BATHROOMS WITH COLOR

Another popular trend in modern Chinese bathrooms is to use color for a dynamic effect. An innovative combination of colors in walls, floors and glass becomes the keynote and serves to enliven the usually small space. Bathroom fittings themselves are usually white and chrome, but bright color can be used to offset this essentially minimalist finish and illuminate the vibration of space. Splashes of color can be applied in a variety of ways, as we see here, from a brilliant red-painted wall immediately at right, to mosaic tiles, to concealed lighting that lifts a small colored area into a much brighter state. Perhaps most striking of all is the use of backlit glass windows and walls. The vertical strips of glass in alternating yellows, reds and greens below right is pure Shanghai Art Deco, while the floor-to-ceiling bright red peonies on the glass wall below is a nostalgic call for historical memories. A colorful bathroom in a Chinese house is out of tradition and an entirely modern phenomenon, but as a small space that is visited for relatively short times it offers the opportunity for experiment. It is a place in which the owner or designer can assert personality and make a creative statement.

The original Art deco glass paneling in a vibrant geometrical design on a toilet door in a restored French Concession house.

A sandblasted glass wall carries a design of peonies in the bathroom of a converted hutong in Beijing.

A simple and striking arrangement of red wall, granite counter and large mirror enlivens this small shower cubicle and wash-room. A bathroom with mosaic tiles and a wooden washstand constructed with an angular version of a scroll end. This idiosyncratic bathroom arrangement in a modern Beijing apartment occupies a free-standing unit in the center of the open-plan space. Concealed lighting behind the mirror lifts the mood of this brightly colored small washroom off the courtyard garden in a Shanghai house.

In this conversion of a Shanghai lane house in a terrace, the designer made use of the typically narrow light wells between houses to bring light to one bathroom. The floor tiles are Venetian glass.