Modern bath designs with open floor plans help make the room feel spacious.
Bathrooms are typically tiny rooms that perform some very important functions central to our daily lives. We want our bathrooms to be beautiful and pleasant, as well as functional and durable. Designing a bath with these requirements in mind is for having a bathroom you'll love.
Showers and Baths
Showers and bathtubs can feel like hulking pieces of furniture that hog precious space. Custom-built enclosures integrated into the room's floor plan make the shower or tub feel like part of the room rather than an intruder. A wet room shower enclosed by a simple glass panel becomes part of an open, modern floor plan. If such a radical plan is not an option, a frameless shower or bath enclosure minimizes the fixture's impact on the room's plan.
Walls and Partitions
Bathrooms are often among the smallest rooms in the house, so keeping the room as open as possible is important. That usually translates into a lack of walls, which translates into a lack of privacy and storage space. When designer Eric Cohler designed a dream bathroom for Kohler, he used innovative solutions, such as building storage niches into the shower itself and tucking the toilet behind a retractable curtain. He helped maximize the room plan's openness by using the shower as a pass-through to a powder room area and using wall treatment to direct the eye upward, giving the illusion of more space.
Vanities and Countertops
A bath's vanity should not be an afterthought or a simple cabinet with a sink on top shoved between the shower and the toilet. Even Cohler admits his dream bath needs more storage space than niches in the shower, and he hides more storage inside a mirrored cabinet. Built-in cabinets with pull-out shelves, drawers and storage hidden behind pocket doors maximize as well. When it comes to choosing materials, options such as ceramic tile and stone are not just luxurious; they also stand up well to the heavy daily use that most bathrooms endure.
Windows and Skylights
A bathroom filled with sunlight feels like a spa, but privacy is an issue. Window treatments help, but choosing the right window in the first place does away with the need for heavy curtains or blinds. Frosted, etched, tinted or stained glass allows light into the room without letting anyone on the outside clearly see inside the bathroom. Thick glass block achieves the same effect. If cost is not a concern, windows that tint electronically using LCD technology are available. Skylights avoid the issue altogether by moving the windows to the ceiling. They also have the advantage of allowing sunlight into a bathroom with no exterior walls.
Tags: storage space, feel like, floor plan, into lack, into room