OUT IN THE OPEN

Yes, your bathroom should be a sanctuary. But does that mean disconnecting from the world?

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Think about the bathrooms in all the places you've lived. We'll hazard a guess that some, or most, have been windowless (or as good as), clad in high-gloss tiles and lit by harsh spotlights that beam down on your belly in the bath. Often we inherit bathrooms like this from previous homeowners and can’t afford to change them. But what might you do if you could start from scratch?

“Bathrooms deserve as much access to natural light as any other room,” says Andrew Brown, founder of Brown & Brown Architects. The bathrooms he designs give their owners something to look at beyond the four walls. In one, a bath in a glass-to-glass corner was positioned to overlook, and be shielded by, a canopy of trees; others have had slim window slots installed at eye level in the shower to cast a lens on the surrounding countryside. “As well as a rooflight over the shower, that bathroom [pictured on the right] had a relatively small window for the size of the room,” says Andrew. “We lined it up with the bath so that when you're lying there, you’re looking out over your own courtyard garden, giving you that connection with the outside without any loss of privacy.”