Bathrooms in bloom
Bathrooms are being warmed up with a deluge of pattern and colour
FOR some, A Very British Scandal, the BBC’S drama on the court case that overshadowed the life of the Duchess of Argyll, brought to mind the infamous bathroom at her Mayfair home (stop sniggering at the back). It had been designed 30 years before by Syrie Maugham, who had a passion for colour, as long as it was white, and is also remembered for her ill-fated marriage to W. Somerset Maugham. The room —all floor-to-ceiling mirrors and discreet detail—offers a glimpse of the marvels of the Art Deco bathroom. Few others still exist, but photographs—many of them in the COUNTRY LIFE archive—reveal the capacity of architects such as Oliver Hill to transform the functional into the breathtakingly beautiful.
What Art Deco bathrooms did, too, was to encourage an aesthetic chilliness in bathroom design that persisted—except for a flurry of jolliness in the 1980s— until now. A renewed interest in the ideas of the 1980s is demonstrating that bathrooms don’t have to look like a science laboratory. Back then, many designers took a lead from Nancy Lancaster, who furnished bathrooms in the way she decorated any other room, with wallpaper, furniture and pictures.
The move away from the reductivism that dominated bathroom design is manifesting itself in other ways, notably a greater emphasis on pattern and colour. An example is a new collection by the interior designer Samantha Todhunter for Bert & May, who was inspired by the scalloped ric-rac trim on clothing. Bold and simple, it also offers huge versatility. Another brand to enter the fray is Claybrook, co-founded by the former Fired Earth creative dynamo Rob Whitaker. It has introduced encaustic cement tiles that offer a chance to inject life-enhancing pattern into lifeless bathrooms and kitchens. The process of making encaustic cement tiles was first developed in Catalonia in the 19th century. It was exhibited at the 1867 Exposition Universelle and creates vibrant, eye-catching hues.
The other way to add colour to a bathroom is through elements such as taps. THG the French producer has a collection of exquisite designs created by Jean-claude Delépine, in a range of luxurious materials in jewel-like colours. Another, of course, is paint, although there is something about the striking contrast between crisp white and zingy tiles and accessories that lifts the spirits, especially first thing in the morning. Syrie Maugham would approve.
The move away from reductivism is putting an emphasis on colour