Decorating a luxury bathroom

Designing a deluxe bathroom is an art that goes beyond just picking the right fixtures and fittings. Bringing a high-end bathroom to life is as much about the decorations and finishing touches as it is about choosing the perfect freestanding bathtub or statement shower. So, get creative, have fun and let your inner interior designer loose—there are few things more enjoyable than making your home beautiful.

Contents

Get inspired on Instagram and Pinterest

Choose your decoration style

Craft your look around your fixtures and fittings

Light up the space

To wallpaper or not to wallpaper?

Get inspired on Instagram and Pinterest

We probably don’t need to tell you this, as anyone with even a passing interest in interior decoration will be all over it, already but... There’s nowhere better than Instagram and Pinterest for contemporary bathroom inspiration.

If you’re thinking of buying your luxury washroom online, you’ll find all manner of interior retailers on social media to inspire your imagination—see the Riluxa Instagram page, for instance. And make sure to follow as many amazing design influencers as you can for decorative ideas—people like:

Justina Blakeney

Emily Henderson

Orlando Soria

Ariel Ashe & Reinaldo Leandro

Sasha Bikoff

You don’t have to hire the world’s best designers to learn some of their approaches to creating timeless luxury bathrooms. Just take a look at our article on How to Design a Kelly Hoppen Inspired Bathroom for evidence of that.

Choose your decoration style

Before you start selecting ceramics for your tiles or paint for the bathroom walls, try to get an idea of what kind of overall aesthetic you’re going for. Sure, the eclectic style is one that mixes and matches from all kinds of design movements—but there’s a technique to juxtaposing different styles—it’s not just about throwing your favourite pieces together haphazardly.

Some of the most popular interior decoration styles in the bathroom include:

Minimalist—applying the “less is more” approach to interior design, minimalist bathrooms are deceptively exacting in their approach to decorating. Because it’s sparsely decked out, a minimalist washroom will reveal every last decorative decision—whether it’s the choice of plants or the decision to hang a piece of art in the bathroom—so it’s important to get them right.

Retrofuturist—a bathroom inspired by retrofuturism will have the appearance of the future as imagined by people back in the mid-20^th Century. Look at a film like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), for example and you’ll see that its projections of what the 21^st Century would look like were remarkably accurate. That’s because today’s designers have been—ironically—been inspired by it. The future is the past.

Mid-Century Modern—the 20^th Century style developed for the industrial boom following the end of WWII is, today, largely referred to as mid-century modern decor. And it’s back in a big way. Much of today’s Japandi and Scandi decoration owes a debt to the mid-century modern approach.

Maximalist—as you’ve probably guessed, maximalism is interior design’s response to minimalism. Elaborate, loud and over-the-top, the maximalist bathroom will incorporate bold colour schemes, mixing patterns and textures. Expect to see things like white marble bathtubs juxtaposed with contrasting black and gold marble wall panels.

Shabby chic—fusing old and new to stunning decorative effect, the shabby chic style empowers you to indulge in your love for antique shopping while still enjoying a beautiful, brand new bathroom. From a decorative perspective, this can be incredibly freeing—it’s all about knowing how to shop (see our guide to buying vintage tiles, for instance).

Boho—bringing together objets d’art from all over the world, the Boho interior decoration style presents you as a well-travelled, cultured and open-minded style sponge to your home’s visitors. The boho bathroom might juxtapose African art with Asian fabrics with European marble. It gives your home a sense of sophisticated intellectualism.

Craft your look around your fixtures and fittings

Back in the old days, people were more likely to buy fixtures and fittings from a limited range, based on the style of bathroom they were putting together. Today, that has somewhat flipped on its head. That’s because people are now, more than ever, installing luxury bathrooms that offer maximum customisability.

Companies like Riluxa offer customisable vanities and other products in multiple colour and material options that can be made to fit any size and shape of bathroom. This enables you to plan your painting and decorating around the fixtures and fittings, making them the centrepieces so that decoration is exactly what it’s meant to be—the trimming.

So, choose paint, wallpaper, ornamentation, plants and lighting that go with the bathtub, shower and washbasin—not the other way around.

Light up the space

Designing lighting for a luxury bathroom starts organically—with natural daylight. Natural light in the bathroom is the best source of lighting. So, when you’re decorating the space—whatever you do—don’t block it out. Encourage its reflection with mirrors and experiment with dappled light as it passes through the leaves of any plants you put in the bathroom.

As for electrical lighting—this is just as important a design decision as the tub, shower, basin and taps. If you’re designing a luxury, high-end space, then every single detail needs to ooze that aesthetic. A poorly lit bathroom will not do your other fixtures and fittings justice, so choose your ceiling, wall and freestanding lights carefully.

To wallpaper or not to wallpaper?

We receive so many enquiries from our customers asking us, “should I wallpaper my bathroom?” It’s understandable. The bathroom is a moist environment and wallpaper can peel if the space isn’t allowed to dry out after it’s been used.

The only advice we offer our customers on that front, then, is to make sure they have a well-ventilated bathroom. As for the aesthetic decision of whether or not to wallpaper? It’s entirely dependent on their taste and style.

Nowadays, there are some beautiful wallpapers on the market that can help create fantastic feature walls to really make the space pop. The good thing is, if you don’t like it, you can always change it easily enough—not so easy with a big slab of marble panelling. Though the latter would probably be considered a little closer to our idea of luxuriousness, if push came to shove.