Before & after: a Widcombe bathroom in twelve square metres

The Widcombe bathroom is twelve square metres under a sloping roof, with one small window facing north. When we first saw it, it was tiled floor to ceiling in grey, lit by a single ceiling light and filled with a corner bath nobody used.

Start with what stays

The window, the slope and the soil stack couldn’t move. So we planned around them: the bath went under the slope, where you sit rather than stand, and the basin moved to the wall facing the window so you meet the light every morning.

Before: grey tiles, one ceiling light and a corner bath.

One material, top to bottom

Instead of tiles we used tadelakt, a polished lime plaster, in a soft Pink Plaster tone. It runs across the walls, round the bath and into the shower without a single grout line, which makes the room read as one calm surface.

Light from low down

We swapped the ceiling light for two wall lights at eye level and a strip of warm light under the vanity. In the evening the room glows from below, like a lamp-lit sitting room.

The room is no bigger. It just stopped working against itself.