I recently had the pleasure of designing a concept bathroom around the @hansgrohe_uk Raindance shower system in Matt Black. My concept was an outdoor bathroom as I love blurring the boundaries between outdoors and indoors and I wanted to play with this idea around black hardware.

Inspo shot for my outdoor bathroom concept via Pinterest.

I haven’t worked with black bathroom fittings before and my initial thought was that the bathroom would have to be in a monochrome scheme for it to work.

However, once I’d started mood boarding with images of the shower, I soon changed my mind.

The Raindance has beautiful form and line and the matt black colour really emphasises and accentuates this. It makes the shower a much more of a noticeable design feature than if it was in chrome for instance. So I used the line and form of the shower as a design feature. I used the strong line of the whole fitting to frame the bathroom and then picked up on the black in some of the accessories.

A big challenge in bathroom design is mixing and matching the colours of the hardware - the shower and controls, the sink taps and the bath taps. In my opinion, unless you’re strongly into symmetry and formal design, I don’t think you would necessarily have to have black sink and bath taps to match this shower. As long as the bath and sink taps match each other and are a very simple, unobtrusive design that allow the shower to be a strong standalone design feature. The black can then used as an accent colour to be picked up in other accessories such as towels or floor tiles. This also creates flow and harmony around the bathroom without being too matchy matchy.

I’ve also used the black in the floor tiles. Not only does this draw your eye down to the floor as part of your visual journey around the room, the black and white floor tiles create a mediterranean country look.

Tiles are used inside and outside a lot more in mediterranean countries so I wanted this to form the basis of my outside bathroom. As I say all the time, I love blurring the boundaries between inside and outside so to me floor tiles are the perfect vehicle for this.

I’ve then used Farrow and Ball ‘Setting Plaster’ as the main colour for the bathroom. This colour is a neutral, natural pink that you would find both indoors and outdoors and is the perfect foil for the black - and stops it looking too masculine.

Setting Plaster one of many ways of softening black.

Obviously I’ve used flowers for colour in my concept outdoor bathroom theme but you could pick up these colours using tiles in a real bathroom. I’ve used a palette of pinks, burgundies and a little black to take you on a journey from the pink of the walls to the black of the shower. Terazzo would be a great way of bringing in this palette.

Great use of terazzo to create a colour palette. Image Credit: @wearescout

To complete the design I used distressed wood in the form of reclaimed french shutters and an old bistro chair. Again this creates an outdoor garden feel, and ties in with the rustic galvanised bath, but also serves to again soften the strong lines of the black Raindance shower.

Finally! I added a fern - ferns are a must in every bathroom as they love the damp steamy conditions.

It was so fun creating this concept bathroom for Hansgrohe but hopefully you can see how some of the ideas can be used in a real bathroom. And who knows, one day I would love to have a real outdoor bathroom in my garden!