I am constantly planning my next home decoration project. Surely I’m not the only one? It’s like an obsession. I may not always follow through but I just love coming up with new ideas for our home. For me personally- I spend so much time here as I live AND work from home (when I am not shooting on location, propping or out at meetings etc) so I feel like I need to feel inspired by the space that I spend so much time in.
So, the next room we want to tackle is the bathroom. It hasn’t been decorated in the seven years that I have been here so I think it’s about time! Our bathroom is slightly unusual in that the only bathroom we have in our Victorian Terrace is downstairs at the back of the house. Most houses like ours are two beds and a bathroom upstairs but we have three beds upstairs and a bathroom downstairs that was a 1970’s addition.
We keep um-ing and ah-ing about whether to extend the back of our home (since we watched Sarah Beeny’s ‘Double your house for half the money’. Thanks, Sarah for planting that seed!) and the points that we keep coming back to are:
1. If we extended our house we would need to move the bathroom upstairs and sacrifice a bedroom for it.
2. If we don’t extend our house and choose only to renovate our bathroom now and then decide to renovate the house in a few years time, will we just be wasting money?
So, what I am researching at the moment are some inspiration images of bathrooms that you don’t have to do a complete makeover to achieve. I have always been pretty obsessed by surface materials and textures in my Interior Styling projects- I love when there is a visible grain in timber or a chunky weave in linen or even rust in a metallic finish.
You may disagree and say that you would need a complete renovation to achieve any of the looks below- but I am looking mainly at the statement areas in each picture. For example, it is easy to clad a wall in burnt larch (see image one, below). Builders can more or less clad over any existing surface.
It’s easy to replace your existing shower head with a matt black one. It’s also a simple job to mount a large mirror along one wall to accentuate the length of the wall.
Being Australian, I think it’s a pretty normal thing to be inspired by any room or building that is modelled after a wool shed (!). (see pic 2) Corrugated iron is one of my favourite materials. I love the raw nature of it. If you don’t like the rustic look then Colourbond (AUS) or Accord Steel cladding (UK) do the same material in practically any colour that you want!
To finish off the look- old taps are easy to come by at car boots or ebay and using them in place of your existing chrome one helps to achieve the industrial/utilitarian look.
I adore the pic below (number 3). Simple neutrals with an accent of brass. We have a bath similar to this so I am thinking of re-painting it in a crisp white.
I love the black units in this bathroom. This image (number 4) is a new collection from Roper Rhodes and shows off their Burford Slate Grey bathroom suite. I also love the simplicity of the bulb pendant lights wrapped around what essentially could be a broom handle painted black!
We have white floor tiles at the moment and you can clean them one day and they’ll be dirty the next. I will never have white floor tiles again! Loving these Victorian inspired tiles above. They look great and hide the dirt!
Lastly, the pic below (number 5) is too good not to share. I spotted this copper beauty at Decorex last year and it stopped me in my tracks. It’s tiny! Perfect for a small bathroom. It’s only about 1250mm long so it’s essentially a half the size of a standard bath but with all the curves and beautiful features of a full-size slipper bath. Hurlingham Baths have a few of these small baths to choose from. They would fit perfectly into a flat!
I’d love to know which picture is your fave. It might help me decided what to do!
1. via My Deco Love Photo by Terence Chin | 2. Photo from ‘Firefly House’ at Unique Home Stays | 3.Photo by Brooke Holm of a project by Shareen Joel via My Scandinavian Home | 4. Burford Slate Grey Bathroom from Roper Rhodes | 5. Photo by Lucy Gough of Hurlingham Baths.