The bathroom renovation is one of the highest-return investments a homeowner can make — both financially and in terms of daily quality of life. A well-designed bathroom, particularly a primary suite bathroom, is used twice a day by the people who matter most to you. It should be calming, well-lit, efficiently organised, and beautifully finished. When all of those things align, the room has a tangible effect on how you start and end every day.
At JAC Interiors, bathrooms are among the most technically demanding spaces we design. The constraints are significant — fixed plumbing locations, strict waterproofing requirements, tile installation tolerances, steam and moisture management — and the material choices are permanent in a way that most residential decisions are not. Here's how we think about designing bathrooms that are genuinely exceptional.
Layout is the foundation
Before any material is selected, the layout has to be right. In most bathroom renovations, the temptation is to keep the existing plumbing locations to control cost — and while this is often a reasonable decision, it should be a conscious choice rather than a default. Moving plumbing adds cost but unlocks spatial possibilities that may be worth far more than the expense. A primary bathroom where the shower is positioned to receive morning light, where the vanity faces a flattering direction, and where traffic flows naturally is a fundamentally better room than one constrained by a 1980s plumbing layout.
The most important layout decision in a primary bathroom is typically the relationship between the shower, the tub (if there is one), and the vanity. These three elements need to coexist without competing for space or creating awkward dead zones. In rooms with the budget and square footage, separating the toilet into its own compartment is almost always the right decision — it allows multiple people to use the bathroom simultaneously and gives the main room a cleaner, more spa-like quality.
Bathrooms
Stone and tile: the defining choices
More than in any other room, the primary material in a bathroom — the stone or tile that covers the floor, the shower walls, and often the vanity surface — defines the entire character of the space. It deserves more time and consideration than most clients initially give it.
Large-format stone slabs — Using a single stone slab that runs continuously from floor to shower wall, book-matched at the seam, is one of the most effective ways to create a bathroom that feels genuinely luxurious. The grout lines disappear, the veining reads as a continuous composition, and the room has a coherence that tiled surfaces rarely achieve. Marble and quartzite are the most common choices for this application. Calacatta marble with a dramatic veining pattern can be genuinely breathtaking in a shower surround when the book-match is done well.
Terrazzo — Back strongly in both floor and wall applications. The appeal is its combination of visual warmth (it reads as a living material rather than a manufactured one) and durability (pre-cast terrazzo is exceptionally hard-wearing and water-resistant). Contemporary terrazzo formulations offer a wide range of aggregate sizes, colours, and base tones that make it far more versatile than its historical associations suggest.
Zellige and handmade tile — The gentle imperfections of handmade tile — slightly varying thickness, surface variation, subtle colour shifts — bring a warmth to bathroom walls that manufactured tile rarely matches. Zellige, the traditional Moroccan glazed tile, has become a significant element in contemporary luxury interiors precisely because of these qualities. It catches light in ways that mechanically consistent tile doesn't, and it gives a bathroom a sense of craft and intentionality that photography captures well but that is even more compelling in person.
Fluted and textured surfaces — Vertical fluting on vanity panels, textured wall tile behind the freestanding tub, carved stone details — tactile surfaces that engage with light and add dimension to what might otherwise be a flat material palette. This is one of the stronger trends in bathroom design right now and one that we expect to endure because it's grounded in genuine craft rather than novelty.
Bathrooms
The shower: investment worth making
In the contemporary luxury primary bathroom, the shower has largely overtaken the freestanding tub as the primary design focal point and the element where clients are willing to invest most heavily. A well-designed shower should be generously sized (we rarely design walk-in showers smaller than 4 by 5 feet in primary bathrooms), barrier-free (no curb, seamless transition from the bathroom floor), and finished with the same care as the rest of the room.
Rain showers — ceiling-mounted showerheads that deliver a wide, even flow — have become essentially standard in primary suite bathrooms. Combined with a separate hand shower and, in more invested projects, a body spray system or steam capability, they transform the shower from a functional necessity into a genuine ritual. The plumbing for these systems needs to be planned early and coordinated carefully with the rough-in — steam generators, in particular, require dedicated electrical runs and sealed enclosures that need to be specified before walls are framed.
Shower niche design is a detail that separates a professionally designed bathroom from a contractor-designed one. Niches need to be positioned at the right height for the users, planned so that the tile or stone pattern runs through them coherently, and sized to actually hold the products that will go in them. These are decisions that require a designer's attention — they're too small to appear on a contractor's drawing set but too visible to get wrong.
Vanity and millwork
The vanity is both a functional piece — storage, integrated plumbing, surface for daily use — and one of the most visually prominent elements in the room. In luxury bathrooms, it's almost always custom-designed to the specific dimensions and requirements of the space.
The current direction in luxury primary vanities is toward furniture-like design: pieces that look like they were crafted rather than manufactured, with legs that reveal the floor beneath them (making the room feel larger), integrated handles rather than applied hardware, and materials — wood, stone, lacquer — that have warmth and character. The built-in, fully enclosed vanity that dominated bathroom design for the previous two decades has largely given way to something that reads more as a piece of furniture in a spa than as a utilitarian cabinet.
Double vanities in primary bathrooms are standard at the luxury level, with dedicated sink, mirror, and storage for each person. We pay careful attention to the spacing between sinks — too close and the vanity feels cramped; too far apart and it feels institutional. The mirror specification is often underestimated: a backlit mirror or a medicine cabinet with integrated lighting does more for the morning routine than any amount of overhead light, and it becomes a significant design element in the room.
Bathroom lighting
Good bathroom lighting is one of the most impactful investments in the room and one of the most frequently compromised. The goal is layered lighting that serves multiple purposes: bright, even, flattering light for grooming; warm, dimmable ambient light for the rest of the time; accent lighting that highlights the material choices and adds depth.
The critical rule in bathroom lighting is to put the primary light source at face height, not above the head. Overhead light creates unflattering shadows. Sconces at either side of the mirror — at eye level, not significantly above or below — provide the even, flattering light that makes morning routines genuinely pleasant. Combine these with a dimmer-controlled overhead source for ambient light and under-cabinet lighting for depth, and the bathroom works across the full range of times and moods.
If you're planning a bathroom renovation and want a professional perspective on the design, get in touch with us here or call us at 310-428-2645. Bathrooms are one of the rooms where good design pays the most consistent dividends.
