Strategies and Secrets from the Notebook of a London Bathroom Design Professional - Victorian and Edwardian are welcome in 2011

Strategies and Secrets from the Notebook of a London Bathroom Design Professional - Victorian and Edwardian are welcome in 2011

Most bathroom design schemes in London today tend to feel not so much medieval but more Victorian/Edwardian. They harken back to somewhere in the range of 1890-1935. The most noticeable features tend to be standalone iron bathtubs and adjacent boiler tanks. On the continent, bathtubs started to be wall-integrated in the 1940s, but in London the idea never became very popular. However, the 1960s saw many of the older-style bathtubs being thrown out as buildings were renovated and bathroom design professionals were called on to revamp London 's living spaces. But in the 1980s and beyond, the fashions changed, and once again London's best bathroom design studios fielded request for modern versions of the age-old Edwardian styles of bathroom furniture.


Wealthy London residents in the 1980s would typically visit one of the better-known auction houses with their bathroom design professional at their side to buy beautiful restored antique clawfoot bathtubs. At about the same time, some enterprising bathroom furniture manufacturers started to mass-produce reproductions of the famed standalone designs. Without the eye of an experienced bathroom design expert, it can be tricky to know whether or not a historic-looking tub is authentic … but regardless, if you visit London today and have the opportunity to luxuriate in one of these Edwardian-style masterpieces, you will definitely get a great sense of what London bathroom life was like in the early 1900s.