Bring Your Bathroom Up To Date With Trends

The internet is packed with a huge number of different bathroom ideas. However, with the Diamond Jubilee, Wimbledon and the London Olympics, 2012 is a year to remember – so why not update your bathroom to reflect the current trends?

Bringing the outdoors into your bathroom is all the rage for 2012. Debbie Travis, a Montreal-based design expert who has her own TV series and set of published books, affirms that even though kitchens are going brighter, baths are going the opposite direction, with many natural elements.

“Unless it's a children's bath, you don't want to be confronted with bright colours,” she says. So what is the best way to achieve this modern look? “The soothing, natural, bath trend is coming through the wood-grain ceramic or porcelain tile,” Debbie reveals.

Wood is also a perfect material to add a soft, natural touch to your bathroom. Wood floors are most definitely in and because the planks are of a better quality, they can last in the bathroom. In its new starring role, wood is not only being used on floors but also for sinks and bathtubs. Use salvaged barn board for baths, floors and frames for contemporary mirrors to create a raw, textured look.

In a bathroom environment, it is texture rather than colour that proves the most effective way to provide warmth and visual depth. Metal can work wonders to modernise a bathroom. However, it can also impact a room negatively by making it look cold or even sterile. This year however, metal fixtures are on-trend in finishes like Champagne bronze or oil-rubbed bronze.

If the natural look isn’t quite your thing, or if you are fashion-conscious, it may be an idea to bring current catwalk collections to the bathroom. The catwalk is awash with bold,If you are looking to buymosaic art, bright colours, which can be teamed with neutrals in a bathroom environment for a more modern look.

Designers’ collections are also brimming with prints, including animal and geometric, and plenty of stripes. As wallpaper has been busy making its comeback, why not combine two current fashion trends and paper one of the walls with some eye-catching geometric paper?

Show-stopping tiles are also big this year. Choose from a vast range of tiles – natural stones, quartz, glass – and install them in shower enclosures or in the floor. Use this style to punctuate a neutral bathroom decorated with white, grey or black. To complete the catwalk look, why not purchase some steel spotlights for the ceiling? To instil more personality in your bathroom, try installing some fun and unique bathroom lighting, like hanging fixtures instead of wall-mounted lights. Pebble Grey offers a huge range of modern lights to cater to every taste.

Glass tiles are certainly fashionable for bathrooms this year, but recycled glass tiles are even more so. There are a wide variety of recycled tiles available, such as recycled glass composites and recycled paper and resin composites. As well as mimicking natural stone,Learn about the beauty of porcelaintiles. they are durable and easy to clean – and better for the environment.

As a boy, the ritual of getting a haircut began with my dad, Cecil Moore, taking me over to I street between 6th and 7th Streets. There were several barber shops for men on that block, and dad’s choice was Felix’s Barber Shop. Across the street was John (Giovani) Mevi’s, whose door we never entered, and coincidently we ended up living right across the street from the Mevis on California Street. Mr. Mevi and I became friends in my early teen years and he would tell me of his adventures in World War 1, and how as a prisoner of war he escaped his captors.Learn about the beauty of porcelaintiles. He would tell me stories about the Cosa Nostra Mafia too, but I never did know if they were true. He was retired by then and tended a beautiful and spacious vegetable garden which must have been a major contributor to his long life. In the 60’s,If you are looking to buymosaic art, his children were well into adulthood, but as his grandchildren came to visit, we would observe them and their “Nonno”. In fact, as we all grew up, I became friends with a number of them and thanks to FaceBook, have reconnected with Joelle Mevi, her brother John who was once my roving business partner, and Colleen Valadao Rush, who shares the same exact wedding anniversary as Linda and I, May 26, 1984!

-But I digress. Dad always took me in those days, down to Felix’s which was located in the venerable Hub Hotel Complex. From the sidewalk you entered a white and black geometric tile floored entry area, the Hub Hotel coffee shop and bar straight ahead, the barber shop to the right. The Hub Hotel was located on the north side of I street where a parking lot now serves downtown parking needs, and is about 100 feet east of the old Bank of America building.

Immediately you were in a friendly, very male atmosphere. Four barbers were at their stations behind the massive turquoise green, very ornate “KOHEN” hydraulic barber chairs. But before you were seated, you joined the other gentlemen sitting in the chrome metal framed, vinyl waiting chairs. A massive rubber tree plant that filled much of the ceiling area and had its’ roots in a seemingly much too small ceramic planter, was the dominant feature of that rectangular 12×20” room. Racks of magazines and newspapers were standing by,Full color plasticcard printing and manufacturing services. and you could also look out to the street through the large plate glass window and observe passersby or even see who was going into the competitors shop across the street..