Interior designers have compared the powder room in a house to costume jewelry in a wardrobe. Unlike “investment piece” rooms, which typically are finished to be functional, durable and enduring in appeal, the powder room is a place where personal taste and creativity can be unleashed without fear of tiring the result. Its relatively small size usually makes renovations less expensive than larger, more involved rooms and less disruptive to redecorate when the decor falls out of fashion. “A powder room is one place where you can have a lot of fun,” says Tara Mercio, senior interior designer at Maison A+D in Avon Lake. These two design concepts show how it can work as the most imaginative room in the house.
Mercio used the powder room in her Avon Lake center hall colonial to indulge a passion for “Dark Floral II,” an Ellie Cashman wallpaper that looks like an exploded Dutch masters rendering of dahlias, hydrangeas, peonies and roses in shades of white and pink on a black background. She wanted to inject drama into the generic cream-colored space she’d inherited from a previous owner. But at $48 per square meter, she only could afford to use it on one wall — and that’s if she cut the budget for other items.
A search on Facebook Marketplace yielded the solution: a 1940s washstand sink and matching peachy-pink commode salvaged from a Vermilion home, colorful upgrades from her white pedestal sink and commode priced at a mere $100 for the pair. She decided to paint the three remaining walls and ceiling black — a bold choice that highlighted the wallpaper, sink and commode — then picked up the plumbing fixtures from the seller and power-washed them in her front yard.
(Courtesy Michael Wypasek Photography)
“I’ve always loved antiques, but I also love modern,” Mercio says. “So I have a style that meshes both. And I love
to recycle.”
Mercio replaced the pitted chrome washstand legs with reproductions from Faucet Depot, a home-improvement brand. Maison A+D architect David Maison installed them, along with the commode, on a black arabesque tile floor. “I just wanted something sexy,” Mercio says of the shape. The finishing touches: an unframed square mirror and Anthropologie-brand bistro-style sconce consisting of two frosted globes attached to a white, black and gold tiled escutcheon plate.
“It’s my favorite room in the house,” she says of the result.
(Courtesy Michael Wypasek Photography)
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Like Mercio, Wendy Berry drew inspiration from a wall covering when designing the powder room for a just-built Victorian home in Mentor-on-the-Lake. The owner of and principal designer at Chagrin Falls-based W Design had long admired Gracie Studio’s “Waves,” a scene of white-capped blue waves based on an antique Japanese screen painting.
It was appropriate for a waterside-community abode built in an architectural style once hallmarked by items collected during occupants’ well-heeled world travels.
“The [clients’] directive was true Victorian with a little bit of Americana and nautical,” Berry says.
But the wall covering, the design of which is hand-painted to order on metallic paper, comes with a price that makes even the well-heeled gasp. W Design marketing manager Carley Porter estimates it would cost more than $20,000 to hang in the 78-square-foot room.
“It takes six to nine months to get that paper,” Berry adds. “We didn’t have the luxury of that time.”
So Berry hired Cleveland artist John Troxell to paint an approximation of the design above the powder room’s chair rail, an architectural detail with molding carved in a linear wave pattern. It was finished, like the walls beneath, in Sherwin Williams Blue Cruise.
(Courtesy W Design)
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The wavy scalloping is repeated on the edge of a Coleen and Co. drum lighting fixture. The brick red lighting shade and cafe curtains pick up the accents in a hand-painted vanity sink, where a pair of navy blue tall ships sail in its bowl.
“We literally Googled ‘nautical sinks,’” Berry says of the search for the plumbing fixture. The designer purchased the piece from a Turkish artist on Etsy.
(Courtesy W Design)
The quest for achieving Victorian-period authenticity included under-mounting the sink in an antique chest turned into a vanity by replacing the top with a piece of rosso marble and hanging a gold-leaf mirror between candle sconces.
The commode seat and lid also were replaced. Berry ordered the wooden counterparts stained walnut, several shades darker than that on the white-oak floor. Berry concedes that most homeowners would pause before committing to such a bold design.
“But [this couple] loves outside of the box,” she says. “They were easy in the sense that they really loved it.”
(Courtesy W Design)
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