Contemporary bathrooms. New spaces for body and mind

Bathrooms have become a sign of identity in hotels, restaurants, public spaces in general and, especially in the home as a sign of transformation of habits and customs, and of new ways of inhabiting the bathroom.

The evolution of bathroom interior design has been astonishing throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century, and yet it still continues to manifest very specific conventional and functional codes.

The recent transformations have been induced by the technological irruption and the different aesthetics that are being imposed in each trend. These trends directly influence innovation in surface materials, toilets, faucets, sinks and showers, without forgetting accessory furniture, mirrors and textile complements.

• Intimate mystique

Beyond the utilitarian elements, after the pandemic, the bathroom has become more important. It has become a space to isolate oneself, a place of intimacy and reflection where one can find oneself.

Sometimes the bathroom merges with the bedrooms or opens to the outside, to gardens and forests. It brings together constant novelties, all kinds of advanced possibilities for body care and relaxation, the new bathrooms incite to take better care of oneself, for health and for a recurrent contemporary hedonism, with a clear approach to a new spirituality, that of personal, physical and mental care.

• Order and light

Contemporary order requires maximizing the space with a good organization of the elements, everything in its place, and opening windows to the outside to let in natural light. Create relaxing lighting atmospheres, generate new water inflows, where stony surfaces prevail.

• Dreamlike spaces

The surrealist impulse comes from designers who create digital parallel worlds. There is still no concrete metaverse, nor do our avatars walk among pixels, but certain spaces have captured the collective imagination, the experience of the bathroom space has expanded. New augmented realities are designed, where imagination has no limits.

The Silestone Institute presents three currents, present and future, of the new bathroom spaces as a territory in constant evolution and change, with the human being at the center of design and new creative values:

WATER + LIGHT + EARTH

 

1. WATER

Although the space is minimal, continuous streams of water are encouraged with the prospect of having a SPA of its own. Bubbles, soaps, essences and oils accompany the sophisticated bathtubs or showers. New carpets, inclusion of works of art, present in the spaces, always singular.

“Innovation helps us to rethink the bathroom to evolve creating beauty” Andrea Lupi, art director of the Antonio Lupi brand.

 

Transparency and color

Tradition and vanguard

2. LIGHT

The lighting responds to an intimate and personal atmosphere. A transcendental meditation in front of mirrors that break their traditional shapes with formats and colors that bring them closer to art. Looking in the mirror and reflecting on the present and the future, moving forward.

“To look in the mirror every day in the bathroom and wake up in a new spatial dimension,” explains designer Sabine Marcelis about her new collection of mirrors.

 

Reflected bathrooms

Expanded baths

3. EARTH

Expanded nature in the new vegetable or rocky baths. Feeling nature close, touching it with the senses, natural stone, ceramic or plant surfaces. A sensoriality that takes on a transcendental importance in our immediate environment.

“The multiple bath in the middle of nature takes us back to an ancestral and natural human connection”, says Álvaro Catalán de Ocón about his experimental DRY BATH in the middle of nature.

Outdoor bathrooms

Enveloping nature

Colors inspired by the Mediterranean

Research and texts by Marisa Santamaría.