While the shower may reign supreme in your morning routine, having a showstopping bath as a centrepiece and place for relaxation will elevate your bathroom to sanctuary status. The Reece Bathrooms Annual Insight Report 2021/22 found the bath is the third most important bathroom feature (up 5% since 2019/20), but how do you know which one to choose? Daniela Santilli, bathrooms & kitchens merchandising leader at Reece Bathrooms, shares her thoughts.
Kado Lux Petite Freestanding Bath via Three Birds Renovations
The main consideration is selecting a bath that will stand up to the rigours of your household needs and how you use the space. And with a rise in new materials, shapes and colours, there are several considerations which will inform the bath type and look you choose.
Whether you’re catering to a family or designing your dream bathroom, here’s what you should consider when choosing the right bath for your space.
Why choose a freestanding bath?
Freestanding baths have a bold, luxe look, forming the absolute focal point of your bathroom. But when would you choose a freestanding bath, and what should you consider?
KADO Era bath
Freestanding baths work best for bathrooms with a little more wiggle room.
They don’t need wall support, so they can be placed anywhere in the room – under a window or skylight or even in the centre for dramatic impact.
One of the biggest considerations when looking at the placement of a freestanding bath is ensuring it’s far enough from the wall to allow for ease of cleaning behind the bath – we recommend at least 100mm.
If renovating, think about existing plumbing and keep to the footprint of your current bath to avoid unnecessary expense.
If practicality is a priority (hello young children) and space is scarce, inset baths are a great choice. Here’s what you need to know about choosing an inset bath.
They work well with a smaller floor plan, with a number of different sizes available – from 1200mm to 1900mm.
Inset baths are built into a hob — a tiled section that holds the bath. They’re often installed next to the shower enclosure or with shower over bath installation to fit both a shower and bath in the one room.
The surrounding ledge makes access easy for children and is particularly handy for parents when bathing youngsters. It can also make for some added storage space.
You can clean the space easily, as there are no nooks for dust and grime to hide behind.
The best of both worlds: back to wall and back to corner baths
Back to wall and back to corner baths are great for those who want the convenience of an inset bath, but still want the striking design of a freestanding bath.
Posh Domaine Back to Wall Freestanding Bath
Back to wall and back to corner baths are a hybrid solution, designed to sit against a wall and/or in the corner of a room, but are freestanding in that they don’t need to be fixed into a recess. They’re perfect if you don’t have the space, but still want the benefits of a freestanding bath.
Interiors Addict’s Jen Bishop chose a back to wall bath for her own reno
With an ever-growing focus on the bathroom as a sanctuary, we’re increasingly investing in products that elevate our daily routines through tactile materials and striking design.
Baths are available in a variety of materials, from pressed steel to the organic matte feel of a solid surface. The style of the bathroom and those using the bath can inform the right material and colour for you – think: sanitary grade acrylic and pressed steel for those with young children, or sleek matte black to make a statement.
The best way to get a sense of a bath is to experience it! Visit your nearest Bathroom Life showroom to find a bath of any type that will fit your space.
Sisters Wilhelmina McCarroll (creative director) and Fleur Sibbel (managing director) are the award-winning design duo behind the Zuster brand – a name synonymous with beautiful, bespoke Australian made furniture. This International Women’s Day, we spoke to Willy and Fleur about their design legacy, interiors trends and what it’s like to be working mums.
Wilhelmina (L) and Fleur (R)
Q. How have you brought a new perspective to a family business with a history predominantly founded by men?
Fleur: I said to my son that, “it’s a male-dominated industry.” And he said, “is it?” Because it’s something that we actually don’t acknowledge. We grew up a family of four girls and our father was a builder, and there was no job that he didn’t make us do, like pushing the wheelbarrow, hooking up the trailer, carrying firewood, everything. We did the same as if we were boys. I never carried in my head that I would be perceived differently as a woman. So we haven’t had a lot of obstacles. When we walk into a factory, people take us for who we are, not our sex.
If anything, it’s been an advantage because most of the interior designers and people decorating their homes, the decisions are made by females. And I think us being females has been a massive advantage to our business because Willy is designing for women, especially what we’ve done with the bathroom collection. It’s very much designed by a woman for women that are using the bathroom. And so we’ve been able to add a more feminine flair while having the manufacturing expertise to carry it through.
Q. What are your tips for mums when it comes to running a successful brand while having children?
Fleur: I guess it’s just being really organised. Both Willy and I work four days a week and we’ve always done that. My children are in their 20s now, but throughout the years, we’ve always worked four days. And the time at work is fully focused on work, time at home fully focused on family. So having that life balance is really important.
Willy: And getting up nice and early in the morning to get everything done as well and just being really focused and working really hard when you’re at work and then you have your time off with your family in the evenings. But you’ve got to make every minute count and I think that’s the thing about being a working mother.
