Like a lot of the endeavors that make us human, the mission of refreshing, remodeling, or expanding your home’s bathrooms is part art, part engineering. The best Hilton Head Island bath redesign companies know this, and yet, how can you tell whether the company you are considering “gets it” about the results you want to achieve? In addition to the art-and-engineering balance, the best bath redesign companies also have a talent for knowing when to listen, when to lead, and when to offer considerate options.
We Begin with the End in Mind
The most advanced approach to design these days is called “considerate design.” The experience of beauty and comfort and luxury today is different from even 10 years ago. Considerate design means that your experience of the room progresses from an overall impression, gradually to more and more detail. As those details come to light, you notice that somebody understood what you wanted, and where you would need that to appear. This is “the new luxury.” Excellent design today is not for showing off, but rather for sensing the calm assurance that somebody understood exactly what you wanted to experience in that room.
In the case of bathrooms, most people are aware of desiring convenience. Beyond that, too, a sense of calm, of organization, of comfort enters the picture for most of us, because this is the place where we begin our days, and where we prepare for a restful night.
With this overall idea in mind, the best bath redesign companies on Hilton Head Island take care to consult with you and listen carefully. That listening brings with it a perspective that accomplished designers build through experience and study, a perspective of history or heritage, as well as potential and possibilities.
Where the Bathroom Came From
Perhaps more than any other room in the home – the only rival might be the kitchen – the bathroom has come the farthest in the shortest time. As elegant as Victorian homes might appear, with their decorative treatments and “gingerbread” facades, they come from an era in which the bathroom was “out back.” Look carefully at these classic homes restored, and you’ll realize that the bathrooms were retro fit. Often a half-bath under the stairway, and one of the smaller bedrooms upstairs converted completely to a full bath. Before those conversions, morning shaves and freshening up took place at “dressers” in which a marble panel protected the specialized furniture’s tabletop from splashes arising from the china bowl and pitcher provided there.
The first generation of homes in the U.S. to have indoor bathrooms to begin with were the Craftsman, or Mission style, shortly after the turn of the 20th century. Reading the advertising literature of the period, you’ll notice the word “hygienic” used an awful lot. It’s as if the architects and designers felt that people needed reassurance that it was okay to bring the bathroom from the outdoors, indoors. Perhaps another sign of this was that the Craftsman bathrooms were white-on-white. These were certainly good for giving a hygienic appearance, yet cold and dull to a modern eye.
The best bath redesign companies – especially on Hilton Head Island – draw a bit of today’s inspiration from the riot of color that came to bathrooms in the 1930s. Technology made tiles of pinks and blues and greens possible, and designers used them to celebrate the acceptance of the bathroom as a space that is indeed private and personal, and yet one that should also be presentable. Today’s color palette for the bathroom is more restrained than in those days, yet the lessons of freedom and interest remain, even as people today usually lean toward more restful, comforting colors.
The Productive Point of View
The value of knowing the past comes from not being stuck in it. Still, the perspective of bathroom evolution and progress is deep in the DNA of the best bath redesign companies. This brings to mind a factor that it would be wise to consider: Is the design company looking at my project from the fixtures out, or from the experience in?Some of the most compelling, inspiring visuals that come to a person’s attention when they consider a new bathroom design are provided by the companies that make bathroom fixtures. Only the highest of fashion photography even begins to compare with the quality of images these faucet and lavatory ads are built around. The lighting, the staging, the camera angles – the sheer expertise – makes these images motivating indeed for anyone considering the project of remodeling, refreshing, or redesigning their bathrooms. We are inspired by them ourselves and find them especially useful as reference points in discussing a person’s desires for their project.
It is not just the appearance of fixtures today that makes them motivating, but also the sheer functionality. Who really grew up imagining a shower that comes from three directions? Or a faucet that keeps its temperature setting fairly stable from one shower to the next? The sheer improvements in what bathroom fixtures can do make them a fertile topic for you to discuss with bath redesign companies.
Beware, however, of the design firm that sees the fixtures first. In our view, the best bath redesign companies come to those selections as a conclusion, rather than a starting point.
A Better Place to Begin
Here on Hilton Head Island, we find that more is discovered, and resulting satisfaction is greater, when bath redesign companies begin instead with a considerate conversation. Make your own desires the beginning. What do you want to see and think and feel when you step into this bathroom? What should it impart to your family, loved ones, and friends?
“I know a place where dreams are born,” so begins a song from the timeless musical, Peter Pan. That’s how we look at this conversation. The beginning, for the very best bath redesign companies, is this time and place where your own vision takes shape, through an orchestrated process of listening, considering, and proposing. From that talk, the bathroom of your dream begins to take shape.
No matter what stage your thinking has reached, let’s get together and have this talk. Our passion and our pursuit is to connect your own desires with the finest results that design can offer.
