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Monday Inspiration: Beautiful Rooms

For our round-up of beautiful rooms this week I started off with this divine tiled floor from Devol kitchens and then fell down a bathroom rabbit hole so that is where we will end up. Coming?

devol kitchen with tiles from floors of stone sister company
devol kitchen with tiles from floors of stone, their sister company

If I was ever going to replace my kitchen floor, and I’m a long way off being able to contemplate that kind of upheaval frankly, this is what I would have. These are handmade by Floors of Stone (a sister company to Devol) and their aged patina is a perfect foil for a modern room. Also just mop and go and the footprints don’t show.

Anyway, that’s not going to happen (for me at least) but let me know if you’re doing your kitchen and make this choice so we can all live vicariously through you.

image by @susiesblues_rooms
image by @susiesblues_rooms

So bathrooms and what about this. It follows my favourite theme of putting a bath in a room but not necessarily making it all fitted like a modern bathroom.

The vintage cabinet and foxed mirror, together with the three quarter high panelling, all give it a very boutique hotel feel while the white upper walls and bathroom will bounce the light around and stop it feeling too dark. Also (back to flooring) parquet is another dream floor – especially in this room as it’s unexpected.

bathroom by @susiesblues_rooms
bathroom by @susiesblues_rooms lights from Jim Lawrence.

Moving to this tiny bathroom, where the owner has kept to a minimal colour scheme but included lots of texture – patterned tile floor, brick tiles and a floating wooden vanity unit to stop it feeling cold and crucially, sterile. An ultra modern bathroom may be your taste but be careful that it doesn’t feel cold and impersonal.

modern rustic bathroom by @design_at_nineteen
modern rustic bathroom by @design_at_nineteen

This dark (and very big bathroom) could never feel sterile with its painted wooden floor, giant skull and cow hide carpet. It may not be to everyone’s taste, but this is a brilliant example of getting your interiors to tell your story. This has vintage for character and lots of personal touches, so that anyone who knows the owner (and I have met her once) would immediately feel, on entering that this bathroom, that it exactly reflects its owner. And that is what you should strive for in every room.

Your friends and family may not share your taste, but they should feel as comfortable in your house as they do in your company, even if they don’t want to dress themselves, or their walls, the same way.

dark bathroom by @beetle_and_wilde
dark bathroom by @beetle_and_wilde

Staying with black and white and texture – a failsafe combination, not just for small rooms but for any rooms, is this tiny bathroom by interior designer Rebecca Wakefield, who can be found at Studio Fortnum. Her style is clean and pared back and she really knows her stuff. On small bathrooms she says simply: “Dark floors, pale walls to open the space up, basin with storage, bath rack, statement mirror and minimalistic brassware and Bob’s your uncle”. So if you were stuck with your own design then that seems like a good way to start.

black and white bathroom by @rebecca.wakefield
black and white bathroom by @rebecca.wakefield

Our final black and white bathroom – I thought it was worth pursuing this theme as they are all so different in shape, size and characteristics and while the palette remains the same, they all look completely different too. This one has tiles all the way up, a patterned floor and a vintage chest (from ebay) to bring in the character. It was taken from inside the shower, if you were wondering about the black line down the middle of the picture, but that also goes to show you that size is no bar to style.

vintage basin counter image by @our_edwardian_home

Finally, we’re coming back to the kitchen and staying with black, but adding pink for warmth and character. Pink is an unusual colour for a kitchen but it works really well, despite, or perhaps because of, that. I too have a pink pantry door and a pink wall in mine (with dark chocolate walls instead of black) and I love the unexpectedness of it. It’s the point at which you are looking at a colour and can hear your mother saying – you can’t possibly put that colour in that room that you know you might be onto something.

black and pink kitchen by @thehousethatblackbuilt
black and pink kitchen by @thehousethatblackbuilt

And that, in essence, is perhaps the success of these rooms. Pink in the kitchen? The very idea! Black? In the bathroom? You can’t do that. But they could and they did. And let’s celebrate that.

Kate Watson-Smyth

The author Kate Watson-Smyth

I’m a journalist who writes about interiors mainly for The Financial Times but I have also written regularly for The Independent and The Daily Mail. My house has been in Living Etc, HeartHome and featured in The Wall Street Journal & Corriere della Sera. I also run an interior styling consultancy Mad About Your House. Welcome to my Mad House.

6 Comments

  1. Love the little pink IKEA stool in pink. I have the same stool in my kitchen but sadly pink won’t go!

  2. Floors of Stone part of Devol.
    I am very familiar with Cotes Mill from years back and Devol have transformed it so beautifully. Although my nephews and nieces in Leicestershire, felt they could not afford a Devol Kitchen, they all bought stone flooring from Floors of Stone because the prices are very reasonable and the variety and quality speaks for itself.

  3. I love the idea of pink in a kitchen. I’m contemplating it at the moment – Sulking Room, but I’m backing out due to the negativity of reviews on F&B!
    I’m returning to Elephants Breath, which is a Cottage favourite and slightly pink.
    Am I being chicken?
    New kitchen is modern, dark grey.

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