Decisions, decisions.
You can get overwhelmed with choices and do not know where to start. When designing your new bathroom it certainly feels like there is an unlimited choice of, bathrooms suites, showers, taps, tiles and accessories.
And the task does not get any easier if you opt for bathroom wall panels rather than tiles. Sure, the overall number of choices is less limited than tiles. But there are still a bewildering array of colours, patterns, styles sizes and finishes that need to be taken into consideration.
Sometime there are disagreements. One person within the household might want a dark and dramatic finish while the other might want a lighter brighter overall look. An accent wall will solve this issue.
The photo above shows such a situation. The customer has installed a darker panel in the shower area. The rest of the room has a lighter, tile-effect panel. Both are from the grey spectrum and as a result do not clash.
This is a tried and tested design technique. It works really well in all rooms (it is a very common practice in living room styling). You just need to be sure that the two panels chosen have a reasonable degree of contrast and that the colours do not clash.
Reverse Accent Wall
It is also possible to reverse the accent theme.
You do this by having the rest of the walls darker than the accent wall. This shower room illustrates this perfectly.
The room has been finished with a painted plaster wall but the cubicle has been lined with white wall panels. Being white, these panels will pick up colour from the rest of the room so that the contrast is not too jarring. Conversely, if the whole room was finished in plain white it could end up looking too “clinical”. So a balance needs to be struck.
Showers are an area where the walls are regularly finished in a different colour or material to the rest of the room – showers over baths similarly get this treatment to great effect.
The plastered walls are not waterproof so something was needed for the area inside the shower. These panels are perfect as they are 100% waterproof. They are installed without the need for grout. This eliminates one of the biggest headaches for householders – keeping grout looking clean (we have an article that deals with grout problems here)
Mixing Panels On The Same Wall
The previous two photos show two different approaches. In the first, a complete wall was covered with a darker colour. White panels were installed on top of a plastered wall in the second.
But what if you want to mix different panel designs on the same wall?
Well, you can. But you need to ensure that the panels will work with each other.
Ideally, they should be from the same manufacturer. If not, then they should be the same thickness. Where neither of these conditions is met, you will have to improvise to get the panels to mate up to one another. You can use some form of packing to get the thinner panel to line up with the thicker design. Or you could just apply the adhesive a lot thicker.
Some panels are more or less designed to be mixed and matched. The Modern range by Vox is a good example as shown above.
This is a tile effect panel that works really well in a modern setting. There are several different versions of the same design varying from dark to light. A larger tile format is also available. This enables you to create your own, completely unique design.
You can just mix the panels up for a bit of visual interest. Or you can use the cladding to delineate certain areas: above a bath being a good example.