One tile, one colour, every wall. It is the least fashionable way to do a bathroom and the reason this one will still look right in fifteen years.
The decisions
Tiling a whole room in a single dark colour is a decision most people talk themselves out of. Half-tiling to dado height is the safe version and it always reads as a compromise, because the line cuts the room in half at exactly the height your eye lands.
Taken to the ceiling, the green stops being a finish and becomes the room. The glaze is uneven from tile to tile, which is the whole point of a real glazed metro rather than a printed porcelain copy: the wall moves as the light changes instead of sitting flat.
The recessed niches are cut into the tile module rather than added to it, so the courses run straight through without a made-up row anywhere.
Why traditional sanitaryware
A high-level cistern and a basin on chrome legs are not nostalgia. In a small room they both show floor underneath, and visible floor is what stops a dark room closing in. A vanity unit here would have taken the same footprint and read as a solid block.
Details that matter
- Brass brassware throughout, including the exposed pipework, which is on show so it had to be chosen rather than hidden
- A column radiator rather than a modern panel, because it suits the sanitaryware and it dries towels properly
- Pale floor tile to bounce what light there is back up into the green
- Grout chosen close to the tile colour, so the wall reads as one surface rather than a grid
