Why a bathroom
Because it is the hardest room to get right and the easiest to get wrong.
A bathroom is small, wet, heavily serviced and seen from thirty centimetres. There is no distance to hide behind and no furniture to break up a bad junction. Every tile cut, every silicone line, every reveal is at eye level under bright light.
Build a dark bathroom well and you can build anything.
The surfaces
Barestone in graphite for the raw, mineral base. Blackwood joinery for warmth against it. Stone-look tile, and a curved tile wall — a detail that requires the setout to be resolved before a single tile is laid, because a curve exposes every millimetre of drift.
Smoked grey mirror and tinted glass do the light work. Neither reflects cleanly, which is the point: they hold the room in a soft grey rather than bouncing it back at you. LED lighting is placed to rake across surfaces and reveal texture, not to flatten it.
The trades
A room like this is a trade coordination problem more than a design one. Blackout Electrical, The Tiler Guy, Wizard Kitchens, Precision Interior Linings and Glass Supplies each had to work to tolerances that a standard bathroom never demands.
Built in Bellerive, Hobart. See the Material, the stage where rooms like this are resolved.
