Earlier this week, I shared that Matt and I have different ideas and tastes when it comes to bathroom design, you can read all about that delightful marital issue here.
After many, many discussions through gritted teeth, we came to the conclusion that our downstairs bathroom needs to be in-keeping with the heritage part of the house. While our en-suite can be more modern – as it is in the newly built section of the house.
HOWEVER, we still need to ensure that our bathrooms don’t look like they are from completely different homes, they still need to tie together somehow.
It is no secret that my design-style tends to fall somewhere between heritage, french and rustic. Matt’s design-style is more modern, with a touch of rustic. This isn’t such a bad thing, as Matt’s influence often drags me back into the 21st Century.
When designing any room, you need to start with one inspirational element. Whether that’s a piece of furniture, a rug, a colour or even a texture.
Since we both have such different ideas for our bathrooms, we needed to find some common ground. After browsing through home-design mags, websites and stores, we came to the realisation that we both have an appreciation and love of rustic/industrial finishes. So perhaps this is where we should start.
Off to Pinterest we go! We spent many an evening browsing pictures of bathrooms and discussed the particular elements we liked in each photo. Finally, we discovered one reoccurring element we both liked – timber benchtops. We had a starting point!
Here are some of the pics we pinned…
This was one of Matt’s favs. We both like how this bathroom combines old elements with new. The old bathtub, the modern timber vanity, the vintage hexagonal floor tiles and the modern tap-ware. We both LOVE the hanging pendant lights over the vanity and have decided these are something we will replicate in our en-suite.
This was clearly my pick. I love the subway tiles around the window as well as the timber floors. Matt happens to like subway tiles too – win! So, we have decided to use subway tiles in the downstairs bathroom, but only on one wall. We think an entire bathroom full of subway tiles make it look too dated. Our downstairs bathroom will have a very similar layout to the one in the photo, and we will use the subway tiles around the window, which happens to also be above the bathtub.
Also, although I love wooden floorboards in a bathroom, we decided they would make the bathroom look a little too old-worldy, plus they aren’t very practical in a wet room. We will therefore go with floor tiles.
This was actually a joint pick. We both like the timber vanity with the white ceramic sink on top. We have decided to go with this in both bathrooms. We also both like the rustic, industrial light above the mirror, but haven’t made any decisions on the lighting in the downstairs bathroom yet – will keep this in mind though!
So, that makes 4 elements we BOTH like in a bathroom and therefore, a few decisions made!
Downstairs Bathroom:
- Timber vanity top
- Above counter, ceramic white sink
- Subway tiles on the wall around the window and bath
- Floor tiles, not floorboards (style not yet decided)
En-Suite:
- Timber vanity top
- Above counter, ceramic white sink
- Hanging globe, pendant lights in front of the mirror
- Floor tiles, not floorboards (style not yet decided)
Well, it’s a start! While we are keeping some elements the same in both bathrooms, we would like each bathroom to be special in its own way. We need to make all our en-suite decisions and purchases by next week, as the builder will be ready to get on with it – eeek! So I’ll keep you posted on the rest of the decisions, still to be made.
