Modern Rooms With Colorful, Alluring Tile

In a sophisticated main bathroom in Seattle, sea-green concrete floor tiles with a geometric pattern provide a lawn of color against wood walls and white tile. The paper lanterns are also a clear homage to the building’s Japanese inspirations.

The sunken bathtub in George Nakashima’s Sanso Villa mimics the shape of a swimming pool on the grounds. His daughter, Mira Nakashima, took over the studio after his death and now lives and works on the property. “A Japanese garden often has a central pond derived from the character for ‘heart’ or ‘spirit,’ and this may be an abstraction of that character,” she says of the tub’s sculptural form.

In the upper-level bathroom, tiles painstakingly fired by DeSimio cover the walls and ceiling.

In the guest bathroom, penny tiles were chosen “because they’re incredibly economical, utilitarian, and we liked their kitschy feel,” explains Gaffney.

Tiles of natural felt dot the walls in the Universitair Medisch Centrum, Utrecht. Jongstra was asked to create a warmer feeling for this wing of the medical center, where people come for radiation and chemotherapy treatment.

Uncovering the original concrete surfacing of the columns, which are unusually thick thanks to the building’s original industrial function, was a major undertaking. Covered in successive layers of white paint, a team worked for over a week to expose the concrete, revealing the space’s gritty character.

The bathrooms feature Oceanside Glasstile recycled glass tiles from Mission Tile West, in palettes inspired by the home’s coastal setting. The ground-floor bathroom is tiled in brown like the earth, the guest bathroom in seafoam green, and the master bathroom in blue like the sky.

In the master bathroom, Chris clad the tub and walls in Carrara marble. An AJ Wall sconce by Arne Jacobsen for Louis Poulsen sheds some light on bathtub reading.