Usually, not much thought is given to toilets or bathrooms, especially when it comes to feng shui as they are thought of as “taboo” areas of the home. The more fuddy duddy variety of feng shui master would even go so far as to suggest to make them as small as possible, keep them out of sight, and away from the main house even. Today we have to adjust such feng shui recommendations for modern living, as most of us who like our mod cons don’t see our bathrooms and WCs as places where we flush down waste, but as personal sanctuaries where we retreat to relax. For some of us, the bathroom even rivals the position of favourite room of the house! So how do we reconcile the “taboo” vs “sanctuary” dilemma? Easy… just follow some simple rules.

1. AVOID LOCATING BATHROOM IN NW or SW sector

However nice you make your bathroom, it will still be considered taboo to some degree, so to be safe, keep them away from your two most important sectors: the Northwest and the Southwest. The NW represents the Patriarch and a toilet here flushes down his luck. Similarly with the SW for the Mother, as SW represents the Matriarch.

In feng shui, one always strives to preserve the luck of the Mother and Father, and the good fortune of the rest of the family will follow. As such, locate your WCs away from these two sectors. If you buy a ready built house with a bathroom in the NW or SW, and you cannot change the layout of rooms, then at least spend a bit of money to make sure the toilet bowl itself is not located in the NW or SW of the bathroom (Small Tai Chi).

2. AVOID GOLDEN BATHS & TOILETS

A popular show of ostentatiousness (but mostly heard of only among the really nouveau rich) is to have golden gilded tap fittings, and even toilet bowls. This is not just vulgar, it is BAD feng shui! It doesn’t even have to be real gold for it to bring bad luck, because taps wash things away, and when you line your taps with gold, you symbolically flush or drain away your money luck every time you use your taps. Better to go for regular stainless steel taps, and regular materials like ceramic, plastic or Perspex toilet seats.

3. NO TOILETS ABOVE MAIN DOOR

A design that’s super popular with so many developers is to design a house layout plan where the master bathroom and toilet are directly above a main door. Don’t know how that became a norm with many of the housing developments, but this is a major taboo. What can be worse than having a toilet ruin the feng shui of an auspicious sector? To have the toilet above your most important sector of all – your main door sector!

So always check for this taboo before putting down your down-payment for your new dream house. If you already live in such a house and have been suffering a spate of bad luck after moving in, it is so worth your while to spend the money to make some changes – either to the location of your bathroom, or to your main door. Because this configuration doesn’t just bring bad luck, it can be dangerous.

4. MAKE SURE TOILETS DON’T SHARE WALLS WITH BEDS

When designing your bathroom, make sure your toilet does not share a wall with your bed. It’s OK to have the bedroom right next to the bathroom; that’s called en suite, and the more en suites you have, the higher the value of your house. But just make sure that something less inauspicious shares the other side of your bed wall. Like your mirror, or sink, or bath.

5. MAINTAIN CARPETS WELL IN YOUR BATHROOM

Using tiles for your bathroom is more practical and more low maintenance, but if you’re the type who likes to step out of a bath onto a plush carpeted finish, then make sure you spend some effort to maintain it well. Lay out an effective foot towel for when you step out of the bath so you don’t get your wall-to-wall carpet wet. If your permanent unmovable carpet is allowed to get damp and stay damp, it can create a subtle but foul smell that emits unhealthy chi. And if your carpet has become like that, the advice is to change your carpet. It will be money well spent.

6. BATH CAN BE BIG, TOILET SHOULD BE SMALL

The taboo associated with bathrooms is usually specifically confined to the toilet bowl, so if you have a beautiful big spa-like bathroom, it is OK. Just remember to keep the actual toilet small. It is better to confine the toilet in a small room within the bathroom. This way, the unpleasant smells from the WC don’t get a chance to waft out to the main area of your spa sanctuary.

Keep the door to your WC closed at all times when not in use. Another solution is to keep your toilet out of the bathroom altogether. This may be inconvenient, but it has been done before, and owners of such bathroom/WC arrangements assure us that it works. This way your WC doesn’t intrude into your bath sanctuary at all, leaving you able to enhance and decorate as much as you like without fear of “activating toilet feng shui”.

7. CHOOSE THE RIGHT COLOUR SCHEME

Don’t make your bathroom too yin. Bedrooms are good when slightly more yin than yang, as bedrooms are where you’re meant to rest and catch up on sleep. Bathrooms, although their meant for relaxing, are also where you scrub and cleanse yourself, so it should be a touch more yang than yin. So go for colours that are bright rather than dark. Whites, creams and pastels work a lot better for bathrooms then blacks, maroons and khakis. If you go for a dark colour, make sure the walls contrast nicely by painting them a complementary light colour. As long as you have balance, and the balance is tipped in favour of yang, you should achieve a good colour scheme.

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Space Planning

Take for example the space planning layouts on the right. The first arrangement is the most space efficient layout, where the sink, WC and showers are designed in a row to maximize efficiency and space. The layout in Type B looks at separating the wet and dry zones through a central walkway. This is enforced by introducing a feature wall at the end, to split the washing and preparation activities in the middle.

Type C looks at a more circular arrangement in terms of movement. As you enter in the toilet, the vanity table becomes the center piece to the circulation space, however, the arrangement of the WC, showers and feature walls are placed in a circular pattern. The final arrangement, Type D, looks at separating the activities of casual bathing with cleaning by locating the bathtub at the feature wall to highlight its importance. While the shower and WC are positioned on the other side, to indicate a clear demarcation between casual bathing and washing.

