The latest styling trends for our bathrooms this season
There’s no brand new outstanding styling trend for bathrooms this year but still, certain design and systematic shifts are evident, while other solid favourites are proving their staying power and are worth taking notice of to make your bathroom future-proof, as well as water-proofed for the next decade or so.
Heritage Highs
If you’re hung up on period pleasures, before opting for standard Victorian ware, move on to Art Deco and examine inspired new originals from polite Edwardian to full on jazz- style fittings.
With black and white bathrooms and the new rage for highly-veined Carrara marble – cast metal and cross head traditional taps never looked better, and read a little sleeker when they’re discreetly matched to 21st technologies in showering.
Though a little less Upstairs-Downstairs, this look is still vintage at heart and shows as pure quality. New designers like Martin Brudnizki for Drummond’s are abstracting late 19th-century, free-standing bath shapes.
For instance, take a look at the subtle scoop of the upright-sided, Tyburn bath in composite marble, sloped inside for comfortable reading and relaxing.
These vessels dance with the Brudnizki-designed Ladybower double basin, and reeded Double Derwent glass wall lamps.
Drummond’s sanitary ware is made in their own foundries to order. Drummonds-uk.com (Belfast) and suppliers include Versatile Bathrooms in the south.
picks: Swale and Tamar bath with bespoke paintwork from Drummond’s, again, far less fussy than faux antique feet, from €5,000.
Libra Claridge Round Patterned Classic Art Deco Mirror, €631.80, www.lightplan.ie
Sleek and sophisticated
When it comes to tiling in the smallest room, grout lines have to go (well as far as we can tuck them away).
We’re not all in a position to pay out for top of the range, rectified tiling, (which meets in tight, imperceptible seams) and large dimension floor and wall products, but prices are coming down and it’s possible to get good quality at reasonable prices on sale and at outlets like Right Price Tiles.
With regular, cermatic joints, bleached out grout colours for pale tiles, and closely matching greys and buffs for darker colours, can at least reduce the presence of lines.
Walls this year have a stand-alone design or shade, as dramatic a break as you like, from flooring.
Alternatively, rhythmic textures of peaking waves, geometric or beaten surfaces in gloss, matt or metallic tiles, come together in a single contemporary canvas. Several tiles to a panel, again reduces the need for threads of cement.
Relief tiles can also take the place of feature colours in walls and splash-backs. High shine ceramic tiles inspired by the mica content in quarried stone, look utterly amazing under artificial light.
Rectangular subway tiles remain a perennial favourite and are firmly metropolitan. An in-house designer working in a well staged showroom, will demonstrate just how to play with the latest scale, texture and shade.
Manila Deco Blanco rectified wall tiles from Porcelanosa (fragile leaf impressions) in white. €60 per square metre, suppliers nationwide.
Green-washing
With all the hard surfacing demanded of the bathroom or wet-room, wood or wood-look laminates provide natural relief.
Tailor this to a bathroom with Pantone’s colour of the year, ‘Greenery’ and your bathroom gives a nod to every top spa in the country and a shy glance back to a certain 1970’s hit (no one say the ‘A’ word please).
Wood touches are effortlessly delivered in storage solutions to the front of doors and around the frames of mirrored units.
Free-standing and generous cabinets in laminates and superb but expensive examples of hardwood units are on offer from a range of retailers at every price point, so shop around and don’t forget your sizes.
Cramming a large unit into a small space won’t work. Also, bear in mind that any mirror choices should reflect unit size — if you have a 60cm basin unit, then opt for a 60cm wide mirror.
Touch LED lighting and demisters in mirrors are de rigueur for now, but be aware that when the lights run out in two years time or more, they can’t be replaced and out goes your €200 purchase.
picks: Sonas Bathrooms’ Brava 60cm drawer/basin unit in walnut (gloss laminate,) with its beautiful handles, RRP €545.
Floating storage and support
Following the lead of boutique hotels cantilevered sinks with plain square, chromed brackets or invisible support are increasingly overtaking stand-alone basins.
Be warned they are getting skinny and elasticated reduced to one squeaky thin drawer, not more than glorified shelving. With all that sophisticated open air, there’s less cubic centimetres of storage
Consider what you need for that washroom ballast and basin traps to be kept out of sight, and add 15%.
Duravit always offers a vast collection in cabinetry and their Xtra Large is ideal for modern, massive family bathrooms.
Created by Sieger Design, there are super flat consoles with the storage set back, matched to vanities in 48cm or 55cm depths.
Mirror cabinets come with an integrated sound system that works via Bluetooth music streaming (you can even listen to music underwater with their matching bath technology).
Their Wondergliss coating to the porcelain sloughs of dirt and grime.
picks: Christian Werther’s Ketho in Graphic black by Duravit, from €250. www.duravit.com/inspiration
Available at every good bathroom retailer.
NEW: DISCREET DRAINS
The design of wall drains is changing the way we whisk away the water from the shower floor or tray.
Geberit models have an impressive discharge rate of 0.8 l/s even at a low screed height, reducing nuisance pooling on an otherwise sleek, uninterrupted floor in a wet room or walk-through shower design.
A wall drain relies on perfect installation, perfect levels and tanking is key.
The position of the run-off is marked by a collector available in a range of finishes which features a hair trap as standard.
wwwGeberit.co.uk
Floor channels and wall drains available through Geberit stockists nationwide
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