Vintage accessories, rustic tiles and more. These bathrooms designed in AD materials add a beautiful, nostalgic charm to Indian homes. Here are our picks for retro bathrooms from the AD archive that feel like you’ve stepped into another decade.
The house feels like home.
“We chose materials and furniture that look like they had a past life, but they really didn’t,” explains Shekar, one of the architects behind the project. The décor of the bungalow is simple and clean, with geometric lines and plain walls blending in with the surrounding areas of the property, creating a welcoming atmosphere. This can be seen in their timeless vintage bathrooms, where white and gold are a common theme. But a Mumbai escape has recently become a recurring theme for interior designer Shraddha Shah, and something about the room immediately caught her eye. Shah didn’t shy away from adding patterns, upholstery, wallpaper and colourful tiles to the vintage bathroom. The flaws are so numerous and so serious that she decided to preserve them, at least in spirit, to create a beautiful vocabulary of missing surfaces, live-edge planks and deliberately exposed brickwork. Nothing is perfect here, and it doesn’t have to be.
A Jeweller’s Elegant Bathroom
The luxury of this Ahmedabad hotel is that everything in it is unique. Every piece of furniture is made by local artisans, not from wood or traditional furniture, but from old Gujarati homes. The bathroom features a beautiful marble vanity along with numerous tiles, chandeliers, vintage wall sconces, and antique mirrors. The master bathroom is decorated with layered cut tiles and vintage sconces, flanked by a custom vanity in exquisitely molded marble—befitting a jewelry designer’s home. When building a home, attention to detail is not just important; perhaps out of nostalgia or perhaps in memory of their grandfather, the family decided not to rebuild, but to restore it, preserving its original features and beauty for themselves, their family, and their friends. The calm whiteness of the home is reflected in the master bathroom, which is covered in classic graphic paper tiles from the Morbi region of Gujarat. The architect believes in a modernism based on refined minimalism and simple, domestic rituals.
Metropolis minimalist interior design.
Although the rooms all seem to be from the same century, each has its own beauty. This retro bathroom is surrounded by blue tones that match the rest of the house. With antique lighting fixtures, side mirrors and large tiles on the floor, this bathroom represents the beauty of a beautiful English home.
