Feel-Good Home
Bathrooms Without Borders Bring the Outside In
These elegant indoor-outdoor bathrooms inspire an easy, breezy vacation feeling
If you’ve ever spent any time in Asia, you’re probably familiar with the phenomenon of the bathroom that isn’t quite inside and isn’t quite outside. Hotels there do this fantastic thing where the bathroom — or sometimes just the shower — is outside, through a door, contained by a high wall for privacy. Plants and maybe a little gravel courtyard make the area all so relaxing.
Of course, it’s easy to do that in the tropics. Showering outside in cool climes, however, is neither practical nor particularly relaxing. But there are ways of bringing the outside in with your own bathroom, as these great examples show.
Push the Boundaries
If you can’t be outside properly, then glass walls are the next best thing. In this house in Marin County, near San Francisco, architect Dirk Denison melds indoors and out with the use of glass walls and internal courtyards. He poked holes in the facade to create small gardens, and glass rooms extend off the structure into their own gardens — there’s often glass where you’d expect to see a wall. In this bathroom, a glass wall opens onto an internal courtyard and the mirror above the vanity appears to hover in space.
If you can’t be outside properly, then glass walls are the next best thing. In this house in Marin County, near San Francisco, architect Dirk Denison melds indoors and out with the use of glass walls and internal courtyards. He poked holes in the facade to create small gardens, and glass rooms extend off the structure into their own gardens — there’s often glass where you’d expect to see a wall. In this bathroom, a glass wall opens onto an internal courtyard and the mirror above the vanity appears to hover in space.
Nowhere does the house achieve more peak transparency than with this shower: A glass box extends out from the bathroom and into its own private courtyard, with glass on all sides and the light washing in and around. It’s a spacious shower made all the more generous by what it looks out onto.
Similarly, though no less effectively, this bathroom has a separate “wet room” with a skylight instead of a roof and a small garden housing a bathtub and subtropical plants.
Room With a View
One of the easiest ways to bring the outside in is with a large window, preferably above the tub or beside the shower. Green up the space outside the window with lots of big plants — in this case, bird of paradise (Strelitzia reginae).
One of the easiest ways to bring the outside in is with a large window, preferably above the tub or beside the shower. Green up the space outside the window with lots of big plants — in this case, bird of paradise (Strelitzia reginae).
Open Up
The next best thing to showering outside is having a door in the shower. In this San Francisco house, architect Malcolm Davis built the beautiful shower-door combination opening onto a deck. Bonus: It’s easy access when you’re coming in from the beach or yard and don’t want to tramp through the rest of the house.
The next best thing to showering outside is having a door in the shower. In this San Francisco house, architect Malcolm Davis built the beautiful shower-door combination opening onto a deck. Bonus: It’s easy access when you’re coming in from the beach or yard and don’t want to tramp through the rest of the house.
Here’s the inside view. Sigh.
Another way of taking design to the extreme is by opening your bathroom to its own internal courtyard via a wall of bifold doors. Even in cooler weather with the doors closed, the impact of the courtyard is huge. In summer the doors can stay open, cooling the area and letting the steam out. Imagine starting the day in this.
Introduce Stone
This house in Singapore has a spectacular bathroom that sits behind a privacy screen and a beautiful subtropical garden that helps create more privacy the more it grows. (In the meantime there are blinds.) It’s an exercise in crisp modernity, all white and marble and steel, softened by the use of white pebbles sitting in channels between the tiles. The pebbles warm up the space and are a great way of ensuring water doesn’t spill across the entire floor.
This house in Singapore has a spectacular bathroom that sits behind a privacy screen and a beautiful subtropical garden that helps create more privacy the more it grows. (In the meantime there are blinds.) It’s an exercise in crisp modernity, all white and marble and steel, softened by the use of white pebbles sitting in channels between the tiles. The pebbles warm up the space and are a great way of ensuring water doesn’t spill across the entire floor.
Open to the Sky
Have you noticed the trend toward putting bathrooms in the middle of the house where there aren’t any windows? It’s understandable, but you need natural light. Enter the skylight.
Have you noticed the trend toward putting bathrooms in the middle of the house where there aren’t any windows? It’s understandable, but you need natural light. Enter the skylight.
Most effective when placed above the shower, skylights wash the space with light and make it feel taller.
Add Plants
Not everyone has the room or the budget for glass walls and internal courtyards. But houseplants are a terrific way of bringing the outside in — and they’ll add a feeling of relaxation and enclosure to the most prosaic of bathrooms.
Not everyone has the room or the budget for glass walls and internal courtyards. But houseplants are a terrific way of bringing the outside in — and they’ll add a feeling of relaxation and enclosure to the most prosaic of bathrooms.
Even just a few plants will introduce softness, as this collection of plants does in an otherwise industrial-styled bathroom.
But you could really push it further: This array of palms, subtropical plants and succulents makes for an amazing shower area. And those tiles — positively deluxe.
Make It Green
Plant walls are so hot right now, and they’re particularly effective in wet areas, since the steam and damp help to create the humid conditions the plants thrive in. They look pretty impressive too.
Plant walls are so hot right now, and they’re particularly effective in wet areas, since the steam and damp help to create the humid conditions the plants thrive in. They look pretty impressive too.
I’m not suggesting you do this. How would you get clean? But there is something rather lovely about this shower.
Tell us: Have you brought the outdoors into your bathroom? Post your pictures and ideas in the Comments.
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Tell us: Have you brought the outdoors into your bathroom? Post your pictures and ideas in the Comments.
More
12 Naturally Beautiful Hot Tubs
Houzz TV: 72 Dream Bathtub Views
12 Bathroom Windows That Reveal Only the Views