The brief
A family bathroom in Harlow Old Town with a fixed plan: bath under the window, basin beside it, a wall-hung WC and a walk-in shower at the far end. The owners had settled on a Farrow & Ball shade and wanted the bathroom to carry that colour without a single tile, so the room reads as one warm grey surface from the floor to the window reveal.
The fittings were to be brass throughout: a wall-mounted basin tap, a rain head and shower controls and a tall heated towel rail. Against a quiet mineral surface, brass is the only thing that needs to shine.
What we did
Every surface that is not sanitaryware is microcement. The floor is a mesh-reinforced floor grade over the existing screed. The walls, the bath surround, the basin shelf and its recessed niche, the window reveal and the sill were taken in the wall grade, so the bath, the shelf and the reveal read as one object rather than a set of boxed-in parts. In the shower the finish runs floor to ceiling over a tanked build-up, with the floor falling to a single drain and no threshold between the shower and the room.
The colour was matched to the owners' chosen Farrow & Ball paint on a sealed sample panel first, because the sealer shifts a microcement tone and a match made on the unsealed material is not a match. The panel was checked in the room's own light against the paint card before a bucket was mixed.
The ceiling was kept white, which keeps the room tall and lets the grey do its work on the walls and floor.
The detail
- Floor-grade microcement, mesh-reinforced, over the existing screed.
- Wall-grade microcement to walls, bath surround, basin shelf and niche, window reveal and sill.
- Tanked walk-in shower, finish floor to ceiling, level access with a single drain.
- Colour-matched to a Farrow & Ball shade on a sealed sample panel.
- Brass basin tap, rain head, shower controls and heated towel rail; wall-hung WC.
The result
What the owners have is a bathroom with nothing to maintain but the surface itself: no grout to discolour, no silicone line to fail and no tile edge to chip. The colour they chose runs unbroken over every surface, the brass warms it and the whole room wipes clean in a pass. Because the finish is hand-applied it is repaired by hand rather than replaced, and because every tone was signed off on a panel in this room's light, what was chosen is what was installed.
