IT USED to be the kitchen that was the deciding factor when it came to selling a house. It set the mood, laid out the owner’s credentials as behind the times or groovy and design-savvy. It’s not that kitchens do not matter — of course they do — but it is bathrooms, so estate agents and designers say, that are setting the pace. Blow the punter away with a seriously glamorous bathroom and you should have a sale, they claim. However, this is dangerous territory. Ideas are changing so fast that even a bathroom revamped as recently as five or six years ago can look very out of date. So just imagine how downright old-fashioned our own dear bathroom, the one that runs “en suite” with our bedroom, had begun to look, given that it had been “done” some 20 years before.
Mind you, we were pretty pleased with it at the time. First, it was a step up from having the bathroom on the landing (which was where it used to be until we gave up a study or fifth bedroom adjoining our own and knocked down the intervening wall). Second, it had the then so fashionable rag-painting on the walls, all in a delicate shade of pale blue. It also had only one basin and no shower. But as we have been gradually smartening up the house over the years it had begun to look very out-of-kilter with the rest of the house, as if it was inhabited by an entirely different set of people from those who enjoyed the other rooms. Time to call in Christopher Chanond, the design team that helped me to redo the drawing-room, and Voytex, the builders who had done the job so splendidly.
My brief was quite demanding, given that the room measures just 3.30m by 2.87m. It had to have a freestanding bath and a power shower. Two basins were a must. There had to be loads of storage, and it had to look modern and glamorous but not bleak or stark. I wanted a bath in the window, because we look out over beautiful gardens, but it could not be made to work. What Christopher Chanond came up with was a freestanding roll-top bath and a separate power shower along one side and the two basins and the loo set into a three-sided arch of cupboards along the other. The floor, walls and shower are clad in Italian sandstone tiles (600mm by 600mm) called Pietra Carbone (£80 per sq m from Marble City, 22 Smugglers Way, London SW18, 020-8871 1191) and sealed with Lithofin to make them waterproof. They are chic as could be and the grey links brilliantly with the greys in our bedroom, although the floor had to be reinforced to bear the weight.
The cost of baths came as something of a shock. A standard number costs as little as £300, but as soon as you aspire to something with a little pizzazz prices can reach stratospheric levels. Having set my heart on a fancy see-through glass design the price (some £6,000) made it out of the question, and Christopher Chanond came up with an oval white roll-top number called Nouveau, made by Clearwater Collection (01274 738140) for £1,312. The frameless glass door for the shower had to be made-to-measure and its price was also a shock — more than £1,000 all in, from Sam Shower Enclosures — but it fits seamlessly. The shower head is called Raindance (£302, made by Hansgrohe) and at 240mm diameter is large enough for our purposes. Inside the shower there is no need for those little stainless steel appurtenances to hold gels and shampoos: two little niches have been carved neatly out of the sandstone. The wall-mounted loo is called a Subway by Villeroy & Boch (£605, including the concealed cistern).
The magic touches that lift the bathroom from a utilitarian room into a pleasure dome are the lighting, the recessed glass and sandstone shelves and the brilliant magenta PU lacquer on the cupboard units on which the basins rest (they were sprayed with a mix of two Dulux colours called Ice Storm 2 and Garnet Symphony). Without the glorious touch of magenta, not too much, not too little, the room would be just a little . . . well, grey. The cupboards surrounding the basins are ample and take care of everything that the old ones did. They have been lacquered in grey to tone in with the sandstone.
The free-standing basins are Zunyi Bowls manufactured by Nocode and cost £259 each, and the mixers and spouts are from Ritmonio (£230 and £141 respectively). All came from our suppliers: Edwins, of All Saints Road, London W11, 020-7221 3550.
The wall separating the bath from the shower has three lovely glass panels, each one offering a shelf and a spotlight. The wall beside the bath is divided between a big mirror and a section with three more shelves, inset into the sandstone, and lit with spotlights.
It might sound as if it all looked a little cold, but it does not: the magenta lacquer on the central cupboards lights up the room, the large window lets in plenty of light and the room itself is heated with an underfloor electric system (adjustable) from DK Heating. We both love the new room, though the bath has proved almost entirely de trop. In the six months since it was finished my husband has not used it once and I have used it twice. We both seem to prefer the ease and speed of the shower. If we were to do it again I might do away with the bath altogether and make the whole thing more of a wet-room. But if we were ever to sell, then a wet-room, property experts say, just doesn’t cut it. Baths are, it seems, like cookers: no matter how seldom used you just have to have them.
christopherchanond.com, 020-7630 1155
Voytex Ltd: 07789 224060
