The most considered bathrooms being commissioned in Melbourne today are barely tiled at all.
A decade ago, luxury in a bathroom meant book-matched stone slabs and elaborate mosaics. Today, in the projects we are asked to work on, it means a single seamless mineral finish — floor to ceiling, into the shower, across the vanity return.
Why the shift is happening
The eye has grown tired of joints. Once you have stood in a shower with no grout lines at all, tile begins to look busy. Mineral finishes give the architect and the client a rare thing: silence.
The best compliment a bathroom can receive is that no one can quite say what it is finished in.
Microcement handles floors and walls with the same surface. Tadelakt — a burnished lime finish from Marrakesh — belongs in wet zones where a warm, softly glowing surface is wanted. Both age gently. Neither shouts.
