Designing the Bathroom

Instagram / @ericdiesel

Among home designers, it is often discussed as the most difficult room to design. Among homekeepers, it is both an oasis to sink into and a vexation to keep clean. For the family, it is the most functional of rooms, as forthright as the need for personal hygiene. The bathroom is as fundamental to the home as the HVAC system or the front door, and like both of those, it gets short shrift for respect – in fact, it often gets giggles – until something with it goes awry. Then, if you ever want to see homeowners, renters, or guests swing into action, just watch them try to reach a plumber.

For some, designing the bathroom requires no more thought or effort than a trip to the store to buy some towels and a toothbrush holder. A spare approach is a valid design aesthetic for a bathroom. Some of the best are porcelain and tile temples to hygiene, recalling the public baths at which much of society got cleaned up when a home with its own bath was a luxury rather than a fundamental expectation. Spartan bathrooms, appointed with nothing more than white towels, also recall the cement facilities, sterile as the bleach they smell of, at the gym.

Most home baths, though, have different personalities, comforting or luxurious based up the style of the home and the lifestyle of its residents. Chaotic facilities for large families qualify as a design aesthetic, as do the DIY terrariums on a hipster's étagère and the ruffles on a spinster's tissue box cover. Home bathrooms can be as opulent as a luxury hotel's or as rustic as a sleepaway camp's. I have seen baths of magnificent camp, retro-perfect in shades of pink and accents of foil to make any Gabor feel adequately admired, or naughty with red light bulbs and mosaics of softcore centerfolds. However they're designed, bathrooms almost always cleave unto a theme.

I decorated my first bathroom in a garotte apartment in pre-hip Brooklyn. Appropriate to being a drag performer at the time, I created a pink and blue ode to movie stars of the forties, right down to their portraits on the walls overlooking displays of vintage cosmetics. Over time, we revised the design to include vintage palm prints and a collection of kitsch flamingo figurines found at my favorite antique shop in Chelsea. Upon our move to Astoria the bath became, not uncommon to NYC bathrooms, miniscule, literally with no more room than to turn around in. I stripped the frills and furbelows from the Brooklyn bath and sent them to storage. I installed a wooden shelf unit designed for small rooms, and used pandan boxes from a stationery store to hold our grooming supplies. The only design splurge in the room was a shower curtain in the amber tones of a Western sunset, a designer's focal point I did not know was prophetic.

Moving to Los Angeles afforded the luxury of space. We inherited a bathroom reflective of our apartment building's architecture (and arguably the mindset of its residents) as a Los Angeles dingbat plunked down in an area of Hollywood that used to be Christmas tree farms. The bath echoes with black and white tiles underfoot and surrounding the shower and tub enclosures. True to its era, the bathroom's window is long and high, providing filtered light over a vintage wall heater with, in the style of the day, exposed electric coils that I had the management company deactivate. The long counter is black marble, striated peach and green. Mirroring runs the length of the counter and above that, a strip of Hollywood dressing room lights.

When designing a bathroom to reflect the sensibilities of the space and its inhabitants, it is easy to default into the practice, each in its way a trap, of either over-decorating or not bothering. The challenge of designing a bathroom is to respect its practicality, ensure its harmony with the spirit of the home, and accommodate everything that a bathroom has to contain: fixtures, appliances, grooming supplies, linens, etc. Unless you have influence over them, bath fixtures and floor plan are  predesigned, often of a necessity as simple as how HVAC and plumbing are built into the residence. Perhaps more than any other room, with a bathroom you take what you get, and design around that to accommodate your family's usage and style.

In designing our bath, I wanted to respect the space as reflective of its Hollywood locale and vibe, without returning to the museum kitsch I had done with previous bath designs. With its black and white tilework and black counter top, the room provided the basic inspiration of vintage glamour. There was talk of bringing in the flamingos and movie star ephemera from storage, but our move west represented a new chapter in our lives, one in which we have settled into mid life. We wanted our home design to reflect not just newness of locale but what I can best describe as the solidity of lifestyle that is a true benefit of aging. Ironic it is, but while a movie themed bathroom in a bright palette was appropriate in the artist's garotte of our young adulthood, we both agreed it was too campy for who we are and how we live now, even though that is amongst movie studios and the Walk of Fame.

