Boat house

Even though bathrooms are often small, they can still make a strong design statement, and even become a conversation piece, as this guest bathroom illustrates.

The bathroom is tucked beneath the eaves of a contemporary city house designed to convey the sense of a holiday home. The boatshed architectural style can be seen in the exposed, white-painted rafters and timber ceiling, and the extra-large, rectangular white wall tiles.

The architect for the project, Darren Jessop of Jessop Architecture, says the bathroom is at the front of the house overlooking the street, hence the frosted glass wall to the exterior. The glazed wall ensures the room gets plenty of natural light, but is also private. Beyond this wall is a slatted timber screen that provides an additional transition between the public and private zones.

To maximise the interior, the shower is a fully tiled wet room, set down a step from the vanity area. It includes a built-in tiled niche for soaps and shampoos, and a bank of louvred windows for ventilation.

The vanity cabinet has a solid basalt top, and a deeply recessed toekick that makes the unit appear to the cantilevered, so the room seem more spacious. It's a feature that appears in the other bathrooms in the house. Key materials, such as the basalt and tiles, are also repeated in these rooms.

The beach-house feel is reinforced by two natural teak bench seats one in the vanity area and one in the shower room. These introduce a sense of the outdoors they are reminiscent of picnic table settings.

Woodgrain-style floor tiles also enhance the relaxed holiday home feel, and retain a visual continuity with the rest of the house.

Story by: Colleen Hawkes

Photography by: Jamie Cobeldick