POCKET-SIZED POWERHOUSE
Shock and awe. That was how I was going to create a sense of calm and space in this tiny powder room… Impossible?
Project Location: Linkwood
Project Type: Powder Room
Powder Rooms are a designer’s playground. As a space that guests frequent, it is easy to start a journey of atmosphere and drama here. And because of their size, there is potential for bold, unique design and luxe styling in this bijou bathroom.
So in building our new house, I was THRILLED to finally have a true Powder Room! In our last few homes, our “Powder Room” had not been a Powder Room at all. Rather, it had been the Girls’ Bathroom that guests used when they came over. It was always a mad rush to tidy up the girls’ stuff whenever we had company. Not fun…
Now the girls’ were finally older, the rubber duckies were gone relegated to their rooms, and we had a true Powder Room for grown ups without fingerprints on the Mirror! Hallelujah!
When we were designing the house with our architect, we had decided on using the space under the stairs for the Powder Room. Ah, the joys of being a short family! You don’t have to worry about hitting your head on a short, sloped ceiling! 😊
Here is the floor plan:
The sloped part of the ceiling is above the toilet, and then the ceiling flattens out right around the door frame. The rest of the Powder Room has a high ceiling line of 10’ feet high, so it feels pretty roomy in there, despite it being a typically diminutive space. The plan was (as is drawn) to put the toilet along the back sloped wall and the sink along the front, with a door opening outwards in the middle. That is a fairly standard layout for a Powder Room.
The question became, how was I - in true Taashki style - going to turn a standard layout into an unusual and exceptional space? As a Designer, there was no world in which I was going to let the Powder Room in my own home go without a unique design twist!
DESIGN TIP:
You’ve heard the phrase: ‘Small, but mighty’? Or ‘Good things come in small packages’? Nowhere is this more true than in your home. In smaller spaces, you can design to your heart’s content and take major risks. Why? For a few reasons actually.1. Contrary to popular belief, you can go bold and eccentric. Bright colors, patterns, new ideas are all game here. In a large space, these might be too much, but in a smaller space, the reduced surface area means that you can play a little more without overwhelming the senses.
2. You can try new things. If you don’t love it, or you make a colossal mistake, then guess what? It’s easy to fix. Just start again. It won’t take a lot of time or money.
3. You can work with more expensive ideas: wallpaper, stone, brick, 3D applications, unique treatments, etc. Since you don’t have a lot of surface area to cover, applications that are typically not as affordable can suddenly come into the realm of possibility.
4. DIY treatments that take a lot of time also become possible. Again, because of the smaller surface area, you can usually knock out a project in a weekend. Want to try your hand at plaster? Stenciling? Gold leafing? Go for it!
Did you know that we have different rates for different room sizes? If you want some big ideas for a small room, get in touch.
As you can imagine, from the minute we came up with the floor plan, I had ideas swimming around in my head. Literally!
Design Idea #1
Y’all know I’m from Hong Kong, right? And in feng shui, Koi fish symbolize good luck, perseverence, ambition and abundance. So sentimental, feng-shui-believing kook that I am, my initial plan was to have a wallpaper of koi fish swimming all over my Powder Room walls, and tiled floors interrupted by a sculpted koi fish tile right in front of the sink.
But I couldn’t do that. Why? Well, if you’ve been following me for a while, you know that NOTHING is more important to me in design than telling a family’s unique story in their home. So in designing my family’s home, telling OUR story was paramount.
Of course, this Koi fish design is meaningful in every way to the story; to MY story. But it meant little to my husband or my kids. So if this was my office I was designing, that was one thing. But with the Powder Room being in such a central location in our home, it seemed wrong to just focus on my story alone.
So while I absolutely LOVED that idea and tying in my Hong Kong background, this design focus had to go. I’ll use the Koi fish design idea somewhere else someday. But truth be told, once I had the idea and had started sourcing the wallpaper, I came across that exquisite De Gournay wallpaper. And while I truly love the idea of fish swimming around a shower - it’s so ethereal - once I see that something has been done already, the design becomes a little less attractive to me. Not less attractive in a ‘WOW, isn’t that beautiful?’ way, because I still think the design is magnificent and I wish I had come up with it first. But less attractive in a ‘I now want to come up with a new idea because this one doesn’t push the design envelope’ way. So there will be some other iteration that involves koi fish in my head. I’ll let you know when it comes to me…
Design Idea #2
The second idea played around our family’s shared heritage a little more, and revolved around being Indian. When my husband and I had conceived this new home we were building, we had wanted it to feel like we were transported into our favorite resorts that we had stayed in all around Asia. We had wanted to feel like we were on a permanent vacation; that complete relaxed state of mind.
