Umi Sushi makes: Bathroom revamp: dreaming

The truth is I am not really a bathroom kinda girl. Check out my pinterest boards and you’ll see 131 kitchens at the last count and only 6 bathrooms. There a few more tucked away on my decorate board but only because I thought the tiles had potential for a kitchen renovation. I don’t dream of recreating some luxury spa experience I had in Thailand. I hate massages. I’m not into beauty treatments. My favourite product is nivea soft because it does the job and it's cheap. I see the bathroom as a very functional room, not somewhere to linger. The truth is I am finding it difficult to visualise what my dream bathroom could look like.

I do however have a list of criteria; clean, simple, light, contemporary, inexpensive and no subway tiles. I am not a fan. It is more an association thing than a style prejudice. My husband loves them but then he hasn’t spent great swathes of his life travelling up and down the Northern Line. I can’t imagine anything worse than relaxing in a hot bath glancing at your tiles and suddenly being transported to the stink, heat and airlessness of the underground at rush hour.

The reality is we have almost no money to spend on this project and I am slightly fearful that if our design choices are too simple, the bathroom could end up looking purely functional verging on institutional. I prised myself away from the many beautiful kitchens seducing me online and trawled about for some bathrooms to get excited about. And guess what? I did get excited. How amazing is that flamingo above the bath? Only for most of these bathrooms you would need a pretty hefty budget and to live in some amazing high-ceilinged period house chock full of original features. So that rules out our boxy practical 1970s house then. Still I found plenty to inspire me. (All images are credited below where possible). Which ones do you like?