How to Light a Bathroom

Face light first: sources at both sides of the mirror (or a lit mirror) at eye height — a single downlight over the basin puts every face in eclipse. Then a warm general layer, and if the budget allows one luxury, a dimmer: the 6am shower and the 11pm bath are different rooms.

One central source flattens a bathroom into an evenly lit box: no depth, no zones, and a shadow wherever you stand. Every working scheme for this room is plural — sources at more than one height, switched in more than one group, so the room can change register through the day.

A bathroom is hired by four fixtures and the clearances between them, and it is the room where centimetres decide everything: a door that clears the vanity, a shower screen that opens without hitting the toilet, elbow room at the basin. The fixed layout usually cannot move (drains rule), so bathroom design is nine parts finish and light on one part plan — which makes the finish decisions load-bearing: tile, grout tone, mirror size and lighting temperature ARE the room. The lighting follows those hours: bright and even when the room is working, warm and low when it is winding down — and the switch layout is what lets one room do both.

A pedestal basin in the family bathroom, storing nothing, forever. And in every room: bulbs of mixed colour temperature in one view, which reads as a fault even when nobody can say why.