Dark internal powder room with houndstooth wallpaper and moody ambience

Playing up a downside can a great way to inject a little excitement into a home interior, as this project illustrates.

In this case, it was a powder room without windows. Designer Guy Shallard of Lat Forty Five chose to emphasise the dark, internal nature of the bathroom with a houndstooth wallpaper from Design Country.

The houndstooth pattern is an appropriate choice for the country house, which sits on 2.8ha of land near Queenstown. But the slightly metallic sheen of the wallpaper ensures the interior avoids any sense of a rustic look.

The contemporary feel is reinforced by the sleek, imported wall-hung basin and toilet, and a Boffi wall-mounted tap.

As with all the bathrooms in the house, the vanity continues the moody theme black-stained American oak is teamed with a blackened steel drawer.

"These materials and the monochromatic palette feature throughout the house, in the bathrooms and also the kitchen, providing visual continuity," says Shallard.

Large-format stone floor tiles also help to tie the spaces together visually.

Story by: Colleen Hawkes