Supersizing Our Bathroom

Couple Living
4 br
HDB (Maisonette)
≥1,500 sqft
Eclectic

This photo doesn’t do justice to how big our master bathroom really is, but we love its supersize. The wall between the two existing bathrooms on the upper floor was removed to create a spacious en suite bathroom that can accommodate a full-size freestanding bathtub in addition to the typical shower area.
This is the view we see when we walk into the master bathroom from the master bedroom. Although the master bathroom can get dark quite early, we love the look when there is ample natural light permeating from outside.
One of the major benefits of combining our upper floor bathrooms is that it gives us a combined 4 panels of windows for ventilation to dispel moisture. Although top hung windows are supposedly more aesthetically pleasing, we don’t find them practical. 1. To get maximum ventilation, you need to extend them fully. 2. It is difficult, especially for The Wife, to close them. 3. It is not easy to clean the exterior portion of top hung windows And so, we went with louvre windows. Oh well, at least they have old-school charm. And if nothing else, they are easy to clean.
One interesting fact we discovered the other day though is that due to the way we configured our upper floor, it is possible to use the bathtub without closing the bathroom doors if we shut all the exterior blinds. Not sure why anyone would do that but just saying that it is possible
Psst, we have a secret obsession… … with circular flows. Which is why we are glad that most rooms in our EM have more than 1 entrance/exit. Our master bathroom is no exception. We might change one thing if we were to do it all over again. While PD doors are incredibly useful and practical, they don’t score high in the aesthetics department.The louvre ones are not so bad but they are not great for maximising aircon efficiency. We matched the bathroom PD doors to the aesthetics outside rather than to that within the bathrooms, so there’s a tinge of weirdness that bothers us whenever we pay attention to ir.
We pretty much chose all the tiles in our apartment within an afternoon, except for these ones in our master bathroom. Originally, we wanted Peranakan tiles but felt those could make the bathroom feel too jarring for the eyes. The Wife didn’t like mermaid scale tiles at all, and we ruled hexagonal tiles out after seeing some samples. We chose these glossy ceramic tiles eventually because we liked the look and feel, especially how the uneven surface gives it texture and gently reflects light. For these walls, we had a mix of blue and patterned tiles. (Fun fact: we used white tiles from the series for our wet kitchen.)
The bathroom on the lower floor of an EM is very small by default so we extended the floor area slightly by shifting the entrance outwards. The guest bathroom is now “T” shape instead of “–“ shape. We retained the original layout to maximise functionality and opted for a small wash basin and no carpentry to avoid hindering movement.