Should I Have A Black And White Bathroom?

Elizabeth contacted Mad About The House to ask for advice on going monochrome in her bathroom.

Q: I am about to move into my new house and it needs everything doing. We are thinking about the bathroom first and I have ordered a traditional Victorian suite with gold fittings! But now I have to choose a bathroom floor and I am really struggling. It’s so hard to make a decision. I was wondering about going black and white. What do you think?

A: Well the short answer is that you’ll never go wrong with a classic black and white bathroom. As you can see from the two images above, you can start off with this very traditional colour palette but if you lay the tiles in an unexpected way you will have a more modern look to contrast with your Victorian bath.

You can buy the tiles from the top picture – laid in a zig zag pattern here .

If you decide not to go for a black and white floor, you can use those two colours on wall tiles or, my current favourite, in black and white wallpaper. I recently styled a friend’s bathroom (which had a Victorian rolltop bath) with white painted floorboards, black and white floral wallpaper and painted the bath in shocking pink to add a contrasting colour. You can see from the image above that the owners painted round the window in pale blue to add a little more depth to the room.

I have used black and off-white in my shower room in another way, with these Moroccan-influenced tiles on the wall and a black rubber floor, which is very warm and non-slip. These tiles are cement and apparently meant for the floor but I ordered them from Holland from www.designtegels.nl and I don’t speak Dutch. They seem to be still stuck on though.

Below are some tile stockists and other details you might need. Here, in the mean time are some gorgeous pictures to give you ideas and inspiration:

Add the pattern simply with a shower curtain. I would have done the floor in bright orange rubber myself. 

The classic Victorian arrangement of black and white square tiles. A huge plant adds colour and interest to this very monochrome design. For a huge range of black and white tiles in lots of patterns try Decoramic .  Another popular choice is Victorian metro tiles  which are very fashionable at the moment and you can make up your own patterns in the colours of your choice. 

This is fabulous if you are feeling really daring. You could either paint the stripes on the wall or find some wallpaper that you like. Companies are increasingly producing wallpapers that work in bathrooms which gives you more freedom to really go for something exciting. Graham and Brown have a range of Contour papers which are splash proof and designed for rooms with high moisture content, although they have felt it necessary to point out that you can’t actually use it in the shower.

If stripes aren’t your thing then how about spots? These are around £300 a sqm, which is admittedly budget-busting for most of us, but in the interests of giving you ideas I have included them. These are from www.bisazza.com

You wouldn’t have to splash out on an expensive bath like this one for this room. It’s actually all about the black windows. You could paint the outside of your rolltop in any colour you like or just leave it white. If you do fancy a bath like this then try Drummonds.

 For more bathrooms:

should I have a black and white bathroom

should I have a black and white bathroom