The bathroom habits of high-net-worth individuals can be rather different to the rest of us. A simple showerhead delivering water at the right temperature for a few minutes is simply not enough – they want action and ultimate power from just about every direction.
None of this is a real problem with modern plumbing and advanced design, but for architects like us, a simple shower can sometimes be a tremendous challenge – especially when the whole household decides it is time to use the bathroom at the same time.
Some of our clients have required wet massage rooms, with nozzles that have to be operated by specialist masseurs, that literally deliver a high-power ‘wet’ massage, with jets of water at pressures of up to 3 or 4 bar. The pressure itself is not the problem, but just imagine how much water is needed to service that demand!
A wet massage room
Mains water cannot be supplied quickly enough under such extreme conditions, which means that massive water tanks, often measuring up to two metres high, have to be installed. And water is surprisingly heavy, so that also means the additional strengthening of the floor and other surrounding structure, all the while ensuring that it is as unobtrusive as possible.
But back to bathrooms: supplying enough water to showers, which will typically include a rain shower, hand shower and six body jets as a minimum (often in his and hers pairs), is just half of the challenge. What comes in has to go out, and it is not unusual to need to build in up to four separate linear slot drains for every shower simply to cope with the sheer volume of water that such high-powered installations produce.
This is the business end of designing stunning bathrooms for high-net-worth individuals, where everything has to work to deliver ultimate performance or look that little bit smarter. This applies equally to décor and the overall ambience.
As the go-to architects for those who expect the very best, Lees Associates have regularly helped to deliver new and exciting standards in bathroom design. Innovations have included laser-cut stone panelling to mimic the ripples on a faraway sandy beach, or how would you feel if your vanity unit was made of back-lit onyx, creating a glow-in-the dark spectacle of the highest quality – welcome to our world!
Back-lit onyx and rippled stone
You can take it as read that every fixture and fitting, from the choice of sanitaryware and joinery to the right flooring, lighting, heating and views, is all taken into consideration to deliver the ultimate bathroom. While this may sound ostentatious, with personal car and wellbeing getting higher and higher on everyone’s agendas, if you can afford it why not aim for the best of the best - a bespoke bathroom in which one can properly relax, unwind and recharge.
And this needs to be put into context. We delivered a project a few years ago in central London that was reported to be the world’s most expensive terraced house. It sold for £85 million and we are guessing that if you had just paid that for a new property then you really would expect the bathrooms – and, of course, all of the other rooms – to be of the highest standards of design and quality and, most importantly, unique.
That’s what we at Lees Associates strive to deliver every single time – that extra special something.