Fleur: I think it’s really tricky for working mums because when we have our children, we sort of start the whole guilt cycle too, which is really challenging. So you’re guilty when you’re at work, you’re guilty when you’re not at work. But I think we’ve both learned to really let that go and we really believe in what we’re doing and we love what we do.
And we’ve seen the benefits because we’re kind of through the other side a little bit more and we’ve seen the sacrifices we went through. Often when they’re very small, leaving them is really, really hard. But then we’ve built this business over these 25 years and imagine if we didn’t? If we stayed home?
Willy: But they’ve also watched that and it’s been an example to them of how you can build a business and what you can achieve in your career. And I think they’re amazing lessons for your children.
Q. Does having children influence the design of your products?
Willy: Having children definitely influences your product design because you have to work with being more functional with what you make, more robust with what you design, and I think it’s really important because storage becomes such an important thing when you’ve got a family, and design as well. You want the pieces to be beautiful but you also want them to be really, really functional as well.
Q. What trends are you seeing in interiors?
Fleur: We watch the market all the time and we’re seeing where trends are going and where our niche is. And I think we’re really good at establishing that niche.
Willy: I think trends are changing quicker now. It’s two types of trends that I’m feeling at the moment. There’s a really natural kind of a trend with very organic materials and shapes. And then there’s an eclectic trend, which is putting different marbles together, different finishes, lots of different materials, and keeping it very tonal just in the one colour pattern and scheme.
I’ve ended up with two really creative children, they absolutely love design and they’re actually telling me what the trends are. It’s interesting now they’re teenagers, they’re onto everything, quicker than I am.
Q. What are the challenges many women face getting ready in the morning, and how do you address them?
Willy: I think the challenge of women getting ready in the morning is often time. We’ve got children, we’ve got really busy lives, and we want to actually get ready as quickly and efficiently as we possibly can. I think storage is really, really important because there are so many beauty products on the market and you seem to accumulate so many. And so there needs to be a place for all these products. We’ve worked really, really hard on achieving that and I think we’ve done a good job.
Q. What is your advice for people looking to design a new bathroom?
Fleur: We think it’s a really good idea to create a moodboard and to work out what sort of style you want to go for. It’s quite a stressful process renovating a bathroom and the more organised you are and the clearer vision you have, the better.
Willy: I also think in a bathroom, less materials is better, especially in a small space. It’s a lot more messy to see lots of different materials in one bathroom.
Fleur: And when you’re designing a bathroom, really thinking about how you’re going to use that space and what’s important. Do you need two basins for you and your partner to have a separate space? Is storage really important? What is your dream list? Then you can negotiate with the bank and your builder to make that happen. I think to really go high on your goals early on to create the right experience. Because we do use the bathroom every day.
Willy: It’s definitely a room you don’t want to overlook because it’s actually incredibly important to get it right.
Q. What’s in your ideal bathroom?
Willy: My ideal bathroom would definitely have lots of storage, a nice big bath, lots of beautiful materials.
Fleur: My ideal bathroom is the bathroom I have. I’m lucky enough to have done a renovation and have an ISSY by Zuster bathroom. Storage is really important, and mirrors. I love having multiple mirrors that I can look at. I love just getting ready and being able to access everything in the one footprint. And the bathroom being a really calming space, I think is really important.
Willy: Yeah, a bit of a day spa feel is a really nice thing.
Q. What’s next for your ISSY by Zuster collaboration with Reece?
Willy: Next in the bathroom is going to be Blossom. If I was to describe the new Blossom range in three words, it would be glamorous, decorative, and functional.
Fleur: And we’re really excited because it’s a very beautiful, very feminine collection.
Willy: A little bit fashion-inspired as well. I’ve been inspired by a lot of pattern, so I’ve actually incorporated the pattern into the fronts of the drawers, in kind of a subtle, classic way. When I designed the Blossom range, the element on the front of the detailing, I actually saw something similar in a balustrade, overseas, and then I put it together in a timber form and it just worked out so perfectly. I was so happy.
Fleur: We’re also introducing marble for the first time, so there’s the option of marble handles in both Halo and in Blossom, which is going to be really beautiful, and some very organic shapes. We feel like it’s very on trend with people wanting to go back to more organic shapes and materials. And then she’s designed this series of incredible mirror that are oval, very organic.
Willy: Oh yeah, we’ve done a lot of new mirrors which are going to be terrific. They’re a little bit more decorative than we’ve done before. I think that they’re really going to give the bathroom lots more character too. We’re pretty excited about launching them.
Fleur: And with the collection, we’ve tried to create more of that day spa, hotel experience. Because we know, like us, we’re busy with family and work and our lives are crazy, but we want that amazing experience at home. So when Willy designed the collection, she had that very much in mind. Timber is a very calming material, being a natural material, so having that calming experience, that’s our dream for women.
