Baby Blue Tubs and Lemony Loos. Are Coloured Bathroom Fixtures Chic Again?
The divisive trend has design pros in a lather. Here, they argue both sides.
4 min
COLOURED TUBS and sinks are getting another shot. Design experts are revisiting the look, which originated in the 1920s. American waterworks brand Kohler recently revived two heritage colors they originally released in the ’20s and ’30s, and British manufacturers such as the Water Monopoly and the Bold Bathroom Company have found fans on both sides of the Atlantic.
Some designers, however, wincingly recall the avocado-hued tubs and sinks of the 1970s and hold that coloured fixtures are a trend that will date very quickly. For these naysayers, only white bath fixtures will do. Here, they debate the issue.
Yes, coloured fixtures give a bathroom a much-needed shot of style.
Many design pros applauded the news that come summer, Kohler’s bathroom fixtures—including toilets—will be available in two shades from its archive: Spring Green, an icy teal, and Peachblow, a mauvy pink. Fans of the chromatically diverse Rockwell collection from the Water Monopoly, meanwhile, appreciate the fixtures’ vaguely vintage eccentricity.
London interior designer Lizzie Green nestled a Powder blue Rockwell tub, one with a puffy upper rim and spheres for feet, against a wall of variegated green-blue tiles (above). “The playful design creates a center piece in a large bathroom,” she said. (In a similarly bold move, Ms. Green installed a blue art deco pedestal sink from British manufacturer the Bold Bathroom Company in a shower room clad in rose-pink tile.)
Elizabeth Metcalfe, of EM Design in Toronto, made a chalky green Rockwell tub the hero of a primary bath and a foil to some serious luxury. It sits amid walls of Breccia marble—a creamy stone veined in deep purple—and windows hung with pink cashmere drapery. The tub gives an otherwise conservative, grown-up room a “uniquely stylish” edge, she said.
The designers we surveyed agree that the trend’s biggest fans are older millennials who grew up in what Lauren Lothrop Caron terms the “beige 2000s.” The founder of Seattle’s Studio Laloc—a senior millennial herself—urges her contemporaries to be bold. For her own bathroom remodel, she’s eyeing Kohler’s Peachblow fixtures.
Noncommittal types might do best to choose one small colored fixture, says Jake Rodehuth-Harrison, founder of Los Angeles design firm Hubbahubba. Mr. Rodehuth-Harrison loves the “heavy dose of nostalgia” the pieces provide at a time when “the design world and algorithms are always looking forward and saying new, newer, newest.” He popped lilac ball feet onto another Water Monopoly Rockwell tub, this one white, in a Napa Valley, Calif., project. The result perches, most surprisingly, on muted green flooring he chose. If that’s too bold, “we can neutralize these fixtures by surrounding them with tiles in the same color,” he noted.
Another trick: Tiffany Duggan of London’s Studio Duggan suggests working with vintage fixtures that were born white. The designer recently updated an original iron tub with a wash of Farrow & Ball’s Red Earth. “If you change your mind, you can just paint over it.”
No, colored basins and bathtubs are too fatally trendy and impractical besides.
Doubters say hued baths will be a blip on the trend continuum. Unless you’re trying to preserve the aesthetic of a historic home, warned Liana Hawes Young, creative director of Wimberly Interiors in New York City, “colored fixtures will feel dated quickly, if not immediately.” And unlike trendily tinted shower curtains or wall paint that can be changed with little expense, this craze requires a spendy swap out, argued naysayers. Said Kristina Phillips, an interior designer in Ridgewood, N.J., “Clients looking for more long-term, classic design, along with keeping eventual resale in mind, might hesitate.”
Traditionalists say that if you really must, relegate such vivid choices to powder rooms and kids’ baths, spaces you don’t linger in. And well-intentioned salvage-scourers should be wary of mixing eras, said other concerned parties. “Vintage plumbing fixtures can date a space due to their scale,” explained Hattie Collins, founder of Hattie Sparks Interiors, in New Orleans. “Most times, coloured tubs and toilets are much smaller than present-day fixtures.” A safer bet, she suggests, is to focus on rescuing original floor and surround tile.
Powder blue is one thing, many say, but bright or hot-hued renditions of this trend read garish. “Neons and oranges could be a thorn in the room,” said Los Angeles designer Gilda Hariri. Even Ms. Metcalfe, who otherwise champions the trend, warned, “Avoid vibrant, aggressive tones, such as reds and oranges, that evoke a strong emotional response.”
Designers who actually can see a place for coloured fixtures couldn’t help but trivialise the trend as “retro” and “eclectic.” The rest of the room has to quietly suggest luxury, they suggest, to balance kookiness with class. Ms. Collins thinks wallpaper that has layered, expressive colours—the sort often offered by House of Hackney, Gracie or Cole and Son—could help coloured fixtures read higher end, as would lighting of reeded glass and high-quality metal finishes. “Lovely but expensive,” she added. Is the cost of a cheerful toilet really worth it?
The power of association doesn’t work well in the trend’s favor, either. A black bathroom, for instance, installed for a sense of refined moodiness, might evoke one from a 1980s basement nightclub, giving words like sterility and sanitary a new appeal. Austere white bathrooms, a holdover from the “hospital white’” tiled bathrooms of the early 1920s, are far more practical. Dark colours reveal water marks and chalky toothpaste smears. To Kristine Renee, co-founder of Sacramento, Calif., interiors firm Design Alchemy, “Nothing ever seems as clean as white.”
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This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.
