Awash with colour

Dynamic bathrooms tinted with playful hues and designer details.

Many of the trends seen in the kitchens of this issue find their way into the bathrooms, with architects and designers bringing personality and life to these spaces. The classic all-white bathroom – so often described as a sanctuary or retreat – has given way to more energizing, joyful and dynamic spaces, with unexpected colours, materials and light effects.

Material and colour palettes continue from the kitchen into the bathroom to create unity and harmony throughout the home. Similarly, bathroom vanities are designed with the same materials and detailing as joinery in various other rooms, including the kitchen island, as in Layan’s Light House (page 130).

Playful hues such as pinks, blues and greens make for immersive, visually arresting spaces, such as the bathroom at Richards Stanisich’s Beach House, where glazed Italian tiles envelope the space in soft pink (pictured and page 28). The children’s bathrooms in Peppertree Villa by Luigi Rosselli Architects and Alwill Interiors (page 68) are another example, having been designed to appear “like a box of coloured macaroons.” Tiling used across multiple surfaces – floors, walls, ceilings and even vanities – also helps to create immersive, even mesmerising, bathrooms, as light enhances the subtle variations in colour and texture.

This consideration of how light and materials interact – of how light can change the look and feel of a space – has resulted in bathrooms that are dynamic. They are energized by light, shadows and colour at different times of the day and year.