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Avocado is a faddy fruit. Before being smashed onto every piece of toast, it inspired an era of buttery-green bathroom suites that a generation of boomers have since tried to forget. The trend fell out of favour in the 1990s as homeowners decisively returned to white, but colour has been creeping back and sinks are proving a popular fixture for a whole range of shades.
“It’s wonderful to see colour re-emerging,” says Sophie Rowell, director and founder of Côte de Folk, who recently mounted a blue Burlington cloakroom basin onto Robert Kime’s Sunburst Green wallpaper in a London home. “It’s nostalgic, yes, but today’s take feels more intentional and sophisticated, and we’re seeing it used to create personality and warmth without overpowering the space,” she says. This is partly thanks to clever colour pairings. In the powder room of her Varese home, Italian fashion designer Marta Ferri installed a tangerine sink to match the orange handpainted de Gournay wallpaper. Meanwhile at Villa Colucci, a 19th-century palazzo available to rent in Puglia, vibrant contrasts include a custom blue Sbordoni basin set against green and yellow walls.
The enthusiasm for colour is being driven by a younger customer base. “We are now experiencing an ever-increasing shift towards much younger clients,” says Sam Powell, founder of The Bold Bathroom Company, which has supplied retro fittings for films including Paddington and Avengers: Age of Ultron. “This is the first time they’ve had the pleasure of seeing anything other than plain white bathrooms, and they love it.” Also meeting this demand is The Water Monopoly, which first introduced pastel tones with its Rockwell range in 2015. “It was a slow start,” says the brand’s director Justin Homewood. “Only brave designers were using the colours at first. But in early 2018 it really took off and we’re now seeing people mixing colours too.” The Water Monopoly’s most popular hue is willow green, followed by powder blue and sherbet yellow – a soft shade used by designer Pernille Lind for a private residence in Copenhagen, and Sara Garza of Punch World Studio for her own timber-clad bathroom in Dallas.
Poland-based Finch Studio packs a punch with The Water Monopoly’s purple sink, deployed as an unexpected visual anchor. “In my work, basins are never just functional objects – I treat them like sculptures, capable of setting the tone for the entire room,” says founder Magdalena Kwoczka. “Clients are intrigued by the idea of making one striking element the focal point, and a sink is a perfect candidate: it has a small surface area, yet completely transforms the mood – richer colours feel dramatic and immersive, while pastels can bring a whimsical touch.”
Colour is not limited to ceramic. Concrete creates a thoroughly modern look, with manufacturers such as Kast and US maker Concretti Designs producing basins in all shapes and shades. For something glossier, lava stone clads entire counters and sinks for a sleek, streamlined finish. “Customers particularly like it for its technical performance – it won’t fade, delaminate or be affected by chemicals,” says Geoff Leach, a representative of Pyrolave, which produces enamelled Volvic lava stone extracted from quarries in the Auvergne, France. From the thousands of Pyrolave colours to choose from, Studio Duggan picked a golden yellow for a curved custom basin at a London house, while designer Dorothée Meilichzon opted for rich reds and olive for the basins at the Cowley Manor Experimental hotel in the Cotswolds. “When I started to work on hotels in 2012, most were covered in white marble, which I found super-boring,” she says. “Lava is the best way to introduce colour while using a high-quality material.”
The rainbow of tones on offer means bathrooms no longer need resemble globs of guacamole to be fun. “Enough time has passed that we can embrace colour again,” concludes Rowell. “And not as a fleeting trend, but as a design statement that feels both fresh and enduring.”