Bathrooms
August 15, 2022
10 Ultimate Bathrooms By Some Of The Biggest Names In Design
Barbara Sallick, the cofounder of Waterworks, has gathered dream bathrooms in her new book The Ultimate Bath (Rizzoli, $80, 2022). In it we see sybaritic spaces by some of today’s biggest names in architecture and interior design, like Gil Schafer, Nickey Kehoe, Brigette Romanek, Miles Redd and Suzanne Kasler.
Scroll down for a look inside 10 gorgeous bathrooms!
The new book compiles grand baths of high style, with elegant mirrored and marble surfaces, rich maximalist pattern and color, and tailored spaces of serenity. There are baths with restorative views to the garden or forest — or in the middle of nature themselves. These soothing spaces offer rest, refuge and beauty at home.
The cranes on the walls of this bath seem like they might have flown in the window from the nearby seashore. And pairing that wallpaper with a highly active marble takes nerve. Yet there is a rigor to this design, epitomized by the suave, simple mirror and geometric brass inlay on the floor, that keep it all under control.
This compact bathing nook doubles as a modest library, complete with sconces for better reading and even a couple of petite prints. For those who love to read while they soak, it’s a slice of blue heaven.
Running that very active wallcovering up onto the ceiling inflates this bath’s rural charm and character, an idea supported by every single element in the space. And who wouldn’t enjoy stretching out in that big tub beneath a bay window?
This bath presents us with three individual thrusts at abstraction: a raffishly (and colorfully) painted wall; a notably but not aggressively gray-veined white marble; and a floor rigorous in its patterned, eye-teasing geometry. None would seem a natural, or even likely, companion for the others, yet somehow it all works — joyfully so.
While many practitioners would balk at such an extreme plunge into both pattern and color, this design remains firmly grounded in the reality of its circumstances. The view from the window reveals that we are in the Southwest, and the design of the tiles — green with white grout lines — draws directly, even explicitly, on the strongly graphic saguaro cacti. The lightly patterned marble, moreover, owes a debt to the ground cover, and the wood completes and complements the picture.
This rather extraordinary interior does in marble what the classical decorators of an earlier day, Nancy Lancaster and Sister Parish, did in fabric. The light, feathery character of the stone’s figuration remains notably charming and graceful— especially suitable to the bath’s garden setting—and pairs effectively with the brass fittings and fixtures. Though it nods to the past, this project demonstrates considerable originality and imagination.
The repeating Gothic arches define the style of this grand-scale marble pedestal sink, reminiscent of a baptismal font and a brilliant gesture of the imagination. The incongruous Sputnik-like chandelier and the hoofs on the stool complete this creative and bold design.
The ubiquity of regular rows of small sky-blue tiles ascending gracefully to the ridgeline of the shaped ceiling, disrupted only by the larger chevron-patterned panel at the entry, bestows upon this space a serenity akin to being lost in the clouds. The feeling is reinforced by the puffball chandelier and reflective silver of the antique mirror frame. I cannot imagine a more purely peaceful environment in which to release the distractions and cares of everyday life and surrender to the bath’s enduring pleasures.
Two simple motifs imbue this bath with its character. One is the ubiquity of patinated bronze, which the designer has chosen to outline the mirror and doors, and to color the faucets, sconces, and that leafy brass ceiling fixture. The other gesture is the use of facing mirrors, which take a small space and amplify it into infinity.
This bath teaches us that it can be a mistake to be too timid when it comes to the deployment of color—indeed, the more you use, the less invasive it seems. If that blue wall behind the bath had terminated at the height of a wainscot, the outcome would feel at once intrusive and unresolved. By bringing the tiles up to the ceiling, the designer has injected both vigor and beauty into the space.