The latest trend in wellness travel is somewhere between a spa trip and a doctor’s appointment
4 min
For some vacationers, the ideal getaway involves $1,200 ozone therapy or an $1,800 early-detection cancer test.
Call it the longevity vacation. People who are fixated on optimising their personal health are pursuing travel activities that they hope will help them stay healthier for longer. It is part of a broader interest in longevity that often extends beyond traditional medicine . These costly trips and treatments are rising in popularity as money pours into the global wellness travel market.
At high-end resorts, guests can now find biological age testing, poolside vitamin IV drips, and stem-cell therapy. Prices can range from hundreds of dollars for shots and drips to tens of thousands for more invasive procedures, which go well beyond standard wellness offerings like yoga, massages or facials.
Some longevity-inspired trips focus on treatments, while others focus more on social and lifestyle changes. This includes programs that promise to teach travellers the secrets of centenarians .
Mark Blaskovich, 66 years old, spent $4,500 on a five-night trip last year centred on lessons from the world’s “Blue Zones,” places including Sardinia, Italy, and Okinawa, Japan, where a high number of people live for at least 100 years. Blaskovich says he wanted to get on a healthier path as he started to feel the effects of ageing.
He chose a retreat at Modern Elder Academy in Mexico, where he attended workshops detailing the power of supportive relationships, embracing a plant-based diet and incorporating natural movement into his daily life.
“I’ve been interested in longevity and trying to figure out how to live longer and live healthier,” says Blaskovich.
Vitamins and ozone
When Christy Menzies noticed nurses behind a curtained-off area at the Four Seasons Resort Maui in Hawaii on a family vacation in 2022, she assumed it might be Covid-19 testing. They were actually injecting guests with vitamin B12.
Menzies, 40, who runs a travel agency, escaped to the longevity clinic between trips to the beach, pool and kids’ club, where she reclined in a leather chair, and received a 30-minute vitamin IV infusion.
“You’re making investments in your wellness, your health, your body,” says Menzies, who adds that she felt more energised afterward.
The resort has been expanding its offerings since opening a longevity centre in 2021. A multi-day treatment package including ozone therapy, stem-cell therapy and a “fountain of youth” infusion, costs $44,000. Roughly half a dozen guests have shelled out for that package since it made its debut last year, according to Pat Makozak, the resort’s senior spa director. Guests can also opt for an early-detection cancer blood test for $1,800.
The ozone therapy, which involves withdrawing blood, dissolving ozone gas into it, and reintroducing it into the body through an IV, is particularly popular, says Makozak. The procedure is typically administered by a registered nurse, takes upward of an hour and costs $1,200.
Longevity vacationers are helping to fuel the global wellness tourism market, which is expected to surpass $1 trillion in 2024, up from $439 billion in 2012, according to the nonprofit Global Wellness Institute. About 13% of U.S. travellers took part in spa or wellness activities while traveling in the past 12 months, according to a 2023 survey from market-research group Phocuswright.
Canyon Ranch, which has multiple wellness resorts across the country, earlier this year introduced a five-night “Longevity Life” program, starting at $6,750, that includes health-span coaching, bone-density scans and longevity-focused sessions on spirituality and nutrition.
The idea is that people will return for an evaluation regularly to monitor progress, says Mark Kovacs, the vice president of health and performance.
What doctors say
Doctors preach caution, noting many of these treatments are unlikely to have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, producing a placebo effect at best and carrying the potential for harm at worst. Procedures that involve puncturing the skin, such as ozone therapy or an IV drip, risk possible infection, contamination and drug interactions.
“Right now there isn’t a single proven treatment that would prolong the life of someone who’s already healthy,” says Dr. Mark Loafman, a family-medicine doctor in Chicago. “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
Some studies on certain noninvasive wellness treatments, like saunas or cold plunges , do suggest they may help people feel less stressed, or provide some temporary pain relief or sleep improvement.
Linda True, a policy analyst in San Francisco, spent a day at RAKxa, a wellness retreat on a visit to family in Thailand in February. True, 46, declined the more medical-sounding offerings, like an IV drip, and opted for a traditional style of Thai massage that involved fire and is touted as a “detoxification therapy.”
“People want to spend money on things that they feel might be doing good,” says Dr. Tamsin Lewis, medical adviser at RoseBar Longevity at Six Senses Ibiza, a longevity club that opened last year, whose menu includes offerings such as cryotherapy, infrared sauna and a “Longevity Boost” IV.
RoseBar says there is good evidence that reducing stress contributes to longevity, and Lewis says she doesn’t offer false promises about treatments’ efficacy . Kovacs says Canyon Ranch uses the latest science and personal data to help make evidence-based recommendations.
Jaclyn Sienna India owns a membership-based, ultra luxury travel company that serves people whose net worth exceeds $100 million, many of whom give priority to longevity, she says. She has planned trips for clients to Blue Zones, where there are a large number of centenarians. On one in February, her company arranged a $250,000 weeklong stay for a family of three to Okinawa that included daily meditation, therapeutic massages and cooking classes, she says.
India says keeping up with a longevity-focused lifestyle requires more than one treatment and is cost-prohibitive for most people.
Doctors say travellers may be more likely to glean health benefits from focusing on a common vacation goal : just relaxing.
Dr. Karen Studer, a physician and assistant professor of preventive medicine at Loma Linda University Health says lowering your stress levels is linked to myriad short- and long-term health benefits.
“It may be what you’re getting from these expensive treatments is just a natural effect of going on vacation, decreasing stress, eating better and exercising more.”
Consumers are going to gravitate toward applications powered by the buzzy new technology, analyst Michael Wolf predicts
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.
