The importance of storage for functional bathroom basins

It’s said you can learn a lot about someone by rifling through the contents of their bathroom cabinet. But it’s more than just the storage that comes under scrutiny. In preparation, we dress our bathrooms like exhibitions of our (projected) personality – prompting the most luxurious products front and centre while keeping the rest tucked away.

As playful and colourful bathroom trends take hold of contemporary interiors, so too does keeping surfaces clear and unblemished. This means that storage solutions are playing a more vital role in our sanitary spaces, and those with the highest functionality are rising to the top. The following products clean up a bathroom’s usability while revealing only what we want others to see.

The bathroom of the Old&New apartment in Kyiv, Ukraine, for example, by Between the Walls, does exactly as its name suggests, combining colour combinations of vintage emerald green, creamy marble and gold accents with contemporary curves and edges. Meanwhile, rich wooden cabinetry helps to keep the luxurious surfaces above clear and visible by offering accessible space below.

These Dolcevita vanity drawers from Ideagroup similarly combine vibrant colour with sculptural contemporary curves, for example. The drawers themselves are edged with glass, helping to draw light inside. And speaking of inside the drawer, Duravit’s L-Cube cabinets use natural wood inserts to segregate the space. A cut-out section makes way for the waste pipe, allowing the drawer to sit higher in the cabinet.

While the act of opening a cupboard door may not sound difficult, the additional obstacle makes a big difference to usability and functionality. Fresh towels can be grabbed quickly with one hand from the open shelf underneath the Underground cabinet from GB Group, for example. And those staying in the recently opened Cōmodo Bad Gastein hotel in Austria can empty their wash bags into the washrooms’ open shelves without forgetting to pack them up again.

Keeping everything out in the open, however, means there’s nowhere to hide. Anything carelessly misplaced makes an instant stain on the aesthetic, and ensuring everything remains in place sometimes takes more effort than using it is worth. Bathroom storage that combines both open and closed sections, like Scarabeo Ceramiche’s Phorma cabinets, gives the best of both options.

Utilising space underneath the basin for storage allows bathrooms to keep their surfaces clear, but when there’s no surface to use, the necessary storage needs to find another home. antoniolupi’s standalone washbasins add a breathtaking presence to any designer bathroom, for example, but for functionality’s sake, a towel and soapdish can’t be too far away. 

The manufacturer’s Mrwolf unit accompanies freestanding sinks perfectly, providing towel rail and shelf at the perfect height, while the Cactus storage pole can hold a variety of accessories such as towels, soap dispensers, mirrors or even plantlife at heights of the users’ choosing. Elsewhere, simpler tall storage units like Duravit’s DuraStyle cabinet combine open and closed storage to offer accessible and private spaces for both categories of item at a comfortable, reachable height.

The headache of what to do with wet towels affects interior designers of bathrooms just as much as it does frustrated sharers of living space. Fluffy in texture and vibrant in colour, towels offer wonderful palette accents and are perfectly placed in visible storage spaces. Once they’ve been used, however, they can be difficult to know what to do with. 

To limit dripping watermarks on bathroom surfaces, towels must be left near the basin and with enough surrounding airflow to dry sufficiently between uses. The Nyù unit from Ideagroup provides a towel-drying niche set within its cabinet, while the extra-wide Genova washstand from Glass Design puts towel rails at both ends. Meaning two users can keep their own. 

Mirror cabinets are a good way of hiding items in shelving, without using any more wall space. But while placing skincare and sanitary products near to the mirror seems like a good idea, putting them behind means the mirror is regularly smudged. By fulfilling storage needs elsewhere in the bathroom, mirrors can remain clean and untouched, and staying closer to the wall allows them a wider view.

The Zutik shelving from manufacturer Alki, for example, provides storage space, including shelving and towel hooks, at a comfortable height and within easy reach of the mirror’s subject. Meanwhile, NIC Design’s modular Over system allows designers to create bespoke storage arrangements around the washstand, combining basin with mirror, shelving and hooks for towels and bathrobes, too.

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