“The nicest thing in a bathroom is a big sofa,” says Beata Heuman.
The Swedish designer first saw a couch in a washroom in her early twenties while visiting a friend in Tuscany. There was a floppy English-style sofa in a bathroom at the family home, where she and her friends would lounge and chat while primping.
“We had some of my favorite memories in that house and in that bathroom getting ready, and it wouldn’t have happened if the sofa wasn’t there and it wasn’t inviting us to spend time in there,” says Heuman, who lives in London and is known for her imaginative and unconventional perspective on interiors. “It was mind-opening and exciting. Maybe slightly it influenced me with bathrooms — that there isn’t this one way of doing things.”
Since then, Heuman has always decorated her bathrooms like living spaces, inviting people to loll and linger, as if they are in a lounge. Think upholstered seating, antiques, dramatic draperies, bespoke built-ins, wallpaper and rugs — the opposite of utilitarian.
“People forget you can add personality there,” says Heuman, who was born in Skåne, Sweden, and moved to London in 2004. “All the rooms complete the feeling of a house, and intrinsically it felt so wrong to forget the bathroom.”
For a bathroom decorating job in Hollywood, the designer had slipcovers in rusty red terrycloth made for a classic English Howard-style armchair so they could be easily removed and washed. “There is something quite amazing about sitting in an armchair surrounded by toweling,” she says. Who needs a robe after the bath when you can have a whole chair?
In the primary bath of her Swedish farmhouse, Heuman covered the walls in her namesake Florentine Flowers wallpaper. The hand-blocked paper might make some nervous, as it’s a few inches from the tub, but the designer says it was important for the room to “not feel too bathroom-y.” To protect the wallpaper from water, Heuman installed a splash guard made from glass sheeting around the room.
She applied the same wallpaper and splash guard trick in a London townhouse and added custom built-ins, an upholstered armchair, a large meditation cushion, floor-to-ceiling draperies, Roman shades and a giant area rug.
Heuman’s baths are well-appointed and in conversation with the rest of the house. There’s proper seating for a parent to warm their toddler after a bath or spouses to drink their coffee together while getting ready in the morning. They’re meant for people to sit and spend time in.
On a few occasions, Heuman has had clients ask for wall-to-wall carpeting to up the warmth factor in the bath. The homeowners typically know the risks of fitted bath carpets, but she helps them embrace the design decision by making matching toilet mats.
“They can always go and switch them out if they do find that it does get dirty around the loo,” says Heuman, who also notes that high ceilings, fans and windows can help prevent excess moisture and, potentially, mold. It’s in the smaller baths where you really need to be careful with precious fibers and wetness, she says.
Now, you might be thinking that you need major square footage and a sizable budget to create such a bathroom. You’re not wrong. According to design platform Houzz, larger bathroom renovations (100 plus square feet) can cost well over $70,000, with an average cost of $25,000. But it is possible to achieve a similar aesthetic on a budget or in a smaller space.
“There’s so many ways to make it fun and accessorize if you are on a budget,” says Meta Coleman, a Utah-based interior designer. Coleman suggests gussying up a boring mirror with a unique frame or adding such decorative touches as candelabras or plates on the wall, a table lamp on the vanity, vintage fabric for a shower curtain or an antique rug. Hitting up auctions, antique malls or thrift stores can bring your vision to life on a budget.
“Having limitations is a first step to solve the problem,” she says. “Sometimes when people have endless money they don’t know where to start. Some form of limitations forces you to think differently and come up with something you wouldn’t have come up with. We have limitations all the time — architecturally or budget wise. You have to really think outside the box, and that’s a good thing.”
With the arrival of indoor plumbing in the early 20th century, the bathroom became a utilitarian space focused on hygiene. As the space evolved through the midcentury, a more sleek aesthetic surfaced, featuring such materials as Formica, vinyl and linoleum, which were easily cleaned and wiped down.
More recently, most homeowners have chosen white or off-white for their bathroom countertops, vanities, showers and walls, according to a 2025 Houzz bathroom trends study. But the shiny, wipeable whiteness can come off as sterile.
“It’s very similar to a kitchen in that bathrooms are such an investment and people have this mindset that stylistically it needs to last for 30 years: ‘Let’s choose something that is absolutely timeless,’” says Claire Brody, a designer and antiques dealer based in Austin. “And I see that point, too, but I think that’s where the whites and neutrals and the no bold choices come from — fear of not liking it in five to 10 years.”
When Brody was renovating homes in Austin for resale, she always went bold in the bathroom, including painted stripes, busy patterns and vibrant zellige tile.
“I essentially try to incorporate as much color and pattern as the space allows,” she says. “I never do any kind of neutral tile, because if you love color — why not? You only have one life.”
More homeowners might be taking that approach, eschewing the vanilla bathroom for texture, pattern and color.
Another Houzz report backs this up. And searches on the design website show that there’s a growing interest in tactile finishes and earthy materials such as sandstone, linen wallpaper, sea grass wallpaper, terra cotta flooring, lime wash interior paint and wainscoting.
“Those kinds of materials can make a bathroom feel more layered and welcoming,” says Mitchell Parker, a Houzz home design expert.
The shift, Brody says, reflects “what’s happening in the whole interior design world … that people want more collected and layered-feeling spaces, and so we are seeing that trickle down in bathrooms as well.”
White still holds strong for most homeowners, Parker says, but there has been a change in how people see and use the bath, which can explain the desire for a warmer aesthetic.
“Bathrooms aren’t just for getting ready. They’re becoming spots to unwind and recharge,” Parker says. According to Houzz, 25 percent of renovating homeowners use their primary bath for rest and relaxation and nearly as many for beauty and pampering.
“They can be a place of refuge. That’s what I love about bathrooms,” Coleman says. “Some of the most utilitarian spaces in your home you spend the most time in, and I think it’s important to have joy in the everyday and elevating it so you enjoy being there.”
For Coleman, that was a driving force when reimagining the primary bath in her Provo home. She drew inspiration from historic baths in the early 1900s, along with those in house museums like the Nissim de Camondo in Paris, where patterned tile and textured wood add warmth.
Coleman installed cork flooring, which has a soft, warm feel underfoot, and embedded it with pieces of tile for a more tactile feel. She had a vanity custom-made to look like a Biedermeier hutch. Walls were covered in a 1929 Wave wallpaper by Edward Bawden and accessorized with seascape and nude oil paintings. Coleman also designed a stool inspired by Josef Hoffmann and upholstered it in a Svenskt Tenn fabric. The final touch? An area rug she had bought at auction.
“I think there’s been a perspective shift — that we can make it more than what is meant to be for,” she says. “It’s your home and it’s all the things you love, so you can really spend time there instead of it being a stopping point, ‘Oh, I just have to take a shower.’”
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