After water damage was discovered in our small downstairs en suite bathroom last summer, the whole room had to be stripped back to the bare bones. It has taken a long time for it to become a fully functioning bathroom again due to the general hold-ups of COVID-19 and delivery delays due to Brexit and the pandemic (plus, we had to do some water mitigation and wait ages for the space to dry out), but this month the room was completed!

I hired the esteemed building firm Square Mile Builders to do all the work in here. I’d worked with the company before on a client project and knew that I could rely on them to be professional and do a proper job (they openly share all their work and daily life in the trade on social media - something that you wouldn’t get with a discreditable building firm). They gutted the space and then rebuilt it all, while I chose to design, paint and style it.

This is how the small en suite bathroom looks now! The space is a very small 3m x 1m in size, so this ultimately determined the colours used in this room and the size of the fixtures that I could include.

As the room is so small, I wanted it to look as clean, light and airy as possible. I painted most of the room white and selected white tiles for the inside of the shower and on the floor to bounce the light around from the window. However, small rooms are great spaces to play with strong colours, so I couldn’t resist painting the fluted panelling and the door in a deep, ‘grown-up’ purple. I’ve been so drawn to plummy hues and after testing a few colours I knew that Farrow & Ball’s ‘Brassica’ was the right shade to make a beautiful impact in here. By keeping a dark, bold colour below eye level, it does not feel dominating or overpowering. An en suite is also not somewhere to spend a lot of time in (unlike a living area or a bedroom), so dramatic colours can be used as you are less likely to quickly tire of a striking shade.

I had long-lusted over Orac Decor’s fluted 3D wall panels** - determined that I was going to feature them in my home at some point. The en suite was the perfect project for this as I knew that I did not want tiles covering any of the walls, but something needed to line the bottom of them to protect them from water splashes. Orac’s range of wall panels are paintable, water and shock-resistant. They attach to the wall using adhesive and can be easily cut with a hand saw (they come 2m in length and I had mine cut in half so they were a metre high from the floor). I applied F&B’s water-based modern eggshell paint over the top with a brush (Orac’s panels are pre-primed ready for painting) once they were fixed in place and I had caulked the joins where each piece of panel met the other.

As I was already going bold with the colour and adding interest with the panels, I wanted to keep the shower and floor tiles simple and light (but not basic). Rather than selecting a plain white metro tile, I chose these weathered-effect-edged brickwork tiles* from Verde Tiles and had them stacked vertically for a modern look. Verde Tiles sell these tiles in both a matt and gloss finish and I chose the matt option as I did not want the weathered look compromised with the light from the large window causing a lot of sheen. I love how the accompanying light grey/beige grout blends seamlessly with the worn-look edge of the tile so it all feels cohesive (rather than two separate materials placed alongside one another).

I really wanted to bring some marble into the bathroom design and initially was going to go for small, real marble herringbone tiles on the floor. However, natural stone needs to be sealed and requires maintenance and with a busy life and a house full of boys (you know what I am saying here!) I just didn’t want to be stressing about staining and spills on my real marble floor. Instead, I went for marble-effect porcelain hex tiles from Verde Tiles which are completely durable and maintenance-free! The main thing for me when choosing floor tiles for such a compact space was to pick small-scale tiles rather than large-scale floor slabs (which I felt would look strange in such a modest area). My marble-effect hex tiles are 16cm at the widest point, giving the floor a nice flow from one end to the other in such a narrow room.

Verde Tiles are an independent tile retailer with a showroom in Bishop’s Stortford (an online webshop service is due to launch soon). They offer a wide range of floor and wall tiles that are distinctive, characteristic, and design-led at a lower price point than your general high-end tile retailers. Follow them and get in contact via their Instagram account @verdetiles.

I kept the previous shower tray, head and bar valve as there was absolutely nothing wrong with them. Unfortunately, we discovered the old toilet was cracked when it was removed so it needed replacing. I upgraded to a Kohler Modern Life Close Coupled Rimless Toilet* which has a beveled edge that slants towards the interior of the bowl so that excess liquid doesn't accumulate. Without a rim, there is no crevice for bacteria to grow (it also makes it really easy to clean as you don’t have to navigate a brush up and around the bowl).

I updated the sink as the previous one was 50cm deep and felt far too fat for the narrow room. In its place, I put a small cloakroom basin that had only a 30cm depth - saving 20cm worth of space which made a huge difference. I purchased the Imex Wyndham Traditional Cloakroom Pedestal Basin from Drench as I liked the traditional look of it, plus it sat quite flush against the wall to hide the pipes that came up from the ground (I chose not to move any of the placement of the old pipework as it felt like an unnecessary extra cost which I could just work around).

The Brassica paint colour defined the decorative accessories in here - everything had to have a touch of purple or lilac to complement the plummy lavender panels. Once I decided on the paint colour, I purchased a spring floral print by Annie Dornan Smith, as the deep purple background was the perfect match for the Brassica. On the adjoining wall, I attached a Broste Copenhagen decorative fan - something I owned but had previously never found a home for. On the back wall is a new Liberty London print* titled ‘Flourish’, from a collection of archival designs that span across the last century and a half that Liberty has just started to sell online and in-store.

As the toilet could not be placed centrally due to the old pipework, I balanced this out with a freestanding toilet roll holder by Ferm Living. The Dora paper holder in a cashmere colourway puts the toilet in proportion so there is not one gap wider on one side of the loo than the other. The bath mat is also by Ferm Living in a brown and pink colourway, purchased via Map Stores. The magnifying light-up make-up mirror is by Zone Denmark (purchased via Amara) and I chose it as I liked the matt white body which blended in with the white window frame. The tiny lilac bud vase sits nicely on the window sill and is from H&M Home.

I’m so delighted with how it has turned out - it looks exactly how I wanted it to look in my head! Let me know your thoughts in the comments box below…