Brighton: Italian Marble Family Bathroom

This family bathroom in Brighton was designed and commissioned by an interior designer for her own home, which meant the level of scrutiny applied to every decision was higher than most. The material chosen for the entire bathroom
walls, floor, shower tray, bench and all the slab surfaces
was Italian Carrara marble. Three formats were used across different zones. The walls are tiled in 100 x 300mm Carrara tiles laid vertically, a proportion that works well in the room and lets the natural veining of the stone read clearly across a generous wall area. The floor uses a 100 x 200mm Carrara tile in a rectangular field, interrupted at regular intervals by evenly spaced square inserts in a contrasting brown marble. It is a patterning language with roots in Parisian and early twentieth century bathrooms, but the scale and the restrained spacing here give it a more contemporary feel.
The shower tray is lined in Kit Kat strip mosaic in the same Italian Carrara marble, a narrow format that gives the shower floor grip and texture while keeping the material palette entirely consistent. The shower walls continue the 100 x 300mm wall tile from the main bathroom, so the enclosure reads as a natural extension of the room rather than a separate space within it. Inside the shower, a tiled bench was built and topped with a full Carrara marble slab, cut and fitted on site. The same full slab treatment was applied to the vanity top and the window reveal, so every horizontal surface in the bathroom is in the same material at the same standard.

The floor was levelled before tiling and underfloor heating was installed beneath it. A 300 x 100mm Carrara marble tile splashback sits behind the vanity. Every surface was sealed on completion.
Working with Italian Carrara marble across this many formats and surfaces in a single bathroom required careful planning to ensure the material was consistent from piece to piece and that the joints, grout colour and setting out held the same discipline throughout the room. The result is a bathroom where every surface is marble and nothing feels excessive. That is a harder balance to achieve than it sounds, and it is the reason this project was worth doing properly.