Guest Work

In the 1930s, thoroughly modern consumers added a cloakroom lavatory or lavette to the family home, installing the extra bathroom for guests and family alike under the stairway or in place of a large clothes closet.

The snug chambers--with proper fixtures, of course--’will rival the largest room in the house in all around practical value,” a 1930 Kohler Co. catalog promised. The catalog offered two styles of Narrow, wall-mounted sinks for use in small rooms.

As a name, the “lavette” didn’t endure. But more than 60 years later, the concept of the guest bath or powder room is bigger than ever.

Next to the laundry room, it’s still the smallest space in the house. But when it comes to design, the tiny powder room packs a big punch.

Today’s powder room is more than a convenience for guests and family. It has become a place to put your best face forward.

The art on the walls is likely to be real. Lighted niches display items from the owner’s collection of seashells or antique perfume bottles. There’s a funky light fixture over the sink or an elegant sconce on the wall.

The lavatory faucet is unusual and maybe even a bit impractical. The toilet is more expensive than the model in the master bath. Ditto for the sink, which might be hammered metal or even 24-karat gold.

“It’s a place where people like to strut their stuff,” said Joni Owen of Kitchens by Joni in Fountain Valley. She’s a certified kitchen and bath designer who estimates that bathroom remodels make up 60% of her business.

The ‘90s powder room is an art gallery, a mini-showcase for the design theme of the house and a place for people to let their guests know who they are, or who they would like to be.

“If they have a piece of artwork they just love, that’s where they want to put it. They can make [the room] the theme for the house, and they haven’t spent a whole lot of money doing it,” Owen said. A client might buy one piece of nice artwork that becomes the focal point for the powder room and play off of that piece with colors that complement it in mosaic tile on the floor, she said.

The powder room’s very smallness--typically 4 feet by 6 feet--is the key to its design popularity, designers say. You can make a big splash on a small scale.

“You can do that little area fairly inexpensively and feel like you’ve done a lot,” said interior designer Lynda Pratt Notaro of Lynz Designs in Mission Viejo. She created a dramatic powder room in the Orange County Philharmonic Society’s design house last year.

“People are a little more daring in the powder room because they don’t see it as a big space, and they feel like it won’t cost them a lot of money,” Owen added. “There’s not going to be a lot of square footage in tile, and there’s just one sink.”

Faux wall finishes are popular in powder rooms because people feel safe experimenting in such a small area, Notaro said. Homeowners often do the work themselves, she added.

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The true powder room--sans shower or bath--lets homeowners toss caution to the wind when it comes to picking out flooring and putting up art, designers say. Concerns about moisture damage, nonslip flooring and practical lighting for applying makeup fade from the picture.

Then there’s the guest factor.

Any guest who comes over is likely to use that room, so it becomes a special place, Owen said.

Christopher Tower rebuilt a home in Laguna Beach that was destroyed by the October 1993 fire that swept through his neighborhood.

“We wanted a special ambience in the powder room,” said Tower, who worked with a designer to come up with concepts for the house but did the actual design work himself.

That included going to granite yards in the San Fernando Valley to hand-pick granite for vanities and counter tops, matching that with slate for the floor and working with a fabricator to design the vanity, which is anchored to the wall and seems to float above the floor.

Features such as a hammered metal sink, pewter-finish faucets, pewter hardware and doorstops make Tower’s powder room more opulent than the master bathroom.

There’s art glass on the counter and signed Dali lithographs on the walls. The art is framed in carved wood with a muted, brushed gold finish; the same style of frame surrounds the large mirror over the sink, but the finish is silver to complement the basin. Recessed lighting, positioned over the mirror, spotlights the artwork.

The slate floor is in muted pastel shades of gray, blue and mauve; a black granite border echoes the vanity of deep black granite with an opalescent pattern. The toilet--and in this case, the same top-of-the-line quality is also installed in the master bath--is a light gray rather than the current designer favorite, Kohler’s soft cream color called “Biscuit” Gray went with the slate floor better, Tower decided.

“We upgraded everything in there except the toilet. . . . We were rebuilding a dream home, so I didn’t hold anything back,” Tower said.

The whole effect is an arresting, soft contemporary look that gives Tower’s guests a preview of the design theme for the whole house.

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Sounds wonderful, you say, but what does it cost to remodel a powder room?

