Showers Without Borders: Bring the Outside In
These elegant indoor-outdoor bathrooms bring the easy, breezy holiday feeling home
If you’ve ever spent any time in Asia, you’ll be familiar with the phenomenon of the bathroom that isn’t quite inside and isn’t quite outside. Hotels there do this fantastic thing where the bathroom – or sometimes just the shower – is outside, through a door, contained by a high wall for privacy. Plants, high walls, and maybe a little gravel courtyard, make the area all so relaxing.
Of course, it’s easy to do that in the tropics: showering outside in the depth of winter in New Zealand however – especially if you live in the South Island – is neither practical nor particularly relaxing. But there are ways of bringing the outside in while you’re washing – as these great examples show.
Push the boundaries
If you can’t be outside properly, then glass walls are the next-best thing. In this house in Marin County, near San Francisco, architect Dirk Denison cleverly melds outside and in with the use of glass walls and internal courtyards. He poked holes in the facade to create small gardens, and glass rooms extend off the structure into their own gardens – there is often glass where you’d expect there to be a wall. In this bathroom, a glass wall opens onto an internal courtyard and the mirror above the vanity appears to hover in space.
If you can’t be outside properly, then glass walls are the next-best thing. In this house in Marin County, near San Francisco, architect Dirk Denison cleverly melds outside and in with the use of glass walls and internal courtyards. He poked holes in the facade to create small gardens, and glass rooms extend off the structure into their own gardens – there is often glass where you’d expect there to be a wall. In this bathroom, a glass wall opens onto an internal courtyard and the mirror above the vanity appears to hover in space.
Nowhere does the house achieve more peak transparency than with this shower: a glass box extends out from the bathroom and into its own private courtyard, with glass on all sides and the light washing in and around. It’s a spacious shower made all the more generous by what it looks out into.
More indoor-outdoor bathrooms
More indoor-outdoor bathrooms
Similarly – though no less effectively – this bathroom has a separate ‘wet room’ with a skylight instead of a roof, and a small garden housing a bath and a subtropical garden.
Room with a view
One of the easiest ways to bring the outside in is with a large window – preferably above the bath or beside the shower like this one. Then plant up the space outside the window with lots of big plants – in this case bird of paradise (Strelitzia reginae).
One of the easiest ways to bring the outside in is with a large window – preferably above the bath or beside the shower like this one. Then plant up the space outside the window with lots of big plants – in this case bird of paradise (Strelitzia reginae).
Open up
The next best thing to showering outside is to build a door next to the shower. In this terrace house in San Francisco, architect Malcolm Davis built this beautiful shower and door combination opening off a deck. Bonus: it’s easy access when you come in from the beach or the garden and don’t want to tramp through the rest of the house first.
The next best thing to showering outside is to build a door next to the shower. In this terrace house in San Francisco, architect Malcolm Davis built this beautiful shower and door combination opening off a deck. Bonus: it’s easy access when you come in from the beach or the garden and don’t want to tramp through the rest of the house first.
Here’s the inside view. Sigh.
Another way of taking design to the extreme is by opening your bathroom out to its own internal courtyard via a wall of bi-folding doors. Even in cooler weather with the doors closed, the impact of the courtyard would be enormous – and in summer the doors stay open, cooling out the area and letting the steam out. This really is spectacular – imagine starting the day in this.
Introduce stone
This house in Singapore has a spectacular bathroom that sits behind a privacy screen and a beautiful subtropical garden that helps create more privacy the more it grows – in the meantime there are rolling blinds. It’s an exercise in crisp modernity, all white and marble and steel – softened by the use of white pebbles sitting in channels between the tiles. The pebbles warm up the space, and are a great way of ensuring water doesn’t spill across the whole bathroom floor.
This house in Singapore has a spectacular bathroom that sits behind a privacy screen and a beautiful subtropical garden that helps create more privacy the more it grows – in the meantime there are rolling blinds. It’s an exercise in crisp modernity, all white and marble and steel – softened by the use of white pebbles sitting in channels between the tiles. The pebbles warm up the space, and are a great way of ensuring water doesn’t spill across the whole bathroom floor.
Open to the sky
Noticed the trend towards putting bathrooms in the middle of the house where there aren’t any windows? It’s understandable, but you need natural light. Enter the skylight.
Noticed the trend towards putting bathrooms in the middle of the house where there aren’t any windows? It’s understandable, but you need natural light. Enter the skylight.
Most effective placed above the shower, skylights wash the space with light and make the space feel that much taller.
Plant it up
Not everyone has the room or the budget for glass walls and internal courtyards. But house plants are a terrific way of bringing the outside in – and they’ll add a feeling of relaxation and enclosure to even the most prosaic of bathrooms.
Not everyone has the room or the budget for glass walls and internal courtyards. But house plants are a terrific way of bringing the outside in – and they’ll add a feeling of relaxation and enclosure to even the most prosaic of bathrooms.
Even just a few plants will introduce softness to a bathroom – as with the collection of plants hanging in this otherwise industrial-styled bathroom.
But you really should push it further: this spectacular collection of palms, subtropical plants and succulents make an amazing shower area. And those tiles – positively deluxe.
Make it green
Green walls are so hot right now – and they’re particularly effective in wet areas, since the steam and damp helps to create the humid conditions that these plants thrive in. They look spectacular, too – giving you the sense of being in a garden. Without being in a garden.
Green walls are so hot right now – and they’re particularly effective in wet areas, since the steam and damp helps to create the humid conditions that these plants thrive in. They look spectacular, too – giving you the sense of being in a garden. Without being in a garden.
I’m not suggesting you do this. How would you get clean? But there is something rather lovely about this shower.
TELL US
How do you bring the outside into your bathroom? Tell us in the Comments section.
MORE
10 Ideas For Outside Bathrooms
14 Tranquil Bathrooms Inspired By Nature
12 Outdoor Hot Tubs Worth Soaking in
TELL US
How do you bring the outside into your bathroom? Tell us in the Comments section.
MORE
10 Ideas For Outside Bathrooms
14 Tranquil Bathrooms Inspired By Nature
12 Outdoor Hot Tubs Worth Soaking in