A home owner makes an impact in a tiny bathroom renovation – bringing some European inspiration with a creative coral tile mosaic.

When inner-city penthouse owner Mark decided to renovate a small bathroom, he went to a bathroom design company armed with some strong design ideas of his own. The most striking aspect of this second bathroom is the unusual tile work. Mark had seen something similar while in Italy: a coral mosaic style called Corallo, created with Bisazza tiles. He presented the concept to designer Carmel Killingbeck, who incorporated it, albeit more subtly, into the new bathroom.

The outlandish red, white and brown colour scheme may well have come about in direct protest to what was there before. The poky space was a mess of lime green and needed to be brought into line with the standard of the sophisticated home. Carmel set off the bright tiles with classy chrome fixtures and introduced rich chocolate tones in the floor tiles and vanity unit. Carmel’s design skills were working overtime, as the very small room was transformed into something sleek and spacious with minimal structural adjustment. The key was creating the illusion of space; this was achieved with features such as mirrored cupboards and an elevated vanity unit. The tiled ceiling also adds to the effect.

But to really open it up, the existing shower base needed to be removed. Inspired by the wet rooms he had seen during various work trips to Sweden, Mark’s big request was to do away with the shower screen. "I had worked a lot in Sweden and loved their wet rooms and the idea of being able to walk around and have a shave without having to get in and out of a clunky shower with a door or a screen," says Mark. "Openness was key."Removing the shower base did take a bit of work, as did the sizing of the vanity unit, while the mosaic had tilers working solidly for two weeks. Some aspects of the construction were adjusted as they went along, with limited space proving to be the biggest hurdle."

The work itself was huge for such a small room. The waterproofing for the wet room took ages, but was key, considering the location and design of the room," explains Mark. "The tiling took two weeks from start to finish and only then did we get a sense of how it would look and whether the Corallo tiles worked. Then came all the little things: tweaks, changes and fittings." All the effort has clearly paid off. The result is a stunning bathroom with a design that’s unique in the Australian home.

This is our second, much smaller bathroom, but we wanted it to be something fresh and different from the usual.

I really wanted Bisazza tiles. I’d seen the Corallo design in Italy and loved it. From there I worked with Carmel and she really brought so many ideas to the table. First she convinced me not to tile the whole bathroom in the Corallo style, which would have been very expensive and would not have looked as good. She was also keen on tiling the ceiling – something we had not considered but which adds to the sense of increased space in the room.

We really had to make a leap of faith with the tiles. At the start, we had only a small sample to look at and they looked terrible; neither Carmel nor I was convinced looking at those. We almost went with something more boring, but it was amazing to see them once they were up there. Now we think they look great.

The great thing about this bathroom is how easy it is to use. You sometimes see ornate rooms that have had a lot of work done, but they seem tricky and hard to maintain. Our bathroom is very straightforward.