Charmed and Modern

This North Carolina bathroom is beamed and patterned to perfection.

The bathroom is where beauty meets function, and this pairing isn’t always easy to accomplish. Monica and Richard Ryder, owners of Clearcut Construction & Co., are just the people for the job. With a fresh color scheme and new patterns, they took this North Carolina bathroom from plain to pretty, with a focus on modern farmhouse-style charm.

CREATING A VISION

Richard says he starts all his projects the same way—by asking the homeowners to look through renovation examples and pick their top three. From those three choices, Richard finds stylistic consistencies and uses them in his renovation plans. In this case, the homeowners took a liking to patterns. “She likes patterns, particularly the herringbone pattern. So walking in, I really wanted to do the chevron pattern on the floor,” Richard says. He chose to contrast the smaller herringbone tiles on the walls with a large chevron pattern on the floor. It balances the room without creating a busy look. “That’s one thing we did to get as much pattern as possible,” he adds.

The mixed tiles did the trick, but Richard saw that the ceiling also needed some work. “It was a very tall ceiling,” he says. “I felt like we needed to ground it, so I added those beams for a farmhouse look. And then I added some applied molding to the walls in order to get the bathroom more closed-in, so it didn’t feel like it was top heavy.”

MAKING IT FUNCTIONAL

Richard added the large black cabinet as an anchor to the predominantly white space. Not only is the cabinet beautiful, but Richard made sure it maximized the room’s storage potential. “You can design old-looking cabinets and create all kinds of functions in them,” he says. “It’s highly functional when you open it up.”

The cabinet is its own piece, while tying together the charm and function of a farmhouse bathroom.