My Dream Bathroom: The Design — French For Pineapple

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Anyone that’s been reading my blog for a long time or even following me on Instagram, will probably know that I have been talking about, and wanting to remodel our bathroom, for literally years. Not just a couple of years, I have wanted to rip our old bathroom out for around TWELVE years. However, we have never been able to justify it - there was always something higher up the list that took priority. Until now.

My ideas for our bathroom design have changed loads over the years (as has the plan for where said bathroom would be!), as discussed here in a post I wrote in February last year. But honestly, I’m actually so pleased we couldn’t afford to go through with any of my old designs (like really pleased!) or the room configuration, because I know that having all that time, has 100% led us to this final design and location, and it’s 100% the right one.

Moving the family bathroom to the middle of the house into a big spare room, not only gives us a very generous bathroom space, but it also allows us to create a utility AND separate storage cupboard where the old bathroom was.

I’m genuinely not even sure which part of this excites me the most. I will share the more about the design in there in the next post, but today is all about the main bathroom.

The room is big. About eleven square metres give or take, once the walls all come in slightly to accommodate for plumbing and recesses, which is a pretty big space for urban London.

We made the decision to sacrifice a big spare room to create a big family bathroom based on several facts:

We have a five bedroom house, but only require three on a full time basis.
We can accommodate one visitor in the TV room, and if we ever need to accommodate more (very rarely) we can easily shuffle about or deploy the blow up mattress in the living room.
A big unused bedroom 100% turns into a big storage room aka Room Of Doom which doesn’t benefit anyone and only encourages hoarding tendencies.
I never used my office when I had one, I prefer to float around the house, and so does Ed now that he is (still) working from home too.
It won’t affect the resale price given the bedroom to living space ratio.
We wanted to make the house work better for US and the way we want to live, NOW.
Our old bathroom totally sucked and I really really really REALLY wanted a nice big new one!

I think they’re all pretty valid reasons, don’t you? We didn’t make the decision lightly, and even after we decided to go ahead, we had along wait before actually pulling the trigger so we know it’s the right move.

I tweaked this design a LOT, and over a very long time, so I’m pretty confident with my final decisions, although of course it has changed along the way. I wanted timeless and classic but definitely not boring, and with a contemporary edge. Again, delays have meant the design has further evolved and actually calmed down substantially and is quieter than it was to start, but I’ve really honed in on my core style. It will be elegant, luxurious but laid back, and a little bit playful.

My two biggest influences were Athena Calderone whose Brooklyn home is my idea of heaven (this will become apparent I’m sure!), and Australian designers Arent & Pyke who in my eyes can do no wrong, and their bathroom designs in particular always make my heart skip a beat. I know this isn’t the Oscars, but credit where credit’s due right?

ANYWAY, I know you just want to see what I have planned, so I will shut up now and get on with it.

I have had my heart set on the stunning Rosalina Marble tiles from Mandarin Stone* for a really long time. These will be in the shower area and I CAN NOT WAIT to see them go up. I’m pairing them with the very pretty Breton Blanc porcelain which has a kind of mottled beige white and pale grey subtle pattern on the floor which is much quieter than what I had originally planned, but I definitely won’t tire of these choices and they fulfil that all important criteria of timeless elegant beauty. There won’t be any tiles elsewhere, which after living with floor to ceiling tiled bathroom walls for thirteen years plus I’m extremely happy about.

I’ve gone for unlacquered brass taps which will patina and get more beautiful over time (I need to remember to be patient with this while they go through their ugly duckling stage), and a stunning freestanding bath from BC designs*. I’ve gone for one of these two, but you will have to wait and see which one! Both fulfil aaaaall my statement bath dreams and is made from their beautiful Cian material in a lovely satin finish. And they’re both small but perfectly formed because even though this is a big room, I didn’t want to give over too much space to the bath. The Bampton is only 155.5cms long, and the Omnia just slightly longer at 161.5cms.

Image: (L) Little Greene / BC Designs (R) Day True / BC Designs

There is also a little extra something happening in the bath area but I’m keeping that to myself for now, though you *might* spot it happening over the next few weeks if I give a sneak peek on my instagram stories. Yep I’m that person that loves not sharing everything before the big reveal!

After all my chit-chat recently about bathroom vanities, here and here, when push came to shove I just couldn’t find the right one off the peg. I considered adapting a vintage piece and even a new sideboard, and spent quite a lot of time looking for the perfect piece that was the perfect material, style, size and would accommodate under-mounted basins (didn’t want counter top ones), but I really didn’t want to compromise on any aspect of this bathroom, so when a beautiful bedside table popped up on Instagram by London based furniture designer maker Jay Achilles, it just spoke to me. I contacted him to see if he thought it could be re-worked as a floating vanity and to my excitement he said yes!

So Jay is making a bespoke vanity from solid oak, based on his Pelham bedside table, with gorgeous rounded corners, and four drawers. It will be handleless and be fitted with oval under-mounted basins, and eventually a beautiful marble top. The basin taps will be wall mounted.

Above the vanity will be two recessed mirror cabinets which are on backorder from CB2 in the states. Yes, I had to order from abroad as the selection of mirror cabinets here is atrocious, but that’s a whole other blog post. I’ve got these Nel cabinets in black, hopefully arriving in the next few weeks (massive fingers crossed there!), and there will be three Clayton wall lights in alabaster from Lightsource* (also on backorder, please please please please come soon!), which are part of the Visual Comfort collection. If you don’t know, Visual Comfort collaborate with loads of different designers, like Kelly Wearstler and Aerin Lauder, whose designs I adore (obvs) on lighting collections, and Lightsource are one of the few UK based companies that stock a vast range of them.

I’m still deciding on the main pendant light as the one I had my heart set on is probably too big for the space and ceiling height, though I’ve not completely let that idea go yet, so watch this space.

Aside from the visual feast that this room will be, I am so looking forward to having loads of storage in the bathroom for the first time in my life. Oh and did I mention that I’m looking forward to having toasty feet and just generally not freezing or being anywhere near a shower curtain when I step in and out of the shower? That and so many other things, like not having a manky broken toilet, stained grout, weird plastic bath trim - the list goes on and on. In fact I still can’t even believe it’s finally happening.

For those reading this that don’t follow me on Instagram, the work has already started on the build, and is moving at the speed of light. In just over a week, London Bathroom Installations have removed the carpet, taken the floor up, the ceiling has come down, three walls have come down, the studwork is almost complete incorporating supports for the wall hung vanity and recesses for the shower niche and recessed vanity cabinets, plumbing and electrics first fix is done, and the plasterboard has already gone up on the ceiling. Oh and they’ve demo’d the old bathroom too as they’ll be taking that to a certain point for us to take over. Though not so secretly I wish they were taking that one to completion too! Anyway I’m storying the entire thing on Instagram, products will start arriving this and next week so it’s getting exciting, so make sure you’re following along!

See you here next week for the Utility design plans…