WIDE OPEN SPACE
INTERIOR DESIGNER IRENE GUNTER USED SENSUOUS CURVES AND CLOUD MOTIFS TO SOFTEN THIS ELEGANT OPEN-PLAN EN SUITE
1 FRESH START
This is the master en suite in a
London Victorian house. We were going to refurbish the original bathroom, which had been fitted with Carrara marble, but the layout felt wrong, with dividing walls for the shower and loo. The owners wanted it to be spacious and spa-like; they decided to cut their losses and start again.
2 CLEAR VISION
Quite radically, there’s no bathroom door; it opens directly onto the bedroom, pretty close to the bed in fact. It does mean the bathroom has borrowed light from the bedroom, but we had to be extra robust with the ventilation and chose a powerful extractor vented through an extra-wide channel above the bath. We thought about privacy for the windows too, with both blackout blinds and sheers.
3 CURVED LINES
The most obvious spot for the bath was under the window. We then worked out how to allow enough space to walk around it – there’s nothing spa-like about a bath that’s wedged in. Curves were the solution. We designed a curved vanity and a shower enclosure to match. Bending glass is costly but the result lends structural integrity. Without frames or supports, the shower enclosure feels barely there.
4 CHIC APPROACH
We went to town with the lighting to bring in extra glamour and sparkle. The brass pendants above the vanity unit were chosen because they look so lovely, while the wall lights either side of the mirrors produce good light for applying make-up. Porta Romana’s Scallop Shell wall lights by the window are just amazing and work beautifully with the cloud-motif wallpaper.
5 WALL DECOR
We often put this Cole & Son wallpaper on ceilings, so it made a nice change to use it on walls. Initially we considered marble for the panels, but felt that it would look too harsh. The wallpaper is well away from any direct contact with water, but we applied a coat of decorator’s varnish as a precaution. It’s worth doing a test sample to make sure you still like the colour as the varnish can deepen it slightly.
GET THE LOOK
Bespoke vanity unit and mirrors, around £25,000, all Gunter & Co. Calacatta Lusso M426 quartz, from £199.99sq m, Classic Quartz Stone. Barcelona bath, from £3,675, Victoria + Albert. Bespoke curved shower, from £4,200, Glasstrends. Purist thermostatic shower valve, £1,454; contemporary round rain shower head, £1,567; Purist deck-mounted three-hole basin mixer taps, £1,237 each; Purist floor-mounted bath filler, from £2,624, all in Vibrant Brushed Bronze by Kohler; Sterlingham Morville 9-440 towel warmer, from
£1,644; Duravit Darling loo, £609, all West One Bathrooms. Nuvolette 114/28055 wallpaper, £50sq m, Cole & Son. Orb pendant lights, £1,026 each; Scallop Shell wall lights, £1,230 each, all Porta Romana. Visual Comfort Dresser long glass rod wall lights, £604 each, Best & Brown