Designed for a California Tudor bungalow, this master bathroom reflects the traditionalist tastes of its owner. “He said, ‘I want this to look like an old men’s club,’” says interior designer Kristin Rowell, who nevertheless found ways to give the room both modern function and a subtly contemporary feel.
“With small spaces, you try to build in as much as possible,” says Rowell, who merged the double-length vanity cabinet and marble-decked tub as a connected assembly. The countertop provides clearance at the window and shower, but still accommodates a full-size sink. A pair of tilting mirrors “give the illusion that it’s a double vanity, even though there’s only one sink,” Rowell says. Thanks to its frameless glass enclosure, the comfortably sized shower occupies virtually no visual space.
“[The owner] has a taste for the finer things, but he’s also very practical,” says Rowell, who addressed both impulses by lining much of the room in Calacatta marble. “It’s classic,” Rowell says. “You won’t tire of it.” But while using traditional hexagonal and brick patterns, she bumped the sizes up a notch from their Steam Age precedents. The larger scale creates a slightly more modern backdrop, she says: “Not too busy, but not too big.”
Marble is a natural material with a lot of variation, Rowell says, “so we had to edit the tiles. When you start pulling tiles out of the box, you get some crazy patterns happening.” And installation wasn’t the end of the story. “Mosaic tiles vary in thickness,” notes remodeling contractor Pete Hooper. When some stick out, “you don’t see the pattern, you just see the flaws. You have to set [the tiles], then go back and replace the ones that stand proud.”
