Duravit: Thinking Big in A Small Bathroom

Making a great bathroom does not require a lot of space, but above all good ideas and products. Few people know this better than Rolf Heide who, as a Duravit designer, has transformed many small rooms into a big bathing experience.

Statistically, the average bathroom in the UK is all of 4.4 square meters in size. At first glance, this appears to be a small room with cramped conditions and little scope for creativity. But at second glance, this assessment is completely false. With rolf Heide’s six decades of design experience, he would go so far as to say that it is easier to design a small bathroom than a large one.

Rolf Heide

The reason for this is quite simple. In a large bathroom you have lots of available space that you first have to furnish with purpose and style. It is therefore important to consider how to utilise the excess space, and this is anything but a trivial task.

With a smaller area, however, you can and must concentrate on the principal elements and their layout: How do I accommodate the washbasin, toilet, and bathtub or shower logically? In answering this question, everything else usually falls into place. The bathroom is primarily a workshop, just like the kitchen, in which we carry out routine daily activities, and more often than not, under demanding time constraints. First and foremost, the bathroom must function, just like the kitchen.

In addition, there are several design tricks with which you can make more of limited space. This begins with the selection of sanitary ceramics and bathroom furniture in dimensions which are geared to the room, i.e. reduced sizes. Perfumes, shampoos and other small items can disappear in cupboards, and if the building belongs to you or the landlord allows it, these can be space-saving cupboards, built into the wall. Mirrors, floor-to-ceiling cupboards, and extending the floor covering on to the walls make the room appear larger. The restriction to fewer yet continuous materials creates the appearance of calm in a reduced space.