Bathrooms are, first and foremost, functional spaces. But, that doesn’t mean that they can’t be decorative too. The first thing to nail down, before thinking about paint colours and fabrics, is the layout. Often the case with terraced houses, the space traditionally used for the bathroom is on a landing, and can be a narrow and difficult-to-navigate space. How do you make space for a loo, sink, bath and/or shower as well as vital storage? We’ve delved into the House & Garden archives to find three different approaches which can easily be recreated at home.
The one-wall bath
One common solution to the small bathroom is to devote an entire wall, often wall facing the door, to the bath. This is often the shorter wall in a rectangular bathroom, but filling the entire space with the bath is quite satisfying, and leaves the longer wall to be filled with the sink, loo and any storage you can fit in.
The Patrick O’Donnell-designed bathroom above follows this rule, sandwiching the bath, with its smart wallpaper surround (‘Orleans Stripe’ from Farrow & Ball), into the shorter wall. The earthy brown of the joinery blends into the dark wallpaper pleasingly. There is not an inch of floor or wall space that hasn’t been used wisely – from the plates hung on the walls to the clever storage nooks.
If you have a spare inch or two of space either side of the bath, you can make use of it by extending the bath surround to make a handy shelf, as interior designer Phoebe Hollond has done in a Sussex house below, where tongue and groove panelling in a vibrant yellow makes for a vibrant, joyful scheme.