Home hunters play dating game in the bathroom
With Valentine’s Day still fresh in the mind, it’s time for today’s house hunters to play the “dating game.” Not the romantic version of boy meets girl (or boy meets boy or girl meets girl, for that matter) but the game of working out how old a home interior is. And one of the best ways to do this is to check out when the bathroom was fitted out. Here are a few hints to help you do this.
If the colour of the bathroom suite is pale pink or ocean blue, chances are that it was installed in the late 1960s. If it’s avocado green, it’s a classic of the 1970s and if the taps are gold colour with clear acrylic handles then it’s an absolute gem of that period.
If there’s a matching bidet in the bathroom, it’s likely to have been fitted in the late 1970s resulting from the explosion of cheap European summer seaside holidays where most hotel rooms featured a bidet.
Heated towel rails have been around since the 1920s, originally called “bath radiators” but became very fashionable in the 1990s. It was also cost effective to install them as there was no need to fit a radiator and separate towel rail and. once again, space was saved and they were a stylish addition to position the fluffy white towels that were once a symbol of yuppie home living.
They were, however, a real pain in the neck in wet rooms as the towels ended up soaking wet even before being used.
Although invented as long ago as 1880, mixer taps were slow to catch on in Britain and it wasn’t until the 1950s that they appeared commonly in the bathroom and were often combined with a hand held shower attachment rather like an Edwardian telephone.
Ceramic tiles and mosaics may have been a common material in Roman times but the fashion for fully tiling the bathroom walls didn’t catch on until the late
1940s and even then was seen as a luxurious and expensive finish and still hasn’t replaced the tiled splash backs that are more usually installed today.
During the 19th century in upmarket homes, cork tiles became more popular as they were warm and durable but much thicker and more solid than they are today. They could even be sanded like hardwood flooring. They were regularly used by Frank Lloyd Wright for his domestic interiors in the 1930s, especially in his famous holiday home “Falling Water” with its six bathrooms. The fashion for cork tiles in Britain didn’t really take off until the 1960s by which time manufacturers had made them thinner so they became less structurally viable and demand soon dwindled. They have made a little come back of late as lacquers and sealants extend their life.
Back in the 1930s, the illuminated mirror came into its own but those that have survived have generally suffered as moisture rusted the mirrored back and they were rarely wired for a hot, humid environment. Modern and safer versions started to appear more frequently around the time of the millennium.
Armed with this rough guide to the age of bathroom installations, home buyers will hopefully have a little insight into how long ago a bathroom was fitted or changed. Don’t forget that at the end of World War II, most houses still had an outside “privy” and no bathroom. Fortunately the house building boom in the 1950s and the programme of slum clearance began to change this.
The design and colour of bathrooms has given us a clear guide as to how long a bathroom has survived but chances are that after finding your new home, you may well want to change it anyway.