This en-suite was one of two rooms we designed as part of a much wider renovation. The customer was taking on the whole house, and we were brought in to design and supply this en-suite along with the main family bathroom next door. Each room took a completely different direction, so we're covering them as two separate projects rather than trying to fit both into one post. This one is all about the en-suite.
The brief for this room was straightforward on paper, but considerably less straightforward once we started working through the details: keep the character of a Victorian house intact, but bring in some colour. Here's how that played out, including a couple of structural decisions that shaped everything else.
Losing a Cupboard, Gaining a Freestanding Bath
There was no bath in this room to begin with. The original layout held a close-coupled toilet and a full pedestal basin, along with a large built-in cupboard occupying the space where the bath now sits. Taking that cupboard out gave us the footprint for a freestanding bath and a generous vanity unit, which is a much better use of the space than a cupboard nobody particularly loved.
There was also a second doorway in the room, tucked into the corner where the tall wall-hung storage unit now stands. One door led into the bedroom and stayed exactly where it was, but the room also had another door to the hallway, and with the bedroom door already covering access, that second one wasn't earning its keep. Blocking it off freed up an entire corner for storage, which matters more than it sounds in a room this size.
Working Around a Sloped Ceiling
The staircase runs directly above part of this room, which gives one wall and a section of the ceiling a noticeable slope. It's not a problem, but it does mean thinking carefully about where everything goes before committing to a layout. We had actually drawn up an early plan that would have placed the shower where that old hallway door used to be, on the sloped side of the room. It would have worked, but it meant running new plumbing to a spot that didn't already have any, and once that was factored in, it made more sense to keep things simple and use the existing layout instead. The shower ended up in a more straightforward position instead, and the sloped wall was simply worked around rather than designed against.
Plans like this one are part of how we work through a design before anything gets ordered. They're built to show layout and proportion rather than the exact finish of every product, so details like tile colour or a particular tap style can still change between the plan and the finished room.
Bringing Colour Into a Victorian En-Suite
The walls in here used to be pink. The customer wanted green, and rather than tiling the whole room in it, we split the treatment: dark green hexagonal tiles up to dado height, with a soft neutral paint above. It's a combination that keeps the room feeling like it belongs in a period property rather than a new build, while still giving it a colour identity that a plain white scheme wouldn't have had. The floor carries a traditional black and white patterned tile, the same one used in the main bathroom next door, which ties the two rooms together even though their colour schemes are otherwise completely different.
How Do You Design Around a Tile the Customer Already Loves?
The wall tile itself came from the customer's own find. She'd spotted it and fallen for it before we were even involved in the scheme, and once someone arrives with a tile they're that certain about, the job changes shape a little. Instead of proposing options, we start from the tile and work outward, choosing everything else, the vanity finish, the brassware, the accessories, to sit alongside it rather than pull focus from it.
That's roughly how we approach product selection generally. Most people arrive with some idea of the look they're after already, often built up from things they've seen on Instagram or Pinterest, a colour they keep coming back to, a style of tap, a particular kind of bath. Our job is to take that starting point and work out what actually fits the room in front of us, the plumbing, the layout, the budget, rather than the version of it that existed on a phone screen. We work from whatever brief we're given, whether that's a finish like brushed brass, a fixture like a walk-in shower or a freestanding bath, or a general steer towards traditional or modern, and then we choose products within that brief and within budget. Sometimes the brief includes a tile the customer has already fallen for. That's not a complication, it's just one more piece of information to design around.
Is a Freestanding Bath Worth It in an En-Suite?
Freestanding baths get a reputation for being more about looks than use, and in a lot of bathrooms that's fair. Here it earns its place. The room had the floor space once the old cupboard came out, and with its own walk-in shower already covering the quick, everyday wash, the bath in this room was free to be about something else entirely, soaking rather than showering. The bath and shower mixer fitted to it is Bathrooms to Love's Pescara range in brushed brass, which picks up the same finish used throughout the rest of the room, so it doesn't read as a separate statement piece bolted onto an otherwise matching scheme. It reads as part of it.
The vanity sits opposite, a broad walnut unit topped with an oval ceramic basin and a tall Pescara mixer tap, again in brushed brass. Vessel basins like this one sit above the counter rather than set into it, which suits a period property nicely since it echoes the freestanding, furniture-like feel that older bathrooms often had before fitted units became standard.
A Walk-In Shower Without a Door
The shower uses a wetroom style panel rather than an enclosed cubicle, which keeps sightlines open in a room that's already working hard to balance a bath, a vanity and storage. Bathrooms to Love's Aurora round thermostatic bar mixer with a riser kit runs the shower, again in brushed brass, and sits on an anti-slip shower tray that's been kept as slim as possible so there's no awkward step up into the shower area. Anti-slip flooring matters more in a wetroom-style layout than a fully enclosed cubicle, since there's less to contain any water that gets past the panel, so it's not a detail we'd skip on a room set up this way.
Heated Towel Rails, Mirrors and Tile Adhesive: The Details Worth Getting Right
A backlit Otsu mirror from Bathrooms to Love sits above the vanity, which does a lot of quiet work in a room without much natural light on a grey morning, and a Grada ladder radiator in matching brushed brass runs along the wall by the shower, both warming towels and giving the pipework somewhere useful to live rather than being boxed in. Behind the scenes, the tiling itself used Benfer slow set white adhesive suited to the hexagon tile, paired with a silver grey grout that sits close enough to the tile colour not to draw attention to every grout line individually, which matters more than people expect on a tile this small and this patterned.
Can You Use TABO's Design Service with Your Own Fitter?
Before anything gets ordered, we put together a full 3D concept of the room, so customers can see roughly how everything will sit together before committing to it. Here's another view from the early design work on this en-suite, showing the bath tucked under that sloped stair wall.
This project came to us in a slightly different way to most. The fitter who installed both rooms is someone we've worked alongside many times before, and it was actually him who recommended the customer come to us for the design and supply side of things, rather than the other way around. We didn't handle the installation ourselves on this one, and that's entirely fine by us. What matters is that the customer ends up with a bathroom they're happy with, not who happens to be holding the tools.
Once the design was signed off, we worked directly with the fitter rather than leaving the customer to relay information back and forth. That meant sending over elevations and full plans for both rooms, along with specs for anything he needed, radiator dimensions, shower valve positions, that sort of thing, and being available if any questions came up during the install. It's a genuinely straightforward way for someone who already has a fitter they trust to still get a properly planned scheme, rather than choosing between a fitter they like and a design service they'd prefer.
If you're planning something similar, whether you've got your own fitter lined up or you'd like us to handle the whole project, the easiest place to start is a free design visit. We'll come to you, take proper measurements, and put together CAD drawings so you can see the room before anything is ordered. You can find out more on our design services page, or drop into the showroom at Waterside Park, Old Wolverton Road, Milton Keynes MK12 5NL to talk it through in person. We regularly work with customers across Milton Keynes and out into Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, so wherever you're based, it's worth a conversation. You can reach us on 01908 311104, and if you'd like to see what past customers have said, our reviews are on Trustpilot. You can also browse more completed projects like this one in our inspiration gallery.
As mentioned at the start, this en-suite was one of two rooms we designed as part of the customer's wider whole-house renovation, and the main family bathroom next door took a rather different approach, trading colour and a freestanding bath for a large walk-in shower in a bright, classic white scheme. We'll be back with that one shortly, and we'll link it here once it's live.