And as we throw in more elements into the design, such as walk-in wardrobes, makeup tables or even a sauna, the permutations in how a bathroom can be designed becomes endless. So what is the best way to design your bathroom? While there is no right or wrong, my advice would be to look at your lifestyle and determine what you want in the bathroom. Ask yourself if you enjoy baths, or are you the type who enjoys a rain shower in the morning. Or maybe you are someone who prefers to use a hand shower. Similarly, for the WC, are you one who shares or one who wants to keep the WC hidden or maybe even open.

Next, look at the space you have and work with the most practical layout that befits your lifestyle to the space that is permitted.

Feature Walls

Feature walls provide a means to break up the monotony of the tiling effect. By introducing a feature wall it helps give prominence to the element it is supposed to highlight. To create a feature wall, there are a few ways to do so. We can either do the conventional method by using two different types of tiles. The secret with this is to keep the tiles within the same colour family. For example, if white is the prominent colour, we can mix the tile colours within the grey and black spectrum. Similarly, if earth tones are being used, stick to earthy colours. Don’t mix with the primary colours such as reds, yellows and blues, as these colours will overpower the space. Especially when the space is restricted, the colours will completely dominate the bathroom.

The other method to create a feature wall is to play with different planes. In this example, the use of a smaller wall in the foreground helps to isolate the wall hung WC within the feature wall. But what helps highlight the feature is the use of a backdrop lighting effect, which not only helps illuminate the space, but creates a visual attraction to the feature wall.

Tiling Patterns & Designs

What determines a well-designed bathroom is the mixture and arrangement of the tiling layout. All bathrooms have to be tiled in some way, whether it is through stone or ceramic tiles. The design issue we have to deal with is to break the monotony of the tiling effect. If we use a single tone throughout the space, it becomes too monotonous and causes the room to feel claustrophobic. Not only that, all the key elements in the bathroom such as the sanitary ware starts to get lost in the saturated colour background.

In this example, the use of marble is truly breathtaking, but to continue the same colour stone throughout the space by replicating the walls and floor in the same tone tends to be distractive to the user. This colour tone is again repeated in the mosaic tile pattern of the bathtub wall, which adds further confusion to the design.

Everyone will have their own opinion to appreciate a space, but when mosaic patterns are used extensively, it may create a scenario for one to get disorientated and for one to misjudge depth and distance. Best to minimize any forms of mosaic patterns to isolated features, or not to use it at all.

And finally, a tiling pattern to avoid is the chess set pattern. While this may appeal to some, the checkered pattern can cause an epileptic episode, especially when you introduce mirrors which reflect the same pattern in the background.

Try to keep a simple tiling strategy when it comes to the bathroom design. In this scenario, the use of lighter tones tile for the floor helps to balance the darker tone wall effect. Similarly, if you use a darker tone for the floors, match it with a lighter tone for the walls. But what is interesting here is the use of mirrors to break away the monotony of the tiling effect. By creating a horizontal band at midway up the wall, it creates a visual dissection of the wall to create a top, middle and bottom band, thereby giving the user a panoramic feel to the space. This technique helps to create a visual expanse of space to an otherwise confined environment.

And when you integrate steps into the design especially for bathtub, use contrasting colours in the flooring to allow the user to identify where the step is. In this example, the riser of the step is carried through the wall tiles, which then is used as a feature wall for the WC. To highlight the bath area instead of tiles, a skylight is used to pull in natural light, but also to create a visual aura to the bath space, thereby accentuating its importance.

When you start designing the bathroom, first look at what layout suits your lifestyle and plan. Then look at ways to create feature walls for key elements and work through the whole design with a simple tiling pattern that accentuates the bath but not overwhelm the space.

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When it comes to Design, the end product is generally quite subjective. As clients, you tend to put your faith into your Designer hoping they can translate your aspirations into reality. Sometimes you get a product that you can be proud of and sometimes not. But through all my travels, this has got to be the Ultimate Design Question Mark of the Century.

Different designers have different styles and taste. I can understand that. I can also understand some designers are rather flamboyant, daring to explore contrasting colours and shapes to create the shock value when you enter the room. I also understand the concept of installing windows into the bathroom to create the feeling of space, as well as to pull natural sunlight into an otherwise enclosed room.

But I have never seen a bedroom that literally pulls the toilet into the bedroom. If it were a feature wall with glass panels at the side, it wouldn’t be so bad, but the use of a fully glazed panel where the main view from the bed is that of your loved one taking a S*** is beyond me. The shower at the corner is not so bad as one may envision, but I have to draw the line somewhere. Either the Designer was trying to create this no holds barred concept or there is a weird fetish behind their ideology.

So maybe the use of glazing was to make the room feel bigger. But as I walked into the adjacent room, I found that it was double the size and therefore not lacking the need for space. The same ideology is shown again with the WC directly facing the bed. Now one may say this is definitely NOT good luck to have a toilet facing the bed, but this definitely takes the cake for sure, as I think it is definitely NOT good luck to see someone taking a dump from the bed itself. If anything, it would be feel like your bedroom was next to the sewer line.

So next time you start to trust your Designer, make sure they are not on some ideological fetish crusade to change the world and be sure to know what you are getting before you commit to what you are getting.

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