THE 2006 HC&G IDEA HOUSE

July 15, 2006

WHEN DESIGNING A BATHROOM, PRECISE PLANNING MEANS FEWER HEADACHES

Be it a master suite or a powder room, the bathroom is one of the most taken-for-granted rooms in the house. But for anyone who has ever styled or remodeled a bathroom, it is second only to the kitchen as far as complexity, and perhaps even a bit more difficult to design, considering the smallish size of the rooms and the number of pieces that have to fit into the puzzle. The 2006 HC&G Idea House has eight such puzzles, and designers Kyle Timothy Blood of Kyle Timothy Home and Christine Phillips of Viola! PR and Design are responsible for making five of them functional and fabulous.

Blood, who is designing the two guest bathrooms and a home-office bathroom upstairs, happily admits that he doesn't have one specific style, although his definition of beauty is "that which is 'true': stone, glass, wood—nothing artificial." He uses these natural elements in sharp contrast, combining rough materials like hewn stone with delicate ones like glass. He also takes into account the environment in which he works, and in the Idea House he is very attuned to the varying sensibilities of his fellow designers.

For the first bathroom, Blood used the motif of the adjoining bedroom as a starting point. The bedroom's designer, Brian Brady, taking inspiration from his own college-age daughter, is using a background color of off-white with accents of rosy pink and pistachio green. In keeping things simple and easy to update, Blood has used iridescent ivory tile with green details from Urban Archaeology to tie in with the bedroom's palette, and has custom-designed a Thassos marble dressing table (complete with holes cut for hair dryer electric cords and the like).