Contemporary pale bathroom with marble floor and water features

As the design trend moves towards a more pampering style of bathroom, luxuries like drenching showerheads and freestanding baths are becoming ever more popular. Some projects, however, take it further, with luxuriant textures, exotic patterns, and trickling water features.

That's what you'll find in this spa-like family bathroom located upstairs in a new home by designer Kim Duffin.

"The idea was to create an ambience to make the owners feel relaxed and at ease," he says.

Positioned in the centre of the house, the bathroom is like a room within a room. The core bathing space is walled in a white Caesarstone with a crocodile skin pattern. However, two water features one at each end of the room are backdropped by a black Caesarstone in the same pattern. Using the same surface in two tones evokes a contrasting yin and yang theme.

"In front of the stone, myriad slender nylon chords run down from the strip LED lights near the ceiling to the stainless steel floor trough. Water droplets consistently run down the chords creating vertical lines of flowing water."

Blue glass pebbles provide a bright, cheery designer floor surface at the base of the features and are continued along the outer side of the bathtub. Pedestals nestled into the glass pebbles are for the positioning of three mature trees.

As well as the bathtub, water features and marble surfaces on the floor and vanity countertop, the bathroom has another custom luxury.

"The shower stall is in slumped glass a glass returned to a molten state then slumped' over a mould to create a pattern or image that is not as sharp as etched glass but much deeper."

As the room is near an adjacent property, the tub side of the space is finished in translucent glass, optimising both natural light and privacy.