I'm guessing about 60 watt, but there are odd amounts on bulbs these days. No naked bulbs near water. My electrician refused to install my chandelier, and I had to go out and buy a "closed" light fitting as per his instructions. Lighting stores sell certain lights specifically for vanity mirrors, in Aus.

Hi Paul, I hear your collective frustration! my comment about light bouncing into your eyes was in response to your question about bouncing light onto your faces from a light placed behind the vanity (from memory). Have you seen Dr Renos comment here - still the most logical response to me. https://www.houzz.com.au/discussions/5148857/where-to-place-power-points-and-lights#n=5 So I'm going to go for side lights next to the vanity cabinet. Trouble is, my vanity is off-centre to the cabinet mirror, so I still have to sort that one out. Time spent really considering this is well worth it. I think LED downlights may very well cast shadows, sorry to say :-) and the next consideration is what colour temperature - warm white or daylight? For relaxing ambience (75% bathroom function) it will def be 3000 warm white for me, however for the vanity functions it will be 4000K (daylight) so I will probably get the vanity lights switched separately to the main room light, maybe put that on a dimmer... I know there are some LED bulbs available that enable the colour temp to be changed within the same bulb...

We too live in a cold winter climate with our bathrooms all on the southern side and faced similar issues as you do. One smaller bathroom does not have a window so we put in a Velux skylight which provides amazing natural light through the day. This may not be to your liking, especially if you have a period home. We also use heated towel rails and under tile heating (just enough to take the chill off and stop mould) in winter. Although we have a light in the shower recess, a bonus is the large fixed shower head with inbuilt LED, which at night gives the feeling of showering under moonlight. We chose light colours and mirrored recessed cabinets to reflect as much natural light as possible.

We had a very similar arrangement as OKLouise's first design, and it worked a treat when the kids were little. 3 kids, so one could be in the toilet, one could be cleaning his teeth, and one could be in the bath. The vanity being seen from the living area was not a problem - made me keep it tidy, and it was big enough to have a plant, etc to make it pretty. When the guys were teenagers, they would have liked a vanity in the bathroom to give them privacy. Then we understood why the architect wanted to have a cavity slider into the wet area... Cavity sliders are great for giving extra space, but not as good at locking as a swinging door.