This is the second of two rooms we designed as part of a much wider renovation in Wolverton. We covered the en-suite in our previous blog post, a room built around a freestanding bath, dark green hexagon tile and a couple of tricky structural decisions. This one belongs to the same house, the same customer and the same overall brief, keep the Victorian character intact, but we went about it in almost the opposite way.
One Statement Each, in Opposite Directions
Put the two rooms side by side and the family resemblance is obvious, but so is the contrast. The en-suite lets its tile do the talking: dark green hexagons up to dado height, with a plain, quiet colour on the walls above so nothing competes with the pattern. This room reverses that logic entirely. The wall tile here is a straightforward white bevelled metro, about as classic as bathroom tiling gets, and it's the paint above it doing the work instead, a muted, slightly unusual green that isn't the kind of shade you'd reach for without thinking about it first.
It's a good example of a principle that holds true in most small bathrooms: pick one thing to be the statement and let everything else support it. Try to make the tile, the wall colour and the fittings all shout at once and a room this size stops feeling considered and starts feeling busy. Here, the wall colour gets to be interesting precisely because nothing else in the room is competing with it.
What Actually Ties the Two Rooms Together
The two greens aren't a matching pair, and they were never meant to be. What connects the rooms instead runs underneath both of those statements: the same patterned floor tile runs through both, the joinery throughout is the same warm, dark wood tone, and brushed brass carries right through every fitting in both rooms. Walk between the two and it's obvious they belong to the same house and the same design brief, even though neither room looks anything like the other at first glance.
Losing a Bath, Gaining a Walk-In Shower
Structurally, this room needed far less intervention than the en-suite. There was no blocked doorway to plan around and no sloped stair wall to work with, everything stayed within its original footprint. The one significant change was the bath. The room previously held a pedestal basin, a close-coupled toilet and a bath; the bath came out, and a large walk-in shower went in its place.
It's the opposite decision to the one made in the en-suite, where a redundant cupboard was cleared to make room for a freestanding bath. Two rooms in the same house, worked to the same brief, and each one ended up needing something completely different. That's really the point: a good brief isn't about applying one solution twice, it's about working out what each room wants to be.
There could also be a fairly practical case for losing a bathtub in the room the whole family shares, particularly if there's a teenager in the house inclined to treat bath time as a lengthy personal retreat! Nobody's really missing out on a proper soak though, since the freestanding bath in the en-suite is still there for anyone who wants one. It's just moved rooms, not disappeared entirely.
Is a Wetroom Panel Better Than a Shower Door?
The shower uses a wetroom-style panel and support bar rather than an enclosed door, the same approach taken in the en-suite, and for the same reasons. It keeps sightlines open in a room that doesn't have space to spare, and with no door or step to break up the view, the low-profile tray reads as part of the same floor rather than a separate zone.
It's not the right call for every bathroom, though. A shower door contains water more effectively, with no open edge for spray to escape past, and it's simpler to keep on top of day to day - wipe the glass and there's nowhere else for water to go! A true wetroom, with no tray at all, needs the whole floor sloped and tanked to guide water to a single drain, but that's not the case here. This room still uses a shower tray with its own built-in fall, so the panel gives the open feel of a wetroom without asking the floor to do the extra work. It suited this room because of the sheltered corner the shower sits in, though it's worth weighing both options against the room's own layout rather than choosing on looks alone.
The Berwick shower system from Bathrooms to Love runs the room in brushed brass, a thermostatic valve paired with a slider rail kit and a round showerhead on a wall-mounted arm. The valve sits off to one side rather than tucked directly beneath the head, a small positioning choice that means the water can be turned on and brought up to temperature before anyone steps underneath it, rather than getting caught by a cold blast on the way in. It sits on a low-profile 1600 x 700mm shower tray, kept as slim as possible so there's no step to interrupt the floor.
The Basin, Vanity and Details Worth Getting Right
A Radius ceramic vanity basin sits on a broad walnut cabinet, paired with the Tadlow basin mixer and matching pop-up waste by Bathrooms to Love, both in brushed brass. The cabinet does exactly the job a vanity unit like this should: warm wood against white tile and brass fittings, echoing the joinery used throughout the rest of the house.
A ladder-style Grada radiator runs along the wall by the shower, warming towels and giving the room a bit of everyday practicality that's easy to overlook until it's missing. The floor tile is the same pattern used in the en-suite, and behind the scenes the tiling used Benfer Grip Slowset white adhesive along with Benferflex grey rapido, finished in an Ultra Mid Grey grout that sits close enough to the tile tone to keep attention on the pattern rather than the grout lines.
Can You Use TABO's Design Service with Your Own Fitter?
As with the en-suite, this room came together through a full CAD design process before anything was ordered. Here's an early plan view of the room, along with a couple of interior views from the same design set.
Plans like these are built to show layout and proportion, so small details like tile colour or fitting choice can still shift between the design stage and the finished room.
This was a design-and-supply project rather than a full TABO install; the same fitter who worked on the en-suite handled the installation here too, someone we've worked alongside many times before, and it was actually him who first pointed the customer in our direction. Once the design was signed off, we worked directly with him rather than leaving the customer to relay information back and forth, sending over elevations, full plans and any specs he needed, radiator dimensions, valve positions and so on, and staying on hand for questions as the install progressed.
If you're weighing up something similar for your own home, whether you've got a fitter lined up already or you'd like TABO involved from start to finish, it's worth booking a free design visit to begin with. We'll measure the room properly and put together CAD drawings, so you know what you're getting before a single tile is ordered. More details on how that works can be found on our design services page, or pop into the showroom at Waterside Park, Old Wolverton Road, Milton Keynes MK12 5NL and see things in person. Milton Keynes is home turf, but we cover Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire too, so it's worth a call on 01908 311104 wherever you're based, or send us a message via our contact page. Past customers' experiences are on Trustpilot if you'd like a read, and there's more finished project work to browse in our inspiration gallery.
As mentioned at the start, this family bathroom is the second of two rooms we designed for this customer's whole-house renovation. If you haven't already, you can read about the en-suite next door, where a redundant cupboard made way for a freestanding bath and a much bolder tile choice. Same house, same brief, two very different answers.
