Of all the rooms in a home, the bathroom feels the most unassuming. Interestingly enough, it can also be the most intimate. It is the one place where within its walls, nobody is performing or entertaining, and it is where we all partake in the daily rituals of both preparing for the day, and washing it away.
The important yet humble nature of this room is why it deserves a designer’s full attention every time – it shapes our lives through the most insignificant details. This notion was the basis of our Bauhaus-influence towards the ‘Marcel Collection,’ a range crafted in partnership with THG Paris. We borrowed from Marcel Breuer’s way of thinking – harnessing an honest expression of structure, and encapsulating the relationship between art and technology – a commentary that feels increasingly relevant.
Inspired by the modernist master Marcel Breuer and the clean logic of the Bauhaus era, ‘Marcel’ is a sanitaryware range built around subtle lines and a signature play of offsets. It also marks the first time THG Paris has worked with wood. The collection was unveiled at Milan Salone earlier this spring and has finally landed in London earlier last month with a design masterclass at the THG Paris showroom in Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour. Since then, it has made its debut at the Monaco Yacht Show, and our next stop is Dubai Design Week in November.
Ultimately, the range stems from the belief that our most ‘everyday’ spaces deserve our greatest attention. The Bauhaus principles, ‘that form and function should exist in harmony,’ transforms the humble bathroom into something more tactile and expressive. As ‘Marcel’ continues its journey across the globe, we hope it demonstrates how thoughtful design can elevate even the most basic of moments, proving that beauty need not be loud to leave a lasting impression.
Read on for my top bathroom design considerations.
THE TAP AS A SCULPTURE
If a bathroom was a person, the fittings would be the jewellery and glistening accessories that ‘make’ the outfit. Taps and handles are usually the first thing we touch in a bathroom, and usually without thought, and so it should be the first thing the eye enjoys too: a thoughtless moment with deep impact.
Find one style with presence, something that reflects your character, and let the space around it play a supporting role. Think of it like a punctuation mark in a beautiful passage of work. It is relevant and plays an important role, but its considered placement either accentuates everything around it into art, or sadly achieves the opposite.
A TOUCH OF TIMBER
We naturally need things to be somewhat waterproof in a bathroom and so naturally a bathroom leans more towards the ‘cool’ finishes of stone, glass, steel and tile. Those in design know a little wood can change the temperature of the entire room. It is one of the reasons why I was adamant at using wood inlays in one of the iterations of Marcel.
A little natural finish can change the temperature of the whole room, and wood or timber is the holy grail of this symbiosis. This is the quiet reason why THG Paris’s first use of timber in Marcel feels so right, and why I pushed for its inclusion. Think of a teak stool beside the bath, a slatted shower bench or an oak-fronted vanity – it gives the space a certain, welcoming, mood and I wanted to translate that into our creations. It took a bit of back and forth but the product is something both companies are extremely proud of.
LET ONE SURFACE SPEAK
Rather than a patchwork of materials, choose a single generous gesture: a book-matched stone slab climbing the wall, or an underlying hue of one deep, tonal colour. Fewer joins and fewer competing voices make the room feel calmer and larger, ideal for a moment of reprieve, and then allow the metalwork to echo it. Marcel arrives in a spectrum of finishes, from crisp chrome to soft gold and deep bronze, so there is a tone to flatter almost any palette. My favourite approach is to source the highest quality stone, and replicate it across the entire room – the continuity of origin provides a tranquil ambiance that is both hard to describe and hard to translate via a mixture of other textures and finishes.
Ultimately, our wellbeing is dictated by the details we encounter every day and the impact we allow them to have on us: the weight of a handle, the warmth of timber beneath the hand, the continuity of a beautiful stone – these are the things that quietly shape how a space feels and, in turn, how we feel within it.
A good bathroom design is never about adding more, but about intention and allowing elements to work together in harmony. It is a reflection of the outside world to a degree, and it is this considered approach that sits at the heart of Marcel: a collection born from the belief that even our most private, everyday rituals deserve beauty, thought and a little bit of poetry.
