POST-PANDEMIC BATHROOM STYLE TRENDS

IN AUSTRALIA, BATHROOMS PRE-PANDEMIC WHITE OR GREY TILES WERE REPLACED BY CALMING BOTANICAL COLOURS DURING THE PANDEMIC. NOW POSTPANDEMIC BATHROOMS HAVE SHIFTED TOWARDS COMFORT AND SELF-CARE, OPENING UP NEW POSSIBILITIES — AND, HOPEFULLY, AN EXPANDING MARKET.

Household bathrooms remain a core source of income for Australian tile installers. New trends in floor coverings such as water resistant laminate, hybrid and vinyl plank may lead to some reduction in tile installation for kitchens, but most Australians still lean towards tile in truly "wet" areas such as bathrooms and laundries.

Looking ahead to FY2023/24, the good news for tilers is that trends in bathrooms have entered a new stage. This comes after a long period of semi-stagnation, when most bathrooms relied on larger format tiles in any colour — as long as it was a shade of grey or white.

That is good news for tilers (and the tile industry itself). While new designs can be simply integrated into newer home builds, changing trends will lead many more households to opt for renovations. That helps to expand the overall market, something which could be vital during the coming financial year, as new build business continues to slow.

PANDEMIC-ERA BATHROOMS

Bathroom designs began to shift during the pandemic, when styling attempted to provide an environment of calm and reassurance. There was a surge in designs such as "botanical" tiles, which managed to bring some of the outside inside, helping to relieve the stress on homeowners largely confined to their own premises.

However, the overall push during the pandemic was for more bathrooms, rather than higher quality bathrooms. With whole families confined to their homes during lockdowns for weeks and even months, additional bathrooms became a necessity rather than a luxury.

Australia's Housing Industry Association (HIA) reports that during the first two years of the pandemic (July 2020 to June 2022) the number of new bathroom installations increased by 26 per cent and 22.1 per cent to 542,600 new bathroom installations in FY2021/22, a record high. The value of bathroom installations went up by 24.2 per cent to $6.5 billion in FY2021/22.

EMERGING DESIGNS POST-PANDEMIC

Post-pandemic, bathroom design has become much more expansive. The majority of Australia's white collar workers now spend at least one day of the week working from home. More recently, Australia is seeing the beginnings of a more austere economy, which means households must "choose wisely" when spending limited budgets. Combined, those changes have led to home improvement being seen more as home investment. There are also additional economic factors at work.

According to Tom Devitt, senior economist with the Housing Industry Association (HIA): “Activity is likely to remain elevated, while the detached housing market declines. This is because renovations are an attractive alternative when rising interest rates and construction cost blowouts are making the new house market increasingly unaffordable.”

After an understandable splurge in spending postpandemic, Australians are

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FROM ELLE DECORATION UK, November 2021, p227. Windows and more windows, combined with translucent curtains provides a glowing light that helps the highlight detail in tiles.

The end result should be — with a bit of luck — that spending on bathrooms remains stable through FY2023/24, with perhaps a slight reduction in the number of bathroom fitouts, but an improvement in expenditure per bathroom.

A Little History

To really understand some of the design changes the industry is beginning to see in context, it's helpful to take a look back over the slightly surprising history of bathrooms in Australia.

Since the early-2000s the design of high-end resort/spa hotel bathrooms has had a profound effect on bathroom design in Australia. There is something of an interesting economic story behind why that is the case.

In the mid-1980s international hotels began to be constructed to appeal to very specific market sectors. The upper end of the hotel business grew increasingly more luxurious, and the lower end grew increasingly spartan and less expensive. In the middle, there was also growth of longer-term occupancy accommodation, family-style accommodation, sports-based hotels (boating, tennis, golf, for example), and health spas.

The development of the high-end tier of resort hotels was a very positive one for several Asian and South-East Asian nations. Attempts to grow a tourism industry in these nations had not always been so successful, largely because they were a mingling of first-world and third-world infrastructure and cultures. Turn a corner in 1990s Kuala Lumpur, and you could go in the space of 10 metres from a super-modernist environment to the Malaysia of the 1950s.

The resort hotel solved this problem. As the hotel was itself the destination and the purpose of the journey, it could be equipped as a selfcontained area, with its own rules and regulations, delivering an environment in which inexperienced travellers would feel safe.

While these hotels brought a form of economic magic to developing regions in the early 1990s, by the turn of the century problems began to show up. There was first of all the currency crisis of 1997, followed by the 2001 9/11 attack on New York's World Trade Centre. These events not only reduced the number of guests at resort hotels, they also reduced expenditure per guest.

Yet from the Australian perspective, these crises had one key effect: the cost of holidays to these “exclusive”, very high luxury hotels in Asian destinations fell dramatically. The Australian market was targeted with a wide range of packages, and the trade was boosted by a similar reduction in airfares.

The result was that a wide band of the Australian demographic experienced truly luxurious hotel accommodation for the first time in their lives. This had a profound effect on design sensibilities. One reason that bathrooms are such a focus of this kind of hotel design is that studies show guests typically spend around 25% of the time in their rooms in the bathroom. Particularly in warmer climates, the bathroom can become a strong focus for activity.

Returning to their own houses, the Australian tourists brought with them a sense of their home architecture that was often quite changed. The bathroom evolved from a functional place of quick preparation, to a room that could provide a positive experience itself.

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FROM ELLE DECORATION UK March 2023, p173. Dark terracotta tones warm up these bathrooms.

The New Bathroom

It took the pandemic to start to move the market away from white, and the post-pandemic period has affirmed that shift. Pandemic bathrooms design emphasised calm and reassurance, through bright lifeaffirming designs. Today, postpandemic, the focus has shifted again, towards comfort and new forms of self-care.

