AD lists six original ways to make your most personal and intimate space in the house even more special with these beautiful bathroom design ideas.
A Stone Wall Makes A Bathroom Feel Like A Garden
This house is in a once poor but now up-and-coming district of Porto, in northern Portugal. “My father’s roots are Portuguese and when I bought the house, it was a way of reconnecting with that side of my family,” says François Leite. “When I first saw it, it had been badly renovated, without the proper permits, a few years earlier. It was a very dark house and lacked some basic amenities.”
This bathroom opens onto the garden creating a shower that almost feels like it’s outdoors. Located off of the living room, the bathroom’s floor climbs up the bottom of the walls with a skirting board effect created with azulejo-style ceramic tiles. A former passageway now feels like an extension of the home’s garden. Mirrored doors on steel frames blend into the stone wall and provide a contemporary touch. They open in both directions, with mirrors on both sides, allowing the bathroom door to reflect the patio when it is open on the living room side.
Tip to remember
You can transform an old passageway into a bathroom and in the process create a shower that feels like it’s open to nature.
Also read: 43 small bathroom design ideas to bookmark for your next home renovation
A Bow Window Is Converted Into A Shower
In Montmartre, in Paris, this 430-square-foot flat in a 19th-century building exudes a sense of calm while also being filled with natural light thanks to its exposure on two sides. Its current owner is Tom Locatelli, one of the founders of the firm Rive Architects who renovated it along with his partner. Originally partitioned into three rooms, it has been transformed into an open plan layout. The style is “a bit loft-like, with everything opening up into a single space,” Locatelli says.
The flat’s bathroom is Locatelli’s favourite, and also most unusual, room. It’s located in a section of the building that was added in the mid-20th century giving every unit in the building an additional bow window. By placing the shower there, it enjoys an abundance of natural light. “We wanted to interrupt the rectangular floor plan with this bathroom that’s filled with light, especially in the morning,” the architect explains. He imagined a sort of “cocoon,” separated from the rest of the unit by a translucent oval door that allows the sun to shine through to the adjoining dining room. The floor, walls, and ceiling are all finished in a pink waxed concrete that creates a feeling of softness. “Concrete is a material that evolves with time and takes on different feelings depending on the light,” Locatelli explains. “It has a unique warmth and texture.”
Tip to remember
Think out of the box. Even unexpected parts of an apartment, like a bow window off of a living room, can be converted into a space for a shower.
Follow A Common Motif
In Paris’s 18th arrondissement, there’s a street that runs along one side of the Montmartre cemetery. On the sixth floor of a building on that street, you’ll find an attic apartment that was formerly a maid’s room. Anthony Authié, of Zyva Studio, first renovated the flat after he graduated from architecture school—it was his first professional project. “I was right out of school without the experience that I have now. I used the project as a way to work on a dream of mine, to design my own hotel,” Authié recalls. “It’s only one room and it’s tiny!”
Many of the elements in the flat reflect Authié’s interests and life. For example, the stripes in tiles in the bathroom are a reference to the outfits of the Dalton Brothers, characters in the Lucky Luke series of cartoons and one of Authie’s obsessions.
Tip to remember
Extend a common theme in a home, like the stripes inspired by the Dalton Brothers in this flat, into the bathroom too.
A Curved Partition Houses A Bathroom
In Barcelona’s Gracia district, a neighbourhood with a bohemian soul that’s rich in history and culture, a 560-square-foot flat had been divided into six small rooms with low ceilings. After being transformed by the architects Isabel Francoy and Anna Enrich with interiors by designers César Carcaboso and Josep Vicens, the founders of Santa Living, the space is now open with a fluid circulation.
Tip to remember
Turn the bathroom into an architectural element: Isabel Francoy and Anna Enrich removed all of the flat’s partitions and then built just one new element, the bathroom with its curved walls that form a unique cocoon.
Also read: 5 eclectic shower ideas to add a pop of colour to your bathroom
Bookcase Shelves Almost Hide A Secret Door
An unusual little space in Paris’s Charonne-Bastille district revealed a surprise once its renovation started. The owner had bought two separate flats with very low ceilings without any idea of what she would find above them. When the internal dividing walls and a false ceiling were removed, the owner and her architects discovered a 1.50-meter-tall space. “The beautiful, sloping roof in this unit on the fourth and top floor of this 1900 building presented a unique opportunity,” Pierre and François Voirin, the architects in charge of the renovation, say.
“It was clear from the floor plan that a recess in one wall would be the perfect place for a toilet and shower, creating a sense of symmetry with the two doors in a bookcase. [Editor: Behind one door is a toilet, behind the other the shower and bedroom.] This use of the shelving unit was inspired by the idea of separation. The library wall hides the rooms with the doors located between the shelves,” the architects explain. The dressing room and shower behind one door can be closed off from the bedroom behind a curtain. This arrangement creates a series of interesting architectural transitions.
Tip to remember
In a bedroom designed as a suite, a curtain can serve as an effective partition between a shower area and the bedroom.
A Mini-Bathroom Vanishes In Plain Sight
Julien Pradignac, the founder of Atelier PA, has turned what was once a typical servant’s room, with terracotta floor tiles, mansard ceilings, and narrow, angular partitions, into a small apartment with a bedroom, kitchen, and shower. “It’s an apartment that we designed in conjunction with Barcelona-based architects Juliette Boulard and Marc Mazères,” Pradignac explains. “The project was to renovate this maid’s room, which was then sold along with a larger adjacent flat.”
The architects wanted to create a studio that is completely open, replacing the three small rooms in the original layout with a single continuous space from floor to ceiling and unobstructed views across the flat. The shower area faces the kitchen.
Tip to remember
You can smoothly integrate a bathroom into a very small space by having it custom designed to follow the circulation of the flat. Even the triangular washbasin at the back tracks the lines of the floor plan.
