Another facility you will want to incorporate is adequate shelf area around the wash bowl, or twin wash bowls. Vanity units have been mentioned and they provide exactly the sort of flat surface people want and on which they can put hand cream, aftershave lotion, face tissues and so on, and wristwatches and rings whilst they wash their hands. It may be, though, that there simply is not the space for such an arrangement around the bowl. Apart from installing a basin which has as wide a rim as possible (and some have virtually none), arrange to have a broad and safe shelf above the bowl or even at a lower level – perhaps an extension of the boxing-in which conceals pipes. A shelf there must certainly be if wash time frustrations are to be avoided.
A mirror
Make sure an adequate-sized mirror is included in your plan. Too much mirror glass in a bathroom, despite its glittering appeal, can be an early morning depressant to the less-than-slender, besides encouraging a tendency to condensation, but an inadequate mirror is infuriating when you are shaving, inspecting the progress of wrinkles or painting your eyelids. A large one over the wash bowl can be placed at a height to suit the principal users, but not so low as to attract every splash from spluttering tooth-brushers.
A more expensive, but generally satisfactory arrangement for bathrooms cabinets, is to have a shallow storage cupboard above the bowl, with sliding doors faced in mirror glass. Sometimes it is possible to conceal lights behind the doors so that this one fitting effectively fulfils three functions.
Privacy
This is the time to think about a measure of privacy in the bathroom, certainly, in the family bathroom, which may need to be used by several children at once. If the bathroom contains a lavatory and is large enough, partial screening of the lavatory by a waist-height partition wall will give at least an illusion of visual privacy, and this vvall could also incorporate storage cupboards. A separate shower cabinet could be arranged behind a full-height partition wall where there is sufficient room.
