Designing every detail: Bathrooms done right

Certain pesky details might irritate the average person, but choosing the perfect bathroom accessories down to the toilet brush can thrill the interior design aficionado.

With the plethora of choices out there, as well as our burgeoning fascination with the world of spas, bathroom accessorization has almost been transformed into a decorating profession unto itself.

Usually, the largest flat space in the bath, which can also be the most cluttered, is the bathroom vanity. It can become a 
repository of every product known to mankind. So, selectively gathering these various 
necessities onto a tray is both visually restful 
and prevents breakables from cascading onto the floor.

Small objects such as swabs and brushes can be assembled together in canisters matching the other accessories. Though not much of a fan for matching ensemble sets of anything, I find coordinating bath accoutrements enormously useful in organizing and de-junking the bathroom.

Coordinating your bathroom accessory finishes with the metal finishes of your towel bars and lavatory sets, or the stone of your floor or the wood of your cabinetry greatly reduces the visual noise that is inevitable when hair gels, makeup, medicine and hair brushes vie for attention. Because of this useful coordinated effect, many companies have come up with terrific merchandise.

And necessary evils such as toilet brushes, wastepaper baskets and plungers ought to be in close reach and should not be ignored, but should be considered part of the whole “look” of your water closet.

The popularity of polished nickel for plumbing products has spawned an enormous herd of accessories. National retailer Restoration Hardware celebrates classic 1920s and 1930s styling with substantial, good quality trays, wastebaskets and soap dispensers.

Often combining glass containers with the polished nickel tops, Restoration Hardware avoids the monotony of too much metal on your counter. Several of my favorite wastebaskets come from here. They have interesting ribbing on the sides, a substantial rim around the lip and a particularly attractive moulding around the base. And the store has been singularly clever in offering all the vintage and classic designs in four additional finishes including a smashing oil-rubbed bronze.

For a far cheaper, though typically less satisfying alternative, Bed Bath & Beyond, also a national retailer, provides several stainless wastebaskets as well.

Going truly local, Hildreth’s in Southampton carries bathroom ornaments from the company Match, which offers up a very high-end collection of pewter accessories including a wonderfully weighty trash receptacle—it could almost double as a champagne bucket, it’s that kind of quality—as well as tissue boxes and cotton swab containers. The pieces appear to be hand-sandcast as opposed to manufactured. The accessories exhibit a rarefied yet toned down patina ideal for a more relaxed Tuscan W/C.

But with the price of wastepaper baskets topping $500, Match’s line of accessories may be too “2006” for this year’s pocketbook, though they are, by the by, quite understated.

Pearlescent shell finishes have been quite popular this year with mosaic assemblages of abalone and conch shell flooding the market. With a surprising range of prices, from eye-popping to very reasonable, these shell waste containers sporting the white pearl finish can be just the perfect jewel to catch the buyer’s eye.

With a nickel capped shell soap dish and pewter rimmed shell waste basket, both in sleek contemporary forms, these items bring a hint of class and glamour to the bathroom.

Triangle Home Furnishings in Bridgehampton, national retailer Bloomingdale’s and Manhattan-based Gracious Home all carry shell finish items, but Restoration Hardware is heads above the rest.

In the world of spa stone, Calvin Klein’s line of sleek, honed limestone and charcoal slate collections win over on the weighty design aspect. These collections are stars for very large vanity tops.

Waterworks—there’s a store in East Hampton—is a serious contender for the most fabulous creators of classic spa accoutrements. There is a bit more of a diminutive collection of stone accessories, which is a bit less fashion-forward than Calvin Klein’s collection but just as sleek.

I admire the look of stone—though unless constantly sealed for staining and highly compatible with the vanity top, it is simply not as flexible.

With the popularity of white-on-white baths and the emergence of stainless steel cabinetry as well as mirrored vanities, the transparency of glass bath accessories has emerged as very much in vogue. Waterworks sells several handsome heavy crystal lines.

Of that selection, there are two lines that are noteworthy. One harkens to Swedish simplicity and the other is carved with broad classic flutes.

Many designers prefer to bring warmth to the harder bath surfaces and this can certainly be accomplished with the great variety of woven straw, rattan and sea grass accessories available most conspicuously at Gracious Home. Rattan or sea grass hampers with cotton duck inserts give a relaxed South Seas feel to the W/C along with straw trays and bleached coconut-based coir tissue boxes. Gracious Home’s woven bath collections offer every imaginable counterpart for the well-furnished bath.

Traditional English bath accessories that harken back to the Edwardian era are another choice. These accessories still feel fresh and hardly medicinal.

When reflective of creamware and trimmed in silver, the bath picks up that fresh scrubbed nostalgic ambience. Home James in East Hampton, At Home and Waterworks all carry their own version of Edwardian bath style.

Beautiful wood hampers and wastebaskets are hard to come by. International retailer The Conran Shop, which has an outpost in Manhattan, has a stylish gridded teak hamper, though I would fear throwing anything inside such as delicates without a cloth liner because of the rather raw innards. And mega-retailer Pottery Barn has a simple Brazilian wood trash can which is restrained in form—perfect in proportion yet rich in wood grain.

East Hampton’s Jonathan Adler has done it again with a crisp zippy line of resin accessories. Though shown in Palm Beach Green, Boca Orange and Deco Black, the white is my favorite. His architectural lines are haute-moderne, his surfaces high gloss and his references, as always, are high camp.

Now down to the lowly toilet brush. I found the most practical wall-mounted chrome example at Conran’s. Close at hand, yet off the floor, this attached brush ensemble is absolutely universal in shape and draws little attention.

Also, discreet, tubular brush towers clad in nickel, black or white are available everywhere—as are the modern square stands in brushed stainless steel. Remember, replaceable brush heads are a must as well as washable plastic inserts.

For those of us who live in older homes or apartments (where the plumbing might have a mind of its own) Gracious Home offers an attractive toilet cleaning unit that quietly encloses an elongated toilet brush and a plunger in an easily washable container.

Ten years ago, this world of bathroom accessories was sorely lacking. But now, the world of handmade couture and designer bath accoutrements is unending. I have touched on only a few in the many price ranges available.

Bath accessories may be amongst the last details to be considered decoratively, but they are also that final touch that truly elevates the space.

Marshall Watson is a nationally recognized interior and furniture designer who lives and works in the Hamptons and New York City. Reach him at 105 West 72nd Street, Suite 9B, New York, NY 10023.