Bondi Beach Bathroom in Walnut and Marble

The bathroom that came out was in good order. Vertical timber battens ran floor to ceiling, a spa bath sat under the window, and a narrow stone shelf carried a vessel basin with the trap on show beneath it. The floor was mid-brown tile and the shower stood behind a clear glass return.

Out went the battens, the bath and the floor. Large-format stone-look porcelain now runs across the walls and the floor as one quiet background, which is what lets the dark tile and the marble do the talking.

The pan is wall-hung and the cistern sits inside the wall behind the tiled band, so the floor runs through under the vanity and the toilet without a break.

The vanity is the piece everything else is measured against. It is wall-hung walnut-look veneer with a curved return at the open end, which keeps a hard corner out of a room you have to move around in.

The benchtop is a Calacatta Viola-style marble with a bullnose edge and heavy purple-grey veining, and it carries a round stone basin fed by a wall-mounted bronze mixer, so nothing sits on the stone but the bowl. The curve of the cabinet is picked up in the stone edge above it.

Behind the bench, a band of dark gloss finger tile runs the full width of the wall and keeps going past the toilet, where it hides the in-wall cistern and takes a bronze flush plate. Two round glass sconces sit on the plain wall tile above it, and the shaving cabinet is faced in the same timber as the vanity.

The shower has no door and no step. You walk around the end of a curved wall clad in the same dark gloss finger tile, and a linear grate set across the opening catches whatever runs out, with a second floor waste inside the enclosure.

Curved tiling is won or lost at set-out. The wall is framed and sheeted to the radius, waterproofed as a curve, then tiled in narrow strips so each course follows the bend without the joints opening up. The tile wraps the outside face as well, which is the face you see from the hallway and from the storage cupboard beside it.

The wall opposite carries two recesses. One is a panel of glass blocks that lets light through the tiling without giving up any privacy; the other is a niche lined in dark brown gloss mosaic, with a matching mosaic shelf inside the shower. Three bronze hooks sit on the plain tile between them.

Outside the room, a full-height walnut-look cupboard with slim brass handles fills the wall beside the door, and the door reveal is lined in the same timber. The shower curve runs past it to the ceiling.