consider installing panelling on the lower part of the wall and wallpaper above. If it’s a guest bathroom with lighter use, you can go to town on fancy wallpaper: Crosthwaite Eyre’s own features a Soane wallpaper and a roll-top bath, chosen rather than a shower because she wanted to be able to offer something a bit spoiling to her friends. A pro tip for using wallpaper in the bathroom is to seal it with a dead flat varnish.
Add colour
Personality and warmth can also be introduced successfully with good colour choices: “Using warmer, earthier tones in the bathroom in particular makes a space feel calm and comforting, which we all crave after a long day,” says interior designer Nicola Harding. Such tones are on trend at the moment and can be dressed up or down as you choose. Harding seeks out “soulful colour combinations” and encourages people to be braver in the rooms in which they spend less time. For example if you’ve gone for a soft pink colour on the walls, she suggests adding “a splash of red and a pop of yellow” to make the room much livelier.
If this is not your particular vibe, this year we’ll also see new takes on the ever popular nautical colour scheme. Blue and white tiles can look somewhat cold, but the best new examples have a handmade quality that prevents this from being the case. Artist Sasha Compton has designed a collection of porcelain patterned tiles for Ca’Pietra, featuring irregular geometric borders, and Everett and Blue has a collection of handmade and hand-painted blue and white Portuguese tiles that have an appealing muted softness about them. This colour pairing has the advantage of always looking fresh, plus it’s an easy backdrop for greenery; another way to soften the harder edges of bathrooms.
Try out tiles
If tiles excite you, Sophia Ayrton-Grime, interior designer and founder of homeware company Studio Raff, says herringbone patterns are making a resurgence this year. Not only are they pleasing to the eye, Ayrton-Grime says they can also “visually expand a bathroom, creating an illusion of space”. Wet walls – entire walls of tiles where they are being used not just for practical purposes but also aesthetically – are also a big trend.
Go large
If you want to make an impact, one of the best things to do is to think about scale. Large mirrors are a fun way to add some playfulness to the room. A mirror is obviously an essential item, says Felix Milns of joinery brand HUX London, but “an oversized mirror is an excellent way of instantly doubling the amount of natural light and is also an easy way to make this traditionally smaller room in the home feel much bigger”. He suggests playing around with the frame too: “Opting for an interesting frame in terms of texture or shape can be a brilliant way of bringing a more organic finish into a room that traditionally features harder surfaces and more angular elements.”
Statement lighting is also on message. Don’t restrict yourself to bathroom-y choices. “You don’t have to use IP-rated lights in a bathroom if they are outside the ‘zones’, for example more than 60cm away from the tap of a bathroom sink,” says Charlie Bowles, director of lighting brand Original BTC. So put in that huge raffia pendant you love if you’ve got the ceiling height, or a light that will wow you when you’re lying in the bath. Another good way to mix up the lighting is to consider a rechargeable table lamp. These have been massively popular in kitchens and for outdoor use but when used on a shelf in the bathroom (Original BTC has an IP44-rated bathroom-safe one), it can totally change the atmosphere of the room.
Give it a glow-up
But what should you do if you don’t love your bathroom but can’t justify a complete overhaul? Textile designer Cathy Nordstr?m recently gave her own bathroom a “mini makeover”. Her bathroom was fully functioning and she didn’t want to do any invasive work. Instead she played with the furniture, finding a mid-century corner cabinet online, and then enlisted the help of Rebecca Pitt of Inuti Design to design a new vanity, inspired by the cabinet.
“Today, I wouldn’t have tiled the walls and I probably would have chosen a warmer hue for the marble floor, but I really did not want to rip out a bathroom that was more than OK,” she says. It’s an excellent example of how you can dramatically alter a space without construction work. Could those tiles you dislike look different set off by a new paint colour or a less bathroom-like piece of furniture?
To accessorise on a smaller scale, shop around for unique objects, from vases to toothbrush holders, to add personality and character to the bathroom. When Crosthwaite Eyre starts long renovation projects with clients, she suggests that they collect interesting things from their travels, or buy an artwork they love when they see it. Often such things find their perfect place in the bathroom. “Don’t think, ‘I’ll never have a place for that,’” she says. “There’ll always be a spot and it just makes your house feel like it’s yours and not from a catalogue.” In particular, she recommends looking for linen in French markets; she brought home bath mats from St Tropez in her suitcase last year.
When looking for other accessories, think about how you want to feel. If you want to pamper yourself, consider waffle towels and make the effort to roll them and display them invitingly on a shelf. Add a bath caddy with a pretty bar of soap and a new novel, or find the most beautiful bottle of bath oil you can (Aromatherapy Associates or Santa Maria Novella for example) and put it somewhere visible. A small trolley is useful as extra storage for towels and products; and an antique soap dish or a shell (a favourite bathroom accessory with interior designers) can instantly elevate the room.
