4 Top Bathroom Design Styles to Consider for Your Custom Home

Photo by Marcelle Guilbeau, Interior Designer - Look for pool pictures

The custom home design process goes a lot smoother when you have a design style in mind for each room. However, with so many choices of tile, paint colors, vanities, and lighting fixtures, narrowing down your design style for your bathroom might be overwhelming. Our tip is to start with the most popular styles, choose your favorite, and start designing from there. 

What Are the Most Popular Bathroom Styles?

There are dozens of styles of bathrooms, with some more popular than others. What are they?

1. Coastal Farmhouse

The coastal farmhouse style is one of the newest iterations of the farmhouse trend and it may not mean what you think. The coastal farmhouse style doesn’t depend on marine-themed décor or imagery, but instead, colors and textures that leave the space feeling light and airy like you’d feel if you were relaxing on the beach. 

White, blues, greens, and natural wood tones are the main colors and finishes you’d find in a coastal farmhouse bathroom. Picture white or a very light powder blue on the walls, a sage green bathroom vanity topped with marble, and light ash wood look luxury vinyl tile on the floor. Shift your use of color around to not overwhelm the space. With white on the walls, consider using a light aqua blue subway tile or fish scale tile on the shower walls. 

Accent your coastal farmhouse space with a simple or frameless vanity mirror, skylight for more natural light, and glass jars to wrangle your everyday items. Bring in more natural elements with a jute rug and lots of potted plants. 

2. Contemporary 

Contemporary bathrooms are all about sleek design. Straight lines, geometric accents, minimal material choices, bold use of color, and clever lighting make up contemporary bathroom aesthetics. Choose a floating minimalist vanity with underlighting, terrazzo tile flooring, hexagonal shower tile for the curbless shower with a glass enclosure, a sleek black or white freestanding tub, and three-dimensional wall tiles behind the backlit vanity mirrors. 

The bathroom vanity is a great spot for a pop of color. Coordinate the color with a hanging pendant light or two above the single or double vanity. Instead of terrazzo, choose slate tile or black luxury vinyl flooring. 

For an industrial contemporary look, an accent wall of exposed brick, concrete floor tile, and matte black plumbing fixtures. A glass shower enclosure with black steel framing and white subway tile completes the look. 

3. Traditional

On the opposite end of the style spectrum from contemporary design is traditional design. This design style tends to have more layers. It also tends to have more storage because design and material restraint isn’t as important. The cabinetry will have raised panels and more decorative hardware. Matching the hardware with the plumbing fixtures is also common. 

Traditional styles also tend to be warmer in tone, with off-white or cream paint on the walls, vanity, and cabinets, although the color isn’t out of the question. Soft blues and greens, which are trending interior color choices, are often found in traditional designs today. Aside from paint on the walls, you may also see patterned wallpaper above the wainscoting. 

Other materials in warmer tones are also common, like travertine tile on the shower walls and warm wood tones on the floor. As for the lighting in traditional-style bathrooms, expect to see more ornate fixtures, like sconces on either side of each mirror and a chandelier in the center of the room. Finally, a freestanding clawfoot tub is the epitome of traditional design. 

4. Transitional 

The transitional style takes the traditional style and updates it with cleaner lines and cooler tones. Shaker cabinets, white marble with gray veining on the countertops and flooring, white subway tile on the shower walls with a frameless glass enclosure, and brushed nickel hardware and fixtures are standards of this style. 

As of the past couple of years, more color in transitional design is preferred over all-white and gray spaces. Color, however, is applied in a more sophisticated fashion. Use a cool teal on the bathroom vanity, an accent wall of rectangular moss green tile in a herringbone pattern behind the freestanding tub, and custom penny tile on the shower floor in a coordinating color. Brushed gold fixtures and hardware is also still on trend. 

For the lighting fixtures, the sconces in a transitional bathroom will be pronounced but show more of a minimal style paired with a contemporary version of a traditional chandelier. 

Universal Design and Your Style

Any bathroom design style can accomplish universal design for aging in place. Universal design more often considers structural changes, like wider doorways, a higher commode, a vanity with space beneath to accommodate a wheelchair, seating in the cureless shower, and enough open space to navigate the room. The most obvious amenities will likely be grab bars, which are currently being designed with fashion in mind rather than only function. Grab bars are available in many different styles to match your aesthetic as well as metal tones to match your hardware and fixtures. 

Your Bathroom in the Style of Your Choice

Designing a bathroom includes a lot of different choices, from paint and flooring to tile and lighting. Style comes in many forms and there are no hard rules when it comes to simply choose the elements that you like. The main design styles are great to use as an outline and leave plenty of room for playing with different options within each style, or even starting with one main style and adding elements from other styles. 

Finding a custom builder that can help you design the bathroom that suits your own tastes best starts with looking at online portfolios and scheduling consultations to get a better feel for whether or not a builder can help you achieve your design goals. Luckily, Chris Gorman Homes is a design-build firm in the Cincinnati area with experience designing and building spaces in a plethora of styles. To schedule a consultation and learn more about our experience in design, contact Chris Gorman Homes today.