14 DAY TRIAL // Many of us seek refuge from the stress of our modern existence in our bathrooms. Nothing helps us relax better after a busy day at the office than taking a luxurious bath in hot or warm bubbly water laced with refreshing fragrances. It also works for kicking off stress, engaging in a bit of well-earned self-indulgence or simply finding some peace and quiet, away from the world and its troubles. How many times did you slip in the tub, then looked around your bathroom and wished it was less cluttered with everything from towels to toothpaste and Q-tips? Interior designers apparently think along the same lines, and advise us to come up with a way to clear the clutter from our bathrooms and go for the "barren", minimalist look for added comfort.
The bathroom may have had a humble status in our homes a while back, but not anymore. Its prestige is growing, and more and more architects choose to create fewer but bigger rooms, paying special attention to the dimensions of the bathroom. In the houses where design does not take precedence, their advice is the same: keep the bathroom as clear and as unsophisticated as possible. "I try to minimize the number of bathrooms in a house", architect Fergus Scott states for the Sydney Morning Herald. "Rather than many small closet en suites, I prefer to design one beautiful separate room in the bathhouse tradition, where the user is able to take time to enjoy the experience".
So, if you're thinking of redecorating your bathroom or if you're making plans to build your own house, take some of the specialists' advice into account. The first step is to try and bring natural light into your bathroom, or if that turns out to be impossible, provide a source of cross-ventilation in your bathroom and limit the number of extractor fans and heat lamps. Instead of always looking for unusual, exotic fittings, focus on the main points: a big, simple bath tub the shape of a bowl; a large mirror to create the illusion of space. "There are vanities on the market that look like they've landed from another planet and baths that look like an Italian sculptor worked on them for ages. But why go to all this trouble?", wisely asks architect Vladimir Ivanov. And if you think about it, he has a point.
