Songs from the Wood: 7 Bathrooms with Natural Wood

I love seeing natural wood used in a bathroom.  I design quite a few bathrooms every year and they typically involve hours of my time spent with tile, thinking about tile, drawing tile and then having conversations with the homeowner and the contractor about the tile.  (It’s a very exciting job, get a grip on your jealousy).  I could bore you to tears with discussions about outside corners and tile!  If I ever designed a tile line, I would have all sorts of matching trim, edge and corner details to go with the main tile.

Natural wood in a bathroom brings warmth and texture to a typically tile-lined space.  Despite my rant above, bathrooms are tile-lined for good reason.  Water is a natural enemy of wood and for a lot of people it’s hard to reconcile that with an expensive bathroom remodel.  However, it really does give you a bang for your buck in a bathroom remodel.  If you pick a solid wood with a tight grain (typically mahogany, teak and cedar along with some old growth, or reclaimed pines and cypress), seal it correctly and have good ventilation you could even have it in your shower (hire a professional for this!!).

Here are 7 bathrooms where natural wood is the star:

“You feel a certain way in a glass or concrete or limestone building. It has an effect on your skin – the same with plywood or veneer, or solid timber. Wood doesn’t steal energy from your body the way glass and concrete steal heat. When it’s hot, a wood house feels cooler than a concrete one, and when it’s cold, the other way around.”   Peter Zumthor

If you’re nervous about wall to wall wood planks in a bathroom, try using it on the sink wall only and steer clear of the tub and shower walls.  A little touch of it helps warm up a room immensely.

“Let me bring you songs from the wood:
To make you feel much better than you could know.
Dust you down from tip to toe.
Show you how the garden grows.”
Jethro Tull, Songs from the Wood