The answer, Owen said, is about half as much as it costs to remodel a bathroom with a shower. At a minimum, a powder room spruce-up would run about $1,500, Owen estimated. At the maximum, well, the sky’s the limit. A high-end faucet alone can cost $1,000, she said.

“You need a nice-looking toilet, and that will be $500 easily. You can get away with simple toilets in a big bathroom, but in a powder room you really need something that has a decent look to it because there it is; that’s what you see,” she said.

A pedestal sink would be another $500, she estimated, and replacing the faucet would cost $300 to $400 for mid-range quality. With a new mirror and some do-it-yourself faux finishing on the walls and existing vanity, you’ve probably reached that $1,500 minimum. For another couple hundred dollars, you could add a nice light fixture, she said.

To completely change everything in the powder room and have some money left to play with, a $5,000 budget is about right, Owen said. Generally, the biggest costs in a powder room are split between materials and labor.

“You have to get creative with a smaller budget. If you are handy, you can hire a consultant to tell you what you need to do and where to get good buys on materials, and you can do the work yourself,” she said. Her company does that, choosing materials and providing a sketch of the end result for $600.

Tower saved money throughout his rebuilding project by negotiating prices and acting as his own middleman.

“If it’s not a national chain, and you are buying more than one light fixture, ask for a discount. Chances are you’ll get at least 10%,” he said.

By selecting the granite himself and buying it directly rather than through a granite fabricator, Tower said, he got his materials for $10 to $11 a foot rather than the fabricator’s $20-a-foot estimate.

His designer-looking powder room mirror? He ordered the mirror from a glass company and had his art framer make the frame for a total cost of $350.

The materials Tower used, granite and slate, and the natural tones he favors are popular in bathroom design, designers say. Glass block is still in style; limestone flooring is commonly used.

When clients consult her about powder rooms, Notaro said, they want to know what the latest look is, but they also want to know what is going to have the most longevity.

“They want to make a wise purchase. The toilet and sink are pretty substantial, so you want to put dollars into that and then get into what materials to use like Corian, granite or limestone,” she said. She often uses hand-painted tile to coordinate with wallcoverings, and she likes to pull in art such as a small statue on a pedestal.

Notaro created high drama in the Pelican Hill design house with a black granite counter top, a 24-karat gold sink, gold and crystal fixtures and an elaborate Louis XV mirror in a gilded frame. Wall sconces with a touch of gold flanked the mirror.

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Often there’s no window in a powder room, or if there is, it’s a small one. Notaro made the most of the arched Normandy window by using a full-on window treatment, the kind usually reserved for a formal living room.

If you want your bath cabinetry to look like a piece of traditional furniture, you can have it. A major manufacturer makes one that resembles an antique French piece, she said.

Sometimes the cabinet is an antique. That was the case in one of Owen’s favorite powder rooms, one she designed for a large Spanish Colonial house at the beach. She found a heavy-looking antique sideboard to go with the architectural style of the house and had the marble top cut to insert a bowl for the sink.

A limestone-trimmed wall mirror, terra-cotta flooring in a hexagonal pattern, a subtle wildlife mural painted on the walls and pewter-finished brushed steel fixtures all added to the Old World feeling.

Owen is big on brushed steel and--except in powder rooms--down on brass. By its nature, brass will tarnish once the protective coating is fractured, she said. If you really want it, the powder room is the place for it because it won’t get such hard use. Today’s faucets often combine materials, such as chrome with a touch of brass or stone.

The lines are sleeker in new bath cabinetry, and mirrors have fun shapes. There’s a clear sink that lets you see right through to the plumbing. Medicine cabinets now come in unusual shapes that are pointed and arched and have integrated lighting.

The design is meant to grab your attention, like the mirrored cabinet unit with a nickel-plated sink set in a thick glass counter. Toilets are prettier too. The shapes offer more variety and even art--one manufacturer has an artist edition series that features bath china with patterns based on windblown ribbons of sand, the feathery black and white stripes of a loon and the northern lights.

And where do these splashy items show up?

The powder room.

“You see more opulent details in powder rooms because people will spend a little bit more for that one faucet than they would if they had to buy a couple of them for the master bath. They’ll go for the nicer floor tile, and it’s funny, but they’ll always say, ‘Let’s get the little bit nicer toilet for there,’ ” Owen said.