What’s New
Surface was the thread this week. Tile with depth in it, paint that behaves like a material, and solid wood that outlives the room it was built for. Fewer finishes, chosen to last, and given more to do.
Cersaie: tile goes bigger and deeper
The tile fair in Bologna pulled in two directions. One camp went larger, with porcelain slabs long enough to run from floor to wall to counter with almost no joints. The other went deeper: fluted, faceted and hand-painted tile that reads as part of the architecture. Both are useful in a bathroom. A large slab keeps the room calm, and one dimensional wall gives the eye somewhere to rest. Green also turned up across the stands, from pale sage to forest. Read it on Design Milk
Benjamin Moore picks a green as well
Last week Sherwin-Williams chose a pale green. This week Benjamin Moore named Webster Green, a mid-tone green with a little grey in it, from its historical range. Two of the big paint houses landing on green in the same season says the colour is settling in rather than passing through. It suits panelled rooms and traditional trim, and we would try it on millwork first: an island, a bank of mudroom lockers, a library wall beside warm oak. Read it on Design Milk
A kitchen that moved house
Danish maker Garde Hvalsøe took a solid ash kitchen out of a client’s studio after five years and rebuilt it as the centre of her new home on the Copenhagen waterfront, zinc frame and lava-stone sink included. It is a good argument for cabinetry built from solid wood. If a kitchen can be taken apart and rebuilt in a new house five years on, it will hold up for decades in the house it was built for. Read it on Design Milk
Grand, without feeling cold
Hommeboys Interiors gutted and rebuilt a large family house in Los Altos Hills, California, letting oak panelling, natural stone, hand-applied plaster and weathered steel carry the colour instead of paint. An angular plaster fireplace decides where the furniture goes, which is what a hearth should do in a big family room. Many larger homes in Oakville and the west GTA come to us with the same brief: generous rooms that still feel warm. Read it on Design Milk
Rugs built for the kitchen table
A round-up of ten new rug collections runs from dense hand-knotted silk to abaca and jute. The quieter news is that performance yarns are now hand-knotted and hand-tufted too, so a rug that can take a spill under the kitchen table no longer has to look like a compromise. Read it on Design Milk
A sauna that arrives on a crane
Nokken’s Super Sauna is a prefabricated cabin in heat-treated spruce that seats ten, with two cold plunge tubs and an outdoor shower. It arrives assembled and can be running within a day. It is designed for hotels, which is why we are watching it for our hospitality work: here, wellness arrives as a finished piece rather than a construction schedule. Read it on Azure
What We Picked
Our pick is the idea behind Cersaie rather than any one tile: let most of a room stay quiet, and give one surface real depth. It is how we approach most bathrooms, and it ages better than a room where every wall is competing.
The powder room at Sixth Lane is built that way. The walls are wrapped in fluted travertine, with agate accents around a round mirror, and nothing else in the room tries to compete with it. In the primary ensuite the same travertine goes flat and calm beside white oak, with the tub under the window, because a room you relax in needs less texture, not more.
If you are planning a bathroom this winter, choose the one surface that will carry the room before you choose anything else. You can see the fluted travertine powder room at Sixth Lane, read about our bathroom design work in Oakville, or look back at last week’s Dispatch.
Planning a renovation in Oakville, Mississauga or the west GTA? We would be glad to walk through it with you. Start a conversation