Rickmansworth: Cloakroom

This cloakroom and shower room is the third tiling project Tile in Progress completed at this Rickmansworth property, alongside the family bathroom and the en-suite documented separately. The material throughout the principal surfaces is Dahlia, a large-format porcelain slab at 1200 x 2800mm and 6mm thick, with a dramatic swirling pattern in green, grey and amber that carries significant movement across the face of each slab. It is used in three distinct zones: the shower walls, the feature slab behind the wall-hung toilet, and the vanity top. Using the same material across all three surfaces gives the room a coherence that a mixed material approach would not, while the three different orientations and applications of the slab
vertical wall, feature panel and horizontal surface
give each zone its own reading within the overall scheme.
The shower was designed without a glass screen. Instead, a tiled dividing wall separates the shower from the rest of the room, which maximises the usable floor area and removes the visual interruption of a glass panel from the space. The dividing wall is tiled in the same Dahlia slab as the shower walls, so it reads as a natural extension of the shower enclosure rather than a partition.

Waterproofing was carried out as part of our scope before tiling began. Inside the shower, the niche runs corner to corner at full width, with mitred edges on all four faces so the slab wraps the recess cleanly without any trim. The niche at this scale is a significant tiling element in its own right, requiring the slab to be cut and positioned so the pattern of the Dahlia material reads continuously across the full width of the niche back face.
The toilet feature slab has LED strip lighting installed behind it, so the wall appears to glow around the perimeter of the slab panel. That detail requires the slab to be fixed with a precise and consistent gap at its edges to allow the light to read evenly, and the installation has to account for that from the outset rather than as an afterthought. The floor is a 1200 x 1200mm matt porcelain, a deliberately quieter material that grounds the room and lets the Dahlia slabs lead. The project was completed in two weeks, completing the three-room appointment at this property to the same standard throughout.