Bathroom Design
Dark Materials Add Drama to a 55-Square-Foot Bathroom
A 17-year-old helps design his bathroom in his family’s new California home
Shower heads. The combination of wall-mounted shower head and handheld shower head give the bathroom more versatility. The handheld option is also useful when cleaning the shower.
Niche. This shower feature is one of Kern’s most requested bathroom features. This two-level niche is lined with stainless steel trim and the same tile as the bench and wall stripe.
Shower head: Hansgrohe
Niche. This shower feature is one of Kern’s most requested bathroom features. This two-level niche is lined with stainless steel trim and the same tile as the bench and wall stripe.
Shower head: Hansgrohe
Vanity. White quartz tops a floating vanity with a wenge finish. The two deep drawers meet the boy’s storage needs and would come in handy for guests in the future.
Lighting. The sconces on each side of the mirror match the straight lines found throughout the room. In addition to these, they added recessed lighting in the ceiling.
Mirror. Kern found this mirror outlined in a java color that almost perfectly blends with the light fixtures and vanity. “Wood tones are really popular in the industry, so matching the mirror and the vanity was pretty easy to do,” Kern says.
Tip: Kern likes to put pendants alongside the mirrors. The light from each side of the mirror, as well as from above, gives nice illumination to the face, she says.
Outlets. Kern placed the outlets on the wall to the right to keep them out of sight and to keep the space looking minimal.
Loft mirror: Avanity; faucet: Hansgrohe
Home construction: RJ Haas Construction
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Lighting. The sconces on each side of the mirror match the straight lines found throughout the room. In addition to these, they added recessed lighting in the ceiling.
Mirror. Kern found this mirror outlined in a java color that almost perfectly blends with the light fixtures and vanity. “Wood tones are really popular in the industry, so matching the mirror and the vanity was pretty easy to do,” Kern says.
Tip: Kern likes to put pendants alongside the mirrors. The light from each side of the mirror, as well as from above, gives nice illumination to the face, she says.
Outlets. Kern placed the outlets on the wall to the right to keep them out of sight and to keep the space looking minimal.
Loft mirror: Avanity; faucet: Hansgrohe
Home construction: RJ Haas Construction
More
Read more bathroom stories
Shop for bathroom products
Bathroom at a Glance
Who uses it: A 17-year-old boy
Location: Saratoga, California
Size: 55 square feet (6.1 square meters)
Designer: Jamie Kern of Design Theory Interiors of California
The older their sons got, the more these parents wanted to build their dream home. The couple finally decided it was time to make their dream a reality. They worked with designer Jamie Kern to build a new house in Saratoga, California. It includes this dark-colored bathroom for their oldest son, now 17. The bathroom will also work well for guests in the future.
Kern worked with the boy to pick styles and features he liked. The boy found photos on Houzz and saved them to ideabooks to share with Kern. Based on those photos, they chose a dark color scheme and went with a style Kern calls industrial modern.
Color. Kern balanced light and dark materials throughout the space to keep it from feeling heavy. “Dark finishes can be quite dramatic,” she says. “Lighter shades of paints, a bright white countertop and silver tones in the hardware will create brighter reflective surfaces that counteract darker tiles and cabinetry.” Here she’s used light shower tile and a white countertop, and dark colors on the vanity and on the shower bench, niche and stripe.
Tip: When going for this style, Kern says to use materials such as concrete tile and high-polished stainless steel to create high contrast.
Shower. To make the 16½-square-foot shower feel larger, Kern used large-format porcelain tiles. They opted for a mosaic floor tile but went with a larger grout width, as it makes it less slippery, she says. The glass shower doors also make the bathroom feel larger and make the dark tile’s features more visible.
Shower bench. The seat in the shower adds versatility to the bathroom and allows guests who can’t stand as long to have a seat within the shower. It does take up shower space, but the trade-off was worth it for the clients.
Dark tile: Moy Moka, Porcelanosa; shower wall tile: Ash, Iris Ceramica; browse porcelain tiles