Heliconia Interiors Top Tips for Your Bathroom Design

Yes, every bathroom design project requires a well thought out brief. In fact, as Interior Designers, we spend a lot of time in this phase.

There are a few key areas to focus on:

• Assess who will be using this bathroom, how many people, and what will they use it for? Considering the day-to-day requirements that the room needs to address will help you to decide on products, how much storage is required and the layout of the space.

• Budgeting! Of course, this is an essential part of preparing for any project. Bathroom projects can vary in cost from $10 to $100K. Having a clear budget for demolition, trades, fixtures, and fittings, and ‘the unknown’ is imperative. Check out our Bathrooms On A Budget eBook to stay on track!

• Aesthetic! Making your design decisions is much easier with a clear aesthetic direction. Moodboards are not just collections of pretty pictures, they need to illustrate an atmosphere, a feeling, a MOOD. For example, if you’d like to create an atmosphere of a relaxing day spa - the mood board might have images of soft colour palettes, perhaps some leafy greenery, minimal contrast and pattern. It may feature a product or two that accurately helps to add the illustration of mood. A great online tool to achieve this is Style Sourcebook, a platform in which you can add all of your favourite Bluespace products directly into your board!

• Site assessment. Before getting stuck into design decisions, we will always do a site assessment to find out what is in and what is out of the realms of feasibility for the space we’re working within. For example, if the walls are double brick, recessing a niche shelf is not the best option to include in the design.

• Give a lot of thought to your floorplan. Mark it out on the floor, measure a friends’ vanity with storage combinations or take note of layouts that you love. Sketch the outline of the room as accurately as possible and block out placements of your fittings.

• Don’t forget what goes up the wall too! Plan for tap heights, towel rail positions, and floating vanity levels.

Tiling can help make a room feel bigger, draw the eye to a certain feature, and can use scale and contrast to create visual interest and dimension. Selecting tiles is more than picking a floor and wall tile that you like. Consider other aspects such as:

1. 1. 1. Placement - would large format tiles go better on the floor to minimise grout lines? Should a feature tile go behind the vanity to draw the eye towards that feature? Does the floor tile need to go up a wall to make the room feel larger?

      2. Set out - vertical or horizontal? Chevron, herringbone, brick lay or bond stack? Consider how you would like the tiles to be set and whether the labour to set them will influence the budget.

      3. Contrast, pattern, scale and tone - use these design levers to draw attention or detract from areas of the room accordingly and to help achieve your aesthetic. Again, if you're going for that relaxing day spa vibe, you could go for minimal contrast in your tile palette, large format to reduce grout lines, and soft colour tones to create a feeling of calmness.

Find your perfect tile online and learn more here.

• Keep in mind that drawers are better than cabinets for accessing items, but they do cost more.

• Compliment your vanity storage with other items in the room in a way that enhances the aesthetic - a shower ledge, a floating timber shelf over the bath, a mirrored shaving cabinet in an interesting shape.

• It doesn’t matter what it looks like on a computer screen, it’s difficult to assess the true colour of a tile or the level of shine on a tapware finish without holding a swatch in your hand.

• As you start to narrow down your selections, order samples from The Blue Space:

1. Tiles

2. Tapware finish

3. Cabinetry colour / material, and handles if applicable

4. Benchtop finish