When we moved into our 140-year-old cottage a decade ago, one of my first thoughts was ‘that bedroom sink has got to go’. My husband was in agreement: ‘We’ll never use it, it’s a waste of space,’ he said. The white porcelain bowl with its integrated (and more than a little kitsch) shell soap dishes jarred with both the dark wood vanity unit underneath and the patterned blue and white tiles that were added as a modern splashback. Then there were the Hollywood-style vanity lights above the mirror. It felt all wrong.
I’ve since learned there is a reason why you are more likely to find bedroom sinks in historical properties. Interior designer Emma Sims-Hilditch explains: ‘Bedroom basins were once relatively common, particularly in Georgian and Victorian houses, when bathrooms were less widespread and washing facilities were more limited.’ Co-Founder, CEO and Chief Creative of HÁM Interiors Tom Cox adds: ‘Bedroom sinks turn up a lot in houses like this – old farmhouses, rectories – anything built long before every room had its own en suite. They were simply practical, somewhere to wash without trekking down a cold corridor.’
Our cottage is Grade II-listed, so extending for extra bathroom space is virtually out of the question without overcoming a lot of heritage red tape, meaning our bedroom sink has earned its keep in our somewhat-lacking-in-the-bathroom-department house. Tom, who also has a bedroom vanity in his 17th century listed house in Devon, agrees they can be a very practical solution when space and extension potential are limited. ‘You’re rather stuck with the space if you can’t open anything up or move a wall, which forces you to think more cleverly about what you’ve got.’
As with many things when you move into a new home, unless you change them straight away, they end up sticking around a lot longer than you intend. But in this case it was different. With a young baby, I quickly started to actually make use of my bedroom sink – being able to quickly wash my hands between nighttime feeds and nappy changes, which was a more appealing alternative, as Tom references above, to schlepping downstairs (babe in arms) to our only family bathroom and standing, bleary-eyed on a freezing tiled floor.
So if you move into a house with a bedroom sink, should you keep it? As was my first instinct, Tom’s was also to remove the bedroom sink from his Devon house. But his advice now is: ‘Live with it first. I have three bedrooms upstairs and one main bathroom, so a basin in the bedroom takes the pressure off. When you can’t add another bathroom, it’s a clever way to win a bit of that function back. And they’re much harder to put back than they are to keep, so it’s worth pausing before you lose one.’
SourcE: www.houseandgarden.co.uk