Ten functional shower control systems dripping with style

Modern shower systems include luxurious features the likes of which we’re more used to seeing in a high-end spa than our home bathroom. Using hand, shoulder and overhead rain showers to select the direction of water, varying pressure and pulse settings to determine how much water hits us – and with how much force – and even using infrared to create a home sauna in the same space, the luxury wellness experience is coming home.

With so many nozzles and settings to control, however, our shower walls are starting to look like a sound engineer’s mixing desk. This selection of shower units and controls from the Architonic product database uses simple, clean design language and intuitive operations to mix complex features with simple functionality, even when the user is still half asleep.

Fitting in with the rest of the bathroom furniture and hardware, shower control units, along with shower heads and other taps and accessories, can be customised in a wide range of styles, with more modern iterations taking either an angular geometric look or a smoother circular one. The Q mixers from Quadrodesign, for example, combine both circular and angled geometric philosophies to form the letter Q in the collection’s control dials, while the Revolution tap series from Bagnodesign perfectly blends together its contemporary circular form and knurled edging with the classical element of spokes, taking ‘inspiration from the clean, utilitarian lines of machinery from the Industrial Revolution,’ as the manufacturers reveal.

While the circular form of many contemporary controls provides the clean, minimalist shape desired by modern design trends, using them requires a little extra torque compared to lever mixers or those with open spokes. By adding knurled edging like Bagnodesign’s Revolution taps or Grohe’s Smartcontrol unit, the grippier forms take less effort to move into specific positions.

With the use of up to four knurled dials, Grohtherm Smartcontrol uses three to control the water pressure of three separate spray functions and one larger dial to select the temperature. The intuitive system is made simpler still with the use of icons on each button, making it easier for first-time or irregular users.

Whatever style and shape are preferred, a shower’s controls represent an opportunity for designers to make them stand out, giving spaces a pleasing accent of alternative colour or texture. If opting for a modern design, for example, there’s a risk of that modernity running its course and what seemed so new and fresh when installed, quickly starts to look dated.

As a currently on-trend colour/finish combination, black matt hardware is a popular choice, but as black options like these Noya taps from Vallone offer a pleasing contrast to many styles and colour schemes, should the rest of the bathroom’s surfaces or fixtures change in the future, black will always complement them.

By choosing a bar valve shower, the polished brass finish of AXOR’s Citterio collection, designed by Antonio Citterio, offers up a timeless look by combining square and curved details, and using the bold finish with strong contrasting surfaces makes sure users can’t look away. Not all wall-fixed systems need to be bar valve mixers, however. This Milanoslim shower column from Fantini uses an easy-to-install non-concealed connection that still manages to include a shower head and hand shower – and controls for both – into one slim unit. By going large, meanwhile, the Acquapura shower panel, also from Fantini, is so wide it creates an entire shower wall of its own, used to house over 500 nozzles and controls while retaining a minimalist look.

If the shower wall itself is being built or rebuilt from scratch, integrated shower networks mean the controls are free to move around, ideally ending up in the most functional and comfortable place for the user. As this combination of individual Mayday control taps and Ghost disappearing shower head from Manufacturer antoniolupi show, for example, when the controls and head are allowed freedom of movement, shower controls don’t need to be placed underneath the shower at all – meaning users don’t get wet before waiting for the water to warm up.

Single lever systems like those in the Slimline range from Jee-O allow users to control both the water temperature and water pressure with one swift hand movement. This means hand showers, body showers and main showers can all be controlled perfectly with just three protrusions from the wall.

This type of lever mixer, however, can be tricky and temperamental to operate, with users needing to make many small adjustments before getting the lever into the perfect position on both axes. With a louder and more dominating presence on the wall, meanwhile, systems that rely solely on buttons and turn dials like Gessi’s Hi-Fi mixer, while not as minimal in form, put the same amount of control at the users’ fingertips, only with a larger and more forgiving interface.

© Architonic

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