I was wary of choosing a prepackaged set of bath coordinates. I wanted our bath to have a distinctive personality. The design challenge was to provide that within a spatial and historic context. If ever there was a place of abundant possibilities for creating style, it is Los Angeles. I kept an eye out for items and ideas that spoke to an aesthetic developing itself through the room's black and white tilework. The style, so appropriate to the setting, of the quincunx between art deco and art nouveau naturally attracts John and me from Agatha Christie novels to vintage train memorabilia to streamline moderne barware. With that as the foundation, we have developed a bathroom that is a bit Orient Express, a bit glam, a bit Batcave, and one hundred percent true to the style of our home and the personality of its inhabitants.

Peach and forest green look great against black and evoke deco style. The linens represent this color combination, switched out weekly both for hygiene and to tell the design story ongoing. Upon the counter, a vintage lamp in swooping black ceramic adds the warmth of its own reflection in the counter-length mirror, while replacing the dressing room globes with Edison bulbs gives the room an amber glow when those lights are lit. The length of the counter affords one side for John and one for me. Toiletries such as skin care are arranged on vintage peach glass trays with sundries in black dishes, not just because they look nice collected on a tray, but because they should be within reach. As we poked through favorite stores such as Necromance, Spitfire Girl, and Coop 28, we found such treasures as an art deco alarm clock, a collection of tincture bottles, a vintage hand mirror in rose glass, and a black iron wall sconce.

However it is appointed, the inescapable element of every bathroom is practicality. In the style of the day, shower and tub are separate. In the glass-enclosed shower, we replaced the landlord-issued shower head with an easily home-installed rain unit. I have found during an adult life lived in apartments that the spring-mechanism wall to ceiling shower shelves available at the home store are a poor investment: the shelves are not strong enough to hold shower toiletries, and no matter what the packaging declares, the unit is going to rust - and, when rusted, will add to a landfill. In the shower, we use an aluminum caddy that hangs behind the shower wand to hold shampoo, conditioner, face wash, and shower loofahs. A companion caddy in the tubt is stocked for a soak with a washcloth, a cake of Wacko soap, and a manicure kit. Within reach are bath oil and the bath salts I make myself, lined up in vintage apothecary bottles.

Baths have to provide storage for but easy access to personal care items from hair dryers to razors, clean washcloths to cotton balls, toothpaste to soap. (Remember not to store medicine in the bathroom; it is too humid). If a bathroom is lovely to look at but not practical to use for its primary purpose of personal hygiene, then the design fails. There are common solutions from bath-specific standing shelves to wall units, plastic carry-alongs to wicker baskets. Each is specific to the household and none is wrong. We inherited cabinetry under the counter top, fitted with shelves proportioned to hold organizing boxes of items categorized by type, ready when needed. Here we store, among other items, hair care, spare bath gel and soap, loofahs for replacement as the seasons change, replenishment paper goods, and, as practical as it gets, cleaning supplies stored under the sink in a plastic carrier designed for the purpose. We lucked out on linen storage because in another practical room - the hallway - we have a linen closet.

Of any room, bathroom design can be so stultifying, but designing the bathroom is an opportunity to engage with design as a dynamic experience. When I look at our bathroom, I think that it is the best current expression of the bath I was designing all along. That is how style often behaves: it announces itself as influences through which a vision defines itself as it's happening. Our lifetime devotion to vintage style is paired with intact elements to reflect the primary tenet of form and function working together in balance. It is a room of the dichotomy of warm light and cold tile, the alliance of peach and green, the peak of deco as design. It is form and function engaging as symbiotically as mirror and marble, in a room that is used every day by a family of two men not just as a design aesthetic but in the aesthetic of living.

Resources
Decorating with Green
Bath Salts
Decorating is Fun