WHEN it comes to bath-room styles, travelers are the most experienced. Due to the miles frequented which makes them better equipped than most to say which bathrooms are best, they will answer that the international standard is the pinnacle of bathroom design. Certain parts of the world have certain parts of the bathroom missing. In some areas of Asia, the toilet bowl is non-existent.
Inasmuch as we want to celebrate all cultures, certain things must be upheld while remaining sensitive to the politically correct assertion that no one culture is more superior than others. But when it comes to bathrooms, ah, some bathrooms are more superior than the rest. Here are five bathroom ideas to help make yours stand out from the crowd.
ENHANCE WITH WALLPAPER
The most conventional bathroom design calls for ceramic or marble tiles and lots of them on floors and walls. But a trend of the past decades has been to cover not a few walls with wallpaper. Seems counterintuitive, right?
Recent advances in wallpaper production have made new products more water-resistant with plastic lining. The edges of new wallpaper do not to curl due to moisture. This has opened up a whole new world of options for interior designers who want to emblazon their powder room walls with all manner of pattern and design. While not replacing the standard bathroom tile as the most convenient surface to handle water, wallpaper is used to beautify walls that do not catch moisture as a result of using the shower or faucet.
EXPERIMENT WITH TILES
Of course, tiles will most probably never go out of style. As a de rigueur component to the bathroom surface, they are still the most effective and efficient material to hold and drain water in a room. But some designs are better than others. Decorators have mixed and matched various colors, glazes and patterns to arrive at a variety of looks. By merely varying the color of a tiled wall from that of the floor, a decorator can achieve a nice distinction. Also, tiles can also be cut individually to piece together an amalgamated design called a mosaic.
CREATE A FLOOR/WALL MOSAIC
Tessera is what you call a single piece of tile or stone that is incorporated with other units into the design of a mosaic. The creation of such artwork often requires the preparation of a study. The entire surface area, including the design of the work, is first drawn on paper. Called a cartoon, this preparatory sketch outlines the forms that will be finally marked by the use of tesserae.
Pipa Murray of PipaMurray.com specializes in mosaics. For a bathroom, shown in photo, she prepared a cartoon which was the basis for the shapes of various tiles that were later cut individually by hand. Piecing the various tesserae together to form paisley designs only required the right tiles which were affixed on the floor with cement and grout.
OVERSIZE IT
Bathrooms can enjoy the expansive sumptuousness of a spa. This may be achieved by oversizing the proportions of the room. Arch. Fernanda Zarattini shows the way. By giving the bathtub a platform of its own and separating it from the shower and toilet, a spa-like ambiance can be produced for your bathroom.
TAKE THE BATH OUT OF THE ROOM
Finally, the final frontier: What if you take the bath out of the room? Arch. Jeremy Levine accomplishes the task by combining three adjoining rooms into a single bedroom. While the rest of the bathroom finds their place in rooms which hold the shower and toilet, a stone-clad tub sits in the lone bedroom, overlooking a private garden.
Image credits: Favaro Junior, Steve Rice, Johannes Eckert, Dutchbaby and Favaro Junior