Well, we had never felt more free than when we had both been traveling (separately) in our early adulthood through India, without our parents for the first time. Those journeys had led to discovering the deepest parts of ourselves, and allowed us to connect two seemingly diametrically opposed parts of our identities - the Western ones we grew up with and the Eastern ones we held so close to our hearts. This meeting of our two worlds - the East and the West - was a recurring theme in our lives - and one that needed to find expression in our home, if our home was to ever truly reflect us. In thinking about that idea, it hit me like a freight train! What speaks more of reflection than a mirror? I got to work commissioning a piece that still makes my heart race because of the perfect statement it makes. Are you ready for it?
Yup, instead of a standard round mirror, I commissioned two perfectly semi-circle mirrors in different sizes. Of course, figuring out what sizes I wanted them to be the same size or different sizes were impossible decisions. So I treated our home like I did any client project - I played with our elevations and design board to visualize how everything would look. I’ll show you my Design Board in a little bit…promise! As you can see from the pictures though, I eventually decided on two different sized mirrors in a gold finish. When they came and were mounted though, I wasn’t sure that I loved the finish (as you can see from my face in the picture above!).
While we were traveling, I also chanced upon a stunning irregularly-shaped dark stone sink. I loved its organic look and feel and knew it was going to need a truly special vanity and faucet to support it.
When I found this simple, but powerful Indonesian wood cabinet in one of my favorite furniture stores while shopping for a client, I knew it would be perfect for our Powder Room. So I bought it right then and there, and had it delivered to the build site. Our builder knew I wanted to incorporate a furniture piece into the Powder Room and worked with us to make it fit perfectly into the space.
And then, I found the magic. This faucet is the piece that gets everyone talking. I bought it after doing a great deal of math. You heard right - math. I’ll bet you didn’t know that designers spend a huge portion of their days doing math, did you? I had to make sure we could install this faucet. Our ceiling on the first floor (and in that section of the Powder Room) was 10’ and the faucet could only be installed in homes that had lower ceilings. I wasn’t about to change the faucet, so my builder and plumber had to get creative and figure out how to make this faucet work. In the end, they dropped the plumbing further by dropping the ceiling (genius!) just enough to accommodate the faucet plumbing.
Here’s another look.
Our fabricator also worked his magic and made the Calacatta Arabescato I chose for the countertop look absolutely incredible by ‘book-matching’ the marble perfectly. The pictures below show exactly what I mean.
And some heavy, elegant black handles with a rounded profile complete the vanity, reference the rounded profile of the faucet and mirror, and don’t detract from the irregular sink.
I promised a look at my Design Board - here it is below. As you can see, I struggled with choosing lighting for the Powder Room - there were so many great choices! I know I want to plaster the whole space - floor and walls - with a deep grey blue. That hasn’t been done yet because we were so busy getting ready for the Houston Modern Home Tour. But that will be scheduled soon.
In the meantime, I wanted a single pendant in the middle of the space and was considering using a single sconce. The sconce options I considered are shown on the right.
I finally decided against using a sconce and instead chose the faceted pendant, but mounted it as a flush mount, so that it reflects light in the most beautiful fashion on the ceiling. The drama it creates is absolutely fascinating. It already creates a mood, so I cannot wait to see the effect it has once the room is plastered.
I also decided on painting the mirror frame. I wanted black, and so that’s what I did. And that’s an important lesson, y’all. Sometimes you can’t know what you’ll love until you place it. Everything pointed to me loving the gold, but when it came, it just wasn’t speaking to me. After painting the mirror frame black though, I absolutely LOVE the Powder Room. Even though it’s not complete. Take a look and tell me what you think…
A few simple accessories finished the space and made us ready for the Houston Modern Home Tour - a Moroccan brass soap dish, our ‘Bul-Ul’ Rice God figure from our travels in the Philippines, a simple washable rug (not shown) and a Turkish hand towel.
Once the Powder Room is finished, I’ll show you more pictures. So stay tuned.
And of course, I’ll show you more pictures of the Taashki Studio home build. So if you’re not signed up for our Taashki Tribe newsletter, make sure you do that now by putting your email address in the sign up box below!
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xxx Tash WANT SOME HELP WITH DESIGNING YOUR DREAM HOME?Coming home to a space you love is simply magic. The sanctuary that you crave, that feeling of a warm hug enveloping you, that effortless comfort - it’s all there. But creating that magic is anything but easy. It can be overwhelming and time-consuming. It takes vision, and is equal parts planning and art. There are SO many decisions to make, and sometimes, you just don’t want to go at it alone.
If you want a partner in this process who can steer you towards options that work best for your life and style; a knowledgeable guide to take you from ‘dream’ to ‘done’ and who can hold your hand every step of the way, our Interior Design Services might be just what you need.
Find out more about Taashki Studio or Schedule a Discovery Call to learn more about our process. We can’t wait to come on your journey with you!