In my last post which you can find (here) I announced that we’ll be renovating not one, but two of our bathrooms, almost entirely at the same time. Before I can share my design plans, I felt it was really important to share my inspiration and a little bit about the history of plumbing, which actually has a lot to do with how I am planning on going about designing these spaces.

Plumbed bathrooms are a relatively new invention in the sense that they didn’t really exist to the general public before 1900, even more likely the 1920s. It is estimated that only about one percent of homes in the U.S. had indoor plumbing in 1900 and it wasn’t until the 1940 census that they discovered that about 45 percent of the population had indoor plumbing. So you can imagine that only the most wealthy were able to bathe with running water in the early 20th century.

Although a fair number of us live in homes that were built more than 100 hundred years ago, we never really think about the fact that most of our bathrooms were built without a shower or even a bathtub with running water.

With that in mind, my question is, “what would a new bathroom look like in 1916?” I have an idea thanks to my recent visits to house museums that were all built around the early 20th century, even if they may have mostly been homes of the most wealthy. Below is a breakdown of the common design traits I recognized from my recent visits to house museums. I think many of these design traits you recognize in modern bathrooms today. The phrase “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” comes to mind, because it’s obvious that a lot of these design traits still work and make sense with today’s bathrooms.

Photo from the primary bath in the Musée Nissim de Camondo, taken by Lauren L Caron. ©2023

Washable Materials

Bathrooms (and kitchens) were lined with washable materials like tile and marble, that could easily be sanitized up to the minimum height of 4 feet tall. Many were even tiled all the way to the ceiling, and sometimes even on to the ceiling. You can see in the above photos in homes from The Elms in Newport, RI and The Musée Nissim de Camondo in Paris, France, that these bathrooms have tile installed over 6 feet tall. I included the kitchen from Musée Nissim de Camondo because in this room, they even tiled the ceiling! Which was something that was also done in bathrooms, I just don’t have any images from my travels of bathrooms with the tiled ceilings.

2. Standard Square or Rectangular Subway Tiles

Tiles typically come in the sizes of square 4” x 4” or rectangular 2” x 5” or 3” x 6” and mostly in white tiles, but can also be in varied colors. Often the white tiles varied slightly in shade and tone. Which is something I’m keeping in mind for our bathroom remodel. Both the above photos are from The Pittock Mansion a house museum in Portland, OR, show how they’ve used both the rectangular subway tiles and the square subway tiles to line the walls. I believe the square tiles were installed in the men’s primary bathroom and the rectangular tiles installed in the women’s primary bathroom.

3. White Marble

White marble, likely Carrara or Thassos, or similar like Alaskan marble (which was commonly used in the NW in the turn of the century), was the most common type of stone used in bathrooms. From my research, marble was less commonly installed as the main material in bathrooms vs kitchens, but I saw it in the Elms Newport Mansion, pictured above. In the men’s primary bathroom, they lined the walls and tiled the floors with what I believe is carrara marble. The vanities in both the men’s and the lady’s bathroom were constructed of white marble, that may have been Thassos (I’m not entirely sure).

The polished nickel (or possibly silver plated) shower fixture in the Pittock house museum. Photo by Lauren L Caron ©2023

4. Polished Nickel (or similar)

Polished nickel or silver plated brass was the most common finish for plumbing fixtures. I did see the brass fixtures in the Art Deco designed home in Porto, Portugal, the Casa de Serralves. However, I believe I’ve seen most brass fittings in kitchens.

5. Decorative Floor Tiles

Floors were often tiled with decorative patterns and borders. I found hexagonal or square shaped floor tiles tiles in mostly shades of white or gray as the field tiles to be the most common. In the more decorative spaces, you can find borders or more intricate checkered or plaid patterns. Which is seen in the bathrooms and service rooms at the Musée Nissim de Camondo.

6. Plumbing Fixtures for Specific Uses

I found it funny and interesting that the wealthier you were, the more plumbing fixtures dedicated to specific uses you owned. For example, all of the luxury homes of the wealthy upper class had both bathtubs and sit-baths in the bathrooms. In the Pittock Mansion they had showers, which seem to be even less common. In the above photos you can see from the Pittock Mansion, the men’s primary bathroom had both a designated shower (that almost looks like a turn of the century version of a steam shower) and the sit-bath. Sit-baths if you don’t know were used for just what they’re called. You would sit in them to bathe on your private parts rather than having to bathe your whole body. I assume these were common during this period because they required less water than a regular bath. I believe I read or heard somewhere once that Louis XIII only bathed once in his lifetime (please don’t quote me on this as fact because I’m not entirely sure about where I heard that….). He was alive well before the turn of the 20th century, but even the most wealthy didn’t bathe often, and I have a feeling that didn’t change much until plumbing became extremely accessible. The middle image is of from what I can remember a hair washing shower, so that the lady of the house wouldn’t have to bathe as often as she would need to wash her hair.

7. Colorful Plumbing Fixtures Came into Vogue in the 1920s

Nearing the end of the 1920s colorful plumbing fixtures and tiles came into fashion. This was apparent in homes in the US. As we know, certain colors were more prevalent in certain time periods. For example, in the 1920s and 1930s because Art Deco was in full swing, jewel tones were the colors in vogue. Think colors like purple, green and black to be used. In Seattle, I went to a few open house of mansions that were built in the early 1900s (closer to the 1920s and 1930s) and these homes had colorful fixtures. I’m not entirely sure of how many of the bathrooms were even original to the homes, but the colorful bathrooms did exist. In Porto, Portugal I visited the Serralves Villa, which had a bathroom completely lined in a pink marble with the sink fabricated in pink marble also, as seen in the above photos.

Welcome to the 1931 stylings of Architect Harold Doty, in the Alameda neighborhood of NE Portland. Photo by @harrison.whitmarsh

One of my favorite instagram accounts is that of the Vintage Bathrooms Love, which features bathrooms from the early 1920s through to the 1980s (I’m sure through the 90s too in some cases). You’ll see a colorful array of bathrooms showcased in this account starting in the 1920s.

Knowing all these details I have plans to create bathrooms that would feel like they could have been installed in our home in the 1920s or 1930s (likely when they would have first been remodeled). A few details will be updated to feel more modern and ultimately (hopefully) timeless. Do you think there are any design traits to historic bathrooms that I may have overlooked? If so, I’d love your input in the comments.

Stay tuned for the next post when I share how I’m interpreting my inspiration and research into the designs of our bathrooms in our own home!

Cheers!

Lauren

Resources:

plumbingsupply.com

pmmag.com