bathroom

barrier-free function with luxurious style in this Bethesda, Maryland, bathroom. Notable features include a curbless open shower with bench seating, slip-resistant tile, a linear drain, a rain shower head and thermostatic hand shower, a wheelchair-accessible vanity and more.

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Really want to wring every inch of storage space out of your bathroom? A toe kick drawer can turn that usually empty space along the floor into an additional storage space for less commonly used items, or a backup stash of paper rolls. These should be well constructed to avoid scraping your floors or becoming stuck, so be prepared to spend a bit more than a typical drawer.

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Similarly, this example uses a smaller upper tier within the main drawer to use the slim space, but it moves independently so it won’t be in the way when you want to reach into the main compartment. In general, each drawer you add to your vanity will increase the cost but also the functionality, with interior drawers usually costing a bit less than full proper drawers because they don’t need their own proper drawer front or handle.

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A third option for working around the sink is to use every inch of space with a drawer that is sized or shaped to avoid hitting the sink and piping. A drawer like the one shown here with a notch in it will wrap around the pipe so the entire depth can be used beside it.

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Another option to maximize the use of space under and around piping is to use a standard doored cabinet with open shelves inside. And there are little ways you can enhance the usefulness of such cabinets too. Notice how the one pictured here includes pullouts within the cabinet. These pullouts can then house baskets or loose items, whichever you prefer, to fit in many objects or a few large pieces. The fact that they roll out will make seeing and reaching for pieces stashed in the back easier.

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n a small bath with a single-sink vanity, positioning the sink off to one side is a practical solution to allow a larger usable area of open counter on the other side. Notice how in this example, the doored section of the vanity is centered on the sink, with the open shelves on the other end. This gives the whole composition a more structured look because the sink and doors form their own vertical line of symmetry. You can use this trick to take a premade vanity box and extend it to fit your wall by adding floating shelves next to it and then finishing the whole thing with a single top.

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open shelves can be a very attractive look, because it gives a vanity a lighter appearance. When using a dark, weighty wood or stone, having a visual break in the middle adds some airiness to the whole room. Open shelves are not necessarily used only under a sink, though. They can break up a vanity pleasingly in other ways.

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The focal point of the master bathroom is an enormous walk-in shower covered with tile laid in an unconventional manner. The tiles themselves are simple 2-by-3-inch Japanese tiles with multilevel glazing in greens and blues. The design team added interest by arranging the tiles at various different angles, which required some seriously math-heavy calculations

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stone on counter

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stone baseboard

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tile baseboard

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travertine

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tumbled marble tile in shower

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The artistic shower is lined with layered stone made with fossils from the region. Becky found the fossils on eBay from a private seller and inserted the pieces as if they had settled naturally into the crumbling, stacking layers of the Earth.

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dressing area

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