Tile Today has identified four key trends that are at various stages of reforming Australian bathrooms. While they are to some extent independent, they also interlock in interesting ways to create new opportunities for tilers. If there is a single theme that runs through these trends, it's a bias towards making bathrooms a "warmer" experience, as an alternative to flashier styling.

TREND 1: THE WINDOW

Flick through any interior style magazine today, and you will likely be struck by how many high-design bathrooms now have windows as a prominent feature.

Where older-style bathrooms tend to have smaller windows, often frosted and set high on the wall, new bathrooms have large windows that provide the bathroom with abundant light. Of course this means there are privacy concerns that need to be met, but in return bathrooms become a space where it is much more pleasant to spend some time during the daylight hours.

An interesting consequence of this is a move towards textured tiles. Single-source interior lighting can render textures flat, but radiant natural daylight makes textured tiles seem "soft" and touchable. Designers are doing interesting things with pale, non-white tones, an almost river-stone look, that feels both luxurious and grounded at the same time.

Windows also tend to shift the focus from floor tiles to wall tiles. Where it is often the case that bathroom design will begin with the floor, and then move to matching wall tiles, the reverse trend is taking hold to some extent.

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FROM AUSTRALIAN HOME BEAUTIFUL May 2023, p63. The prominent window again, and rosy tiles in a variegated pattern. Note that the wall tiles dominate, and the floor tiles complement and match.

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FROM AUSTRALIAN HOME BEAUTIFUL May 2023, p142. Something of a transitional design, there is the window and a softer grey wall treatment. Not quite a “wet room” this might be better described as a “super shower”, with overhead and handheld shower fittings.

TREND 2: TERRACOTTA, BROWN OCHRE AND AMBER BROWN TILES

A little paradoxically, with more natural light, there's also more of an opportunity to explore darker tile tones on walls, without producing an overly dark bathroom. (Though saying that, the British in particular are adept at making quite dark bathrooms very inviting.)

Used correctly, these darker colours create a comforting, warm experience. One associated trend is to use smaller, multi-toned tiles in these darker colours, adding a sense of texture and pattern.

Much care has to be taken in properly matching those wall tiles with appropriate floor tiles. Properly executed, these bathrooms seem to glow with warmth, creating a sense of a private, cosseted space. With this does come more concern with how these rooms will be lit in the early morning and late evening hours. It is often the case that lighting will be split between bright, task-oriented lighting in areas for activities such as shaving and makeup application, with softer ambient lighting for bathing and general self-care.

TREND 3: A TOUCH OF THE SPA

While spa-style design has often had an outsized influence on Australian bathrooms, when taken to an extreme it can provide an experience that seems a little institutional and cold. The new spa trend is about introducing small elements of the spa, which usually comes down to wood trimmings on vanities and mirrors, and medium to large format tiles in natural tones.

A classic case of this shift is the use of benches in many spa-inspired bathrooms. While this is an interesting feature architecturally, providing seating for six in a mediumsized bathroom seems a little odd. In the more modern spainspired bathroom the bench is replaced by a comfortable chair, or even a lounge, providing a more accessible experience of relaxation.

There's also a balance required between providing an uncluttered, calming space, and adding those personal touches that produce a space which encourages the homeowner to slow down and spend a little more time on personal care.

FROM INSIDE/OUT May 2023, p101. Dual-layer darker brown tones provide a private experience for this retro-referencing shower.

FROM INSIDE/OUT May 2023, p58. A cleverly designed smaller wet room. Note the introduction of the fall in the floor tiles to the grate positioned directly under the showerhead. Square mosaic tiles add texture to the sunlit walls, which the terrazzo flooring serves to highlight. Compact but still luxurious.

Spa bathroom tiles tend towards more earthy tones with some texture, though some variants go for very dark tones, and even near-black, to create a more elegant aspect. These designs also work well with skylights rather than windows, useful in situations where privacy is otherwise difficult to design in.

TREND 4: THE WET ROOM

While this trend has been bobbing around in the background — especially in the US — for a number of years, it's beginning to achieve more prominence in Australia for 2023. The wet room basically refers to a large area of the bathroom that has been fully waterproofed, and is used to contain both the shower and a bathtub.

There are a number of reasons for its popularity. One of the main reasons is that this opens up a wide space for the shower. In terms of the increase in ageingin-place, that makes it very easy to render assistance to an older person, and to provide aids such as chairs and rails. It's also useful for bathing children in the toddler range.

In the spa sense, people also like to combine the bath and shower, perhaps soaking in the bath and ending in a brisk, cooler shower. It also makes it easier for a busy couple to get cleaned up at the same time.

While those are the advantages, from a tiler's perspective, there is serious work involved in constructing this type of bathroom. There's a considerable area that needs to be waterproofed, and, of course, these typically look best with larger format tiles, which brings up issues of slope and drainage. While it is natural to conclude that wet rooms require a large space, that is not necessarily the case. There is some excellent advice on building smaller wet rooms from renovation company On The Ball bathrooms (OTB) based in Perth. This can be found on their website at: https://www. ontheballbathrooms.com.au/ wet-rooms-pros-and-cons/

Conclusion

The best news about recent shifts in bathroom designs is that tiles play a very big role in developing the new look. Other trends could be met by switching out vanities and plumbing fittings, but these changes require a more fundamental redesign.

With an emphasis shifting to quality over commonality, tilers might also be well-advised to look beyond their current tile suppliers, and to explore some of the new options available. Being able to offer more unique bathroom solutions will become an advantage, and help to build that crucial word-of-mouth marketing. n