The Top 5 Latest Vanity Trends

WORDS: Joanna Jefferies

Let’s get personal

There’s a trend gaining momentum that will make indecisive couples happy – and that is personalising your bathroom vanity choices. Sound a bit vague? Stylist Hayley Dryland says it basically means you’re not tied to one style, be it classic, Scandinavian or minimalist. Everything can be chosen on its own merits, mixed and matched. The key, says Hayley, is “being confident – make sure one or two things tie into the materials or colours used in the house.” Mixing high with low, or classic with contemporary might mean choosing a contemporary tap with a classic Shaker-style vanity cabinet, paired with different cabinet feet, but in the same metal. “Trends are overlapping – you can customise your vanity’s design to suit your lifestyle.”

Colour me pretty

For all the colour lovers out there there’s good news – bold colour choices are in. While neutral palettes have reigned supreme for some time now – and they’re always really in style – if you’re willing to be a bit daring with your choice of hues you’ll be bang on trend. Pink is still the colour of the day, but the shade is now steering away from the popular, icier Millenial pink and trending towards a soft mushroom pink or a dirty apricot shade. Bold greys and charcoals are also popular and purple is the latest jewel tone to gain popularity –  it covers a wide spectrum of shades from a soft dusky lavender to a bright amethyst tone.

Storage

With so many homes turned into open plan spaces, the linen closet tends to be taken out and thrown into the skip, which means the bathroom is often the place where towels are stored, along with all the usual bathroom paraphernalia. Hayley says this trend has prompted another trend and that is taking storage right to the ground, rather than having a wall hung vanity, which was popular for so many years.
Storage is, however, very personal to the homeowner’s needs. “In the family bathroom, to maximise the space, you could put in four drawers with a built-in bin like you do in the kitchen and a plug in the back for your hair dryer – but in a guest bathroom you may only need one drawer for spare toilet rolls.” Mirror storage is another opportunity for hiding clutter in small spaces says Hayley and it can be customised with timber or brass frames to match other elements in the bathroom. “That way you can store makeup and toiletries in the mirror and towels in the vanity drawers.”

Tapware: metallic mix up

Tapware is the 'jewellery' of the bathroom, and the mix and match trend applies here too. So if you can’t decide between the pewter and the brushed brass you’re in luck. There is one proviso though and that is consistency because you want to make sure your metallic mash-up looks deliberate and considered rather than a mish-mash of odd choices. For example, you could pair pewter tapware with black drawer pulls, but keep both in the same contemporary style. Or you could match ornate copper tapware with ornate copper vanity feet and pair them with a contemporary steel mirror frame and vanity door handles. Hayley says when choosing your tapware it’s worth considering “running the same theme through multiple bathrooms to create consistency”.

Minimalist basin beauty

Basins are a point of practicality in any bathroom and stone benchtops will always be both practical and jaw-dropping. The trend at the moment is moving away from the eye-catching travertine with its bold unique patterns and towards a simpler more minimalist aesthetic. Undermount basins are key to achieving this and suit both the family bathroom and the en-suite for their ease of use, counter space and easy cleanup. If you want to take the undermount to the next level, Hayley says using a very thin slab of stone or composite is the trend du jour. “It’s a very European trend and there are porcelain basins that look like marble that you can install so it looks like all one form – it’s a very minimalist look.” Equally, going with the personalising trend, Hayley says a simple bowl mounted to a stunning piece of stone always looks impressive.

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