In today’s design age, you’re not limited to tile and plastic when creating a bathroom. Wood, stone, and metal are the perfect materials to outfit and accent a modern bathroom to make it feel elevated and luxurious. We’re here to inspire you to step out of your comfort zone and create a space that’s elegant and relaxing, with high-end design backing up your style.
Bathroom Remodeling Trends
Modern bathrooms use an interplay of natural and man made materials to create a cohesive, luxurious space. Wood, metal, and stone are the new key players in bathroom remodeling. Elements like tile and glass complement all of these materials, and it’s the balance of materials that creates a space that truly feels elevated.
Wood
Wood is a fantastic material to bring a natural touch into a space. It has warmth, texture, and visual appeal. The right shades can brighten or soften a space, creating a spa-like atmosphere. Wood-heavy designs are prominent in Asian and Scandinavian style homes, used for their calming effect in minimalist and modern living spaces. Different grains can add pattern and texture to an otherwise simple panel, pairing well with single-tone materials like tile or stone. However, wood carries a lot of visual weight and strong colors, so we recommend balancing wood accents or panels with other materials like stone and metal.
When designing a bathroom remodel using wood, you also need to be careful about moisture build up. Certain types of wood are better suited for high-moisture rooms, and any wood pieces you install should be sealed for protection. This may involve more initial upkeep, but as the wood ages, you will only need to reseal it every few months.
Stone
Like wood, stone is a natural material that can bring a sense of balance and peace to a bathroom space. Natural tones like dark greys and sandy beiges can visually cool a space, with the right designs bringing outside inspirations in. Stone dries easily and is durable in rooms that see heavy use like bathrooms. One popular use of stone is in shower walls: large slabs of stone remove the need for grout between tiles, giving a smoother finished appearance to a shower wall. With a gloss finish, stone can reflect light gently and brighten up your bathroom space. In contrast, a honed matte finished stone can soften a space and reduce glare.
Natural stones come in a wide range of colors and patterns, making them ideal for many design styles and budgets. From easy to maintain marble to more elevated granite slabs, stone provides a way to add texture and visual intrigue to a space while maintaining function. Stone tiles can also help reduce slip risks in wet areas while still adding to your home’s aesthetic.
Metal
Metal is a wonderful contrast to wood and stone. It doesn’t carry the same natural appearance that these other materials have, which makes it fantastic to balance out a modern bathroom. It’s easily accessible as a bathroom design material, and there are hundreds of possible tones and finishes to match your style cohesively. Metallic finishes draw natural light and bounce it, adding a visual highlight to your space. Metal is most commonly used for items like faucets, shower heads, and drawer pulls, but there are plenty of spaces where you could incorporate it into your bathroom design.
Mixing metallic tones and finishes is also a great way to bring some more design style into your bathroom remodel. Leading the bathroom design trends currently is melding matte black faucets and accents with bronze lighting. Alternatively, using a single metallic texture as an accent means that you’re tying each element of your space together. Think of burnished bronze faucets, complemented with burnished bronze claws on your bathtub and similarly toned drawer pulls.
Modern Bathroom Design Styles
Wood, stone, and metal can balance each other in a wide range of design styles. We’re taking a look at three leading current design trends that we think are here to stay: spa-inspired bathrooms, the modern rustic bathroom, and industrial chic. These design styles draw on more than just trends. The modern bathroom is inspired by a timeless elegance, ready to last longer than seasonal trends while still being inspired by them.
Spa-Inspired
There’s no place more relaxing than a spa, so it makes sense to bring this atmosphere into your home bathroom. A bathroom remodel focusing on the spa aesthetic is clean, minimalist, and balances natural inspirations with functionality. Spa-inspired bathrooms need elements focused on warmth and softness, so you’re likely to find more wood in these designs. However, using a lighter toned wood can help bring lightness into a space without losing the visual texture that wood grain brings.
Modern Rustic
Modern rustic bathrooms can suit a wide range of home interior design styles. This bathroom style balances primarily wood and stone, with some metallic accents mixed in. Many designers opt for textured stone and wood for a more worn in feeling. Mix textured wood flooring with rough stone wall panels, or match a textured stone floor with smooth wood paneling.
Industrial Chic
The industrial chic bathroom uses glass and metal as focal points, bringing shine and contrast into a space. With a backdrop of exposed brick or rough stone, and a palette tending towards darker tones, the industrial chic design style feels modern, elevated, and entirely unpretentious. Dark greys, soft cool browns, and white make this style feel cool, open, and easy to mix with your home’s cohesive style.
Explore Bathroom Remodeling With Mr Kitchen
There’s no better inspiration than visual inspiration. When you visit a home remodeling showroom, you can see materials up close and get a feel for how they would work in your space. Compare wood tones and stone patterns, and see how different finishes affect each one.
Give us a call today on 561-672-7306 to schedule a personal consultation at our Boca Raton showroom to get your bathroom remodel started with Mr. Kitchen.