Vintage Bathrooms: Your Guide to Achieving the Look

There’s something warm and reassuring about a vintage bathroom. It’s a space that encourages the repurposing of the worn, the weathered, and the time-honoured alongside more modern furnishings.

It’s a space where even the distressed and slightly dilapidated won’t necessarily feel out of place with some careful, considered placement in terms of decorative value and functionality.

So, before you contemplate putting that shabby yet somehow characterful piece of furniture into storage, read our guide to achieving the look of a vintage bathroom, where a focus on heritage and the incorporation of the unconventional becomes second nature.

Vintage bathrooms are about establishing a certain nostalgic ambiance that allows a richer and more varied assortment of character to be implemented in your space. This can evoke a greater sense of homely assurance that defies current interior design trends to make a statement that proves ever-lasting.

Personality goes a long way with vintage bathrooms and given the sometimes restricting conventions of contemporary design, this can be a very liberating concept to embrace. This is a space to exercise a nostalgic yearning back to past eras by implementing elegant antique furniture and ornate fixtures that might otherwise appear out of place.

So, consider traditional pendant lighting, bring in those woven baskets and wood crates, show off some prized artwork, trinkets, cherished family heirlooms, and other collectibles – they all have a place here.

One of the distinct pleasures of the vintage style bathroom is incorporating something seemingly out-of-place and making it so effortlessly functional that it feels right at home.

A weathered dressing table could be repurposed as a bathroom vanity for example. An old wooden ladder with distressed texture could make a handy towel rack, a grand footstool, or dining chair might offer the perfect placement for bathroom accessories, or a characterful country Welsh dresser could even provide ample storage space too. Often the more inventive the repurposing the better.

All this focus on the old and the worn might suggest there isn’t room for the modern. However, it’s important to reiterate that it’s precisely the careful integration of the old with the new that makes vintage bathrooms arguably stand out more distinctively.

Sometimes it’s merely a matter of complimenting what contemporary fittings and fixtures you already have to evoke the style. Modern yet individualistic freestanding baths, bathroom vanities, shower, and bathroom tapware can be easily dressed with the more archaic qualities of vintage bathrooms for a brilliant transition.

If you want to capture the authentic essence of antiqued fittings like vintage sinks you naturally have the option to replace your existing bathroom sink with something more in line with that style.

Implementing modern marvel throwbacks such as stone basins into your design means you make an eye-opening statement in your bathroom straight away that captures vintage in all its antiqued glory. You can complement opulent fittings with a subway tile backsplash and either penny floor tiles or hardwood flooring. All of which evoke a great depth of character.

Of course, it helps to have your tapware complementing your vintage bathroom look too. Characterised by very fine vertical or horizontal lines, the versatile qualities of brushed brass tapware will help to enrich your space and become a defining feature in any vintage style bathroom. It works well next to greys, greens, and blues – all signature vintage bathroom colours.

Equally enriching would be brushed copper tapware, brushed gunmetal tapware, brushed nickel tapware, or even matte black. 

Bathroom tapware design can evoke strong character too and as we know vintage bathrooms are all about expressing a sophisticated personality into your space. Fortunately, wall mounted spouts speak to this design philosophy, as do elegant mixers or taps. All of these fixtures will strengthen your aesthetic and appeal to the nostalgic qualities that vintage bathrooms encourage. 

It’s always good to get some outside help when it’s time to transform your bathroom into a superior space.

You can achieve that new bathroom aesthetic by contacting our friendly team here. They are well-versed in the vintage style and selecting bathroom colour schemes. You can also book a free design consultation directly below to kick-start the process and turn your interior design dream into a reality.