GUEST BLOGGER – Mal Corboy – Bathroom Trends
Mal Corboy, international multi-award-winning kitchen and bathroom designer, is based in New Zealand and regularly designs kitchens and bathrooms for the Australian, New Zealand and North American residential market.
While visiting the recent Milan Furniture Fair, incorporating Eurocucina and Salone del Bagno, Mal gave his insights into current bathroom trends in Australia and New Zealand.
Colour: The more neutral, natural colour palettes of the past decade are being updated with bolder colour and more texture with metallics playing a more prominent role on both wall and floor surfaces.
Showers: The introduction of a range of accessories and features for showers (such as rain showers and massaging sprays) has resulted in shower areas increasing in size, often featuring both a rain shower and slide shower.
Baths: The free-standing bath is used as a sculptural statement in those rooms with enough space. The advent of showering 'therapy' though means not every bathroom needs to have a bath.
Bidets: Seeing more of these being installed possibly as a result of European migrants' influence.
Tapware: Taps are far more sophisticated and the popularity of taps that deliver a softer flow of water is increasing.
Outdoor bathrooms: Foliage has a natural affinity with bathing spaces and there is a definite trend towards bringing the outside in. Bathroom renovations are increasingly siting the shower cubicle outside the line of the house, creating a feeling of showering outside.
Mal Corboy