The timber extends to when you open the vanity drawer, it’s a full-extension drawer, that timber is lined inside the drawers as well, which we haven’t seen in bathroom before. Even with the waste cutout, that’s made in the timber as well. So you get that feeling of luxury and craftsmanship. Someone’s handmade each item, one person makes it from start to finish, and you can feel that, especially living with it day-to-day. You see that the edges of the drawer have all been mortared, it’s all lined, you don’t ever see a screw, concealed drawer runners so you never see any hardware. Down to the very minute details, we’ve really thought of everything to deliver a luxury experience.
When we started the bathroom collaboration with Reece, we both really felt like there wasn’t a good solution on the market that offered storage, that was a beautiful, clean-line design, that had the longevity and the quality, and the day-to-day experience would improve people’s lives. And we really saw that as a niche, and same with Reece too.
We thought about what we would want to do in our dream bathrooms. Lucky we’ve got our dream bathrooms now, but before, we didn’t. And we said, “we’d love to be able to sit and do our hair and do makeup and have a mirror that while you sit you can still see yourself at the mirror, to have the compartments that you can just access your makeup.” We’d talk amongst ourselves and we’d say, “imagine if you could just touch and then a drawer would pop out and all your makeup would be there and how amazing would that be?” And so then Willy designed it.
Following the first Block bathroom reveals a lot of you asked me if it was really practical to use timber in the bathroom or did it just look good? I asked Reece Bathrooms’ Belinda Geels for her expert advice.
Timber has been a big feature of many of The Block teams’ bathroom spaces this season. From the bespoke timber vanity tops in Brad and Dale’s bathrooms and feature paneling in Alisa and Lysandra’s main bathroom, to Steve and Chantelle’s parquetry ceiling feature and the stunning full timber wall in Kyal and Kara’s perfect score main bathroom, it’s been a winning element of many of the standout bathrooms from both the fans and favourites.
Image courtesy of Perini
We often get questions from customers about how to properly use this beautiful material in bathroom spaces, particularly when it comes to reducing the risks of swelling or warping of timber in damp spaces or close to wet areas. To help out those of you looking to recreate some of The Block’s best looks at home, we’ve compiled top tips from our experts and industry partners on using timber in everything from vanities to flooring and feature walls in your bathroom.
Timber choice is key
Whether you’re looking to use wood for your vanity, flooring, walls or furniture, your timber selection is crucial. As well considering the look and feel of your timber, it’s important to think about the tightness of the wood grain. According to Stephen Royce from Australian bathroom product manufacturer Formed, solid timbers with a tight grain are best for bathroom spaces as they’re less likely to be affected by moisture. Think mahogany, teak, cedar or even bamboo (preferably local plantation grown) for best results.
Image courtesy of Reece Bathrooms
Seal for success
One of the most common questions asked about timber in the bathroom is around the risk of expansion or warping. According to Stephen, regardless of the timber you choose for your bathroom space or how you plan to use it, you must ensure that it is properly sealed and waterproofed.
“It all comes down to using the correct seal. Sealing prevents moisture getting into the timber, and can reduce any issues with warping, staining or significant expansion or contraction,” he says.
Sealing is the most important factor in the process, as it helps make the timber more resistant to water and moisture. There are various water, oil and wax-based sealants available on the market, which are suitable for different timbers and applications. Be sure to speak to an expert to help select the best sealant for your timber and to ensure it is properly applied. To be doubly sure that your timber doesn’t stain or warp, make sure you wipe up any water that may pool on its surface as quickly as possible.
Image courtesy of Perini
Ventilation must-dos
Timber looks beautiful in the bathroom, however, as it’s a natural material, it pays to ensure you’ve got the right ventilation in place. A well-ventilated bathroom space will reduce the moisture in the air as quickly as possible, helping ensure the timber will respond well over time as the product ages.
Kyal and Kara’s winning bathroom from The Block
Fake it
If using natural timber is not for you, there are now plenty of great ‘timber look’ options available, particularly for flooring.
Kate Fuller from our tiling partner Perini Tiles says porcelain timber tiles are becoming increasingly popular. As well as looking and feeling like real timber, they’re perfect for wet areas like bathrooms as they’re water resistant, low maintenance and durable. They won’t warp or scratch and don’t require the sealing or oiling real timbers need in damp spaces.
“Timber tiles have become so popular there is now an abundant of colours and textures available — from oak, blackwood, spotted gum to recycled, raw and coloured options. Advancements in tile technology and digital ink printing ensure tiles perfectly simulate the look and feel of the real thing with no two tiles looking alike,” Kate says.
Reece Bathrooms provide the bathroom products and accessories you see on The Block each week. Check out www.reece.com.au for more bathroom inspiration and how to incorporate the timber look into your bathroom.
