Bathroom inspiration

While I'm not feeling all that wonderful (sinuses all blocked up, been threatening for weeks!) I thought I'd look on the internet for some bathroom inspiration.

[Bathroom I designed in our old house]

This is my old bathroom, it's quite French inspired and reminds me of a scaled down Parisian hotel bathroom. I love it, but it suited our old house more, which had quite high ceilings, picture rails and white woodwork. When I was designing this bathroom I took loads of cuttings from magazines and tried to recreate some of the ideas using cheaper alternatives. I found the generic and rather boring bathroom suites that were on offer at the time were quite uninspiring, I wanted to create a luxurious bathroom that you would want to relax in. I also wanted to combine my love for all things antique and retro into the bathroom. The mirror and the cabinet are made from MDF which has been distressed. They cost me about £70 in total, I put the blue rose fabric behind the glass - it matched the roman blind we had made (unfortunately I don't have a picture of that!). The bathroom suite was from Bathstore.com. I love all their things, much better quality than lots of other places, yet not over priced. I think this sort of bathroom looks lovely in a Victorian town house.

As much as I love this bathroom, I would like to adopt a slightly different approach in our cottage. I want more old pine and a more rustic look.

[Existing bathroom]

As you can see the bathroom we currently have is a hangover from the 80s. Lovely peach suite, yum! First things first, we need to knock through some walls and remove chimney breasts (don't worry, not proper fire place ones, but small chimney stacks). The cottage used to be a traditional double-fronted, L-shape layout, with the classic side return. In the late 80s this was filled in with a 2-storey extension to create a dining room, a 3rd bedroom and a large landing. When they put this extension in they were not clever enough to realise that there was no longer any need to keep the existing small landing at the top of the stairs.
[Old landing, can just see the old outside wall. On the right is my craft room door and on the top is the bathroom door.]

You see where the door to the bathroom is (above top), well we are going to brick that up, and then make the door to my craft room right on the top of the stairs, making it bigger by about 2 metres square (making it a decent sized double), and then the door to the bathroom will be where this old window is here on the new landing.

[Old window on new landing]

Once we have done all this we will have much more flexibility and will make the bedroom and the bathroom much bigger.

Here's for the fun part - what the bathroom will look like!

I love greys and blues in the bathroom, there's something so relaxing and clean and fresh about those colours. The bathroom will be painted white, with wood pannelling all round. I will probably paint the wood panelling in a blue/grey colour.


For the sink, I want a large Victorian pine wash stand (unpainted) and then I want to plumb in a small belfast sink and have these gorgeous old brass taps.
We will have a seperate white shower with plain white tiles inside. The airing cupboard I want painted MDF with chicken wire and fabric curtains just like my DVD cabinet. The fabric I like is this really pretty cabbages and roses Hatley blue, isn't it pretty? The bath and toilet will probably be the same as our old bathroom - a roll top bath and high level toilet.
[MDF cabinet with curtains and chicken wire]

[Cabbages and roses Hatley blue]

[Wall sconces by bath]

I want to have some sconces by the bath. Rather than spending a fortune on antique brass, I will probably buy modern ones like these and then leave them outside for a bit so that they are naturally tarnished and aged for an authentic look. I would then like a small chandelier. Bathroom lighting is usually so dull, and there's no reason why without good ventilation you can't have beautiful light fittings! I've never bothered about having 'proper' bathroom lights. :-)

[Painted over mantel mirror works perfectly in the bathroom]

[Edwardian blue and white tiles would look perfect in the bathroom]

I like the huge over mantel mirror we currently have in our bathroom, it adds that sense of decandence and luxury that modern bathroom mirrors just don't have. I saw these lovely Edwardian tiles on ebay, aren't they gorgeous? I thought they would look so pretty behind the sink.
[Lovely original window]

Finally for the window dressing, we have a really pretty little window here. I think it would look gorgeous with sweet little curtains and a pelmet. Sairer has some really pretty curtains in her bathroom.
[Sairer's lovely bathroom curtains.]

I hope you have enjoyed my little tour. :-)