Grand Master Bathroom

Rene Dekker Design, one of London’s pre-eminent interior design studios, has been working for the last year on a large 12,000 square foot house in France. The room by any standards is large, approximately 34 square metres or 366 square feet!

Situated on the first floor of a very handsome late 19th-century villa, the room has all the grandeur and qualities you would expect from a house of this calibre. High ceilings, deep ornate cornices, and stone window frames with lead in glass detail. The room overlooks the private gardens at the back and is a light-filled joy to behold. Whilst there were no real planning restrictions, the client was keen to keep to the original vision of the house and not modernise it too much. We started the bathroom design journey by thinking about the finishes and how best to beautify and personalise such a large room. The obvious choice for the floor was patterned stone mosaic as this has a unique and wonderful way of breaking up the floor without disrupting it…if you know what I mean? We headed off to Turkey for this and used one of the supplier’s standard fish scale designs as the starting point. After a few trials for size and stone choice, we eventually settled on the original sample for both stone and size, using a warm Giallo Sienna complimented with some grey, green, and Maron. Then off to Prague to look at stone for the shower walls and vanity top. There were many amazing stone slabs on offer but the Palmino spoke to the designer, unlike the others. This quartzite has random fossilised veining mimicking a tortoise shell and as the name suggests, contains the hues and tones of the famous horse.

The taps had to be chic and sophisticated so there could be no better option than one of the Lalique designs from THG Paris. The showroom in Pont Street London had everything on offer so a few hours at the boutique crystallised the final choice which was the classic Swallow design blended with the polished platinum finish. The bath in the room was placed in the very large bay window area and takes centre stage as you enter the room. For that reason it had to be visually stunning and not ubiquitous! The studio settled on the fluted Casini bath, an elegant almost classical Wedgewood design in off white composite. Finally, to ensure privacy from neighbours without losing light, we added a stunning geometric bespoke metal screen.

To complete the scheme, the walls will be finished in a pearlised polished plaster, the vanity unit in a dark glossy brown paint finish with bespoke 1960’s style handles, add soft shimmery voile window treatment and we will source an appropriate chandelier.