Our Scandinavian Home

[Puggy 13]

Since we are on the topic of bathrooms now, when I visit all those Scandinavian interior decor sites like My Scandinavian Home, Stylizimo, April and May, Coco Lapine Design etc, I never fail to see a bathroom or kitchen picture that features those brown tincture type of bottles that hold liquid hand soap. For example:

Spy that brown little bottle? I became intrigued with getting one of these for the bathroom to go with the Scandinavian look and started scouring for all the brands I saw featured.

One very popular brand that some of you may have heard of is Aesop:

La Bruket

Savon Liquide:

And Grown Alchemist:

[samuelmk 0]

For flooring, initially was considering cement screed for the industrial look, then got swayed by laminates because they made a house look cozier. Then I discovered vinyl tiles or HERF by Evorich. Wow, was really amazed by the texture of the tile when I stepped into Mr Foo's house, it looked so much like wood with all the grains, plus it was waterproof, so that's even better than laminates.

Mr Foo carried both Evorich by HERF and this other brand called Krono Decoria, which I had never heard before. But I was attracted to Krono Decoria because of the color they had and also because it was cheaper than Evorich. One day I saw that the company was going to be at some fair at Expo, so I went down to take a look. Because the rate was really attractive, I decided to sign with them for my flooring. The whole house excluding bathrooms will be Krono Decoria.

The two colors I was deciding between:

Right now I am leaning towards the gray because I think it would make the house look cozier. But I really wanted all white walls and white flooring, although I did find that the white looks a bit yellow. So still thinking about which color for my floor. Any advice?

I will go with the darker shade too for the contrast. Read somewhere the contrast will make your room look bigger, visual illusion. Correct me if i m wrong, haha.

[Songz 132]

Very unique sink design & bathing area design you got there.

Really looking forward to how it turns out

[mintyvintage 52]

Hello! exciting to see your new house layout! im also doing a scandi-industrial look, i guess it is turning out to be more industrial?? hahaha not sure

you hv some very good ideas there!

i think the gray (left) tiles will look great. unfortunately we didnt have the budget to retile our house except for MBR toilet. else would love the woody tiles. we compensated by using lots of woody looking laminates.

gd luck in your progress!!

[OceanEleven 203]

But my ideal wash stand are these pedestal sinks, as I do not want cabinets at the sink area. The pole across at the bottom makes it ideal for hanging hand towels and it is definitely very Scandinavian. I don't know if they have these type of sinks in Singapore though. Although I haven't gone shopping for sanitary wares, nobody seems to use them, which makes me think that perhaps we don't have them after all!

I believe you are a first time house owner? Prior to making decision for the design and look. Ask yourself some questions.

How long do you intend to stay in this house? Long enough till kids are teenagers or changing when MOP?

This plays a part in decision making then. If planning to stay for min a decade and starting a family, you may have to consider more for the future.

New home makers are moving with their luggage and new items are add on when deemed necessary.

Coming from moving to a second home perspective, I view storage as an important aspect for my new place.

Eg, in the bathroom, I need storage for the spare shower gel, shampoo, toilet rolls etc.

I dont like the idea of getting caught in the midst of action and scampering around the house to get the new roll from the store.

Ask new home makers, slowly but surely possession grows with or without reason.

You have seen Mr. Foo.'s place and I believe his cement screed look feature wall storage had solve quite a fair bit of his storage issue.

[Puggy 13]

I will go with the darker shade too for the contrast. Read somewhere the contrast will make your room look bigger, visual illusion. Correct me if i m wrong, haha.

Ohhh have not read that before, I thought all white would make it look bigger!

[Puggy 13]

Very unique sink design & bathing area design you got there.

Really looking forward to how it turns out

I'm hoping that it can be pulled off. Perhaps it's seldom seen/done because cannot be done in BTO bathrooms!

[Puggy 13]

Hello! exciting to see your new house layout! im also doing a scandi-industrial look, i guess it is turning out to be more industrial?? hahaha not sure

you hv some very good ideas there!

i think the gray (left) tiles will look great. unfortunately we didnt have the budget to retile our house except for MBR toilet. else would love the woody tiles. we compensated by using lots of woody looking laminates.

gd luck in your progress!!

I'm quite particular about toilets, that's why I'm willing to sacrifice others to make them look nicer! Ideas are good but feasible ideas would be better! To be honest, I don't know if they can be done, that's why need to see how big (or small) the bathrooms are before deciding.

[Puggy 13]

I believe you are a first time house owner? Prior to making decision for the design and look. Ask yourself some questions.

How long do you intend to stay in this house? Long enough till kids are teenagers or changing when MOP?

This plays a part in decision making then. If planning to stay for min a decade and starting a family, you may have to consider more for the future.

New home makers are moving with their luggage and new items are add on when deemed necessary.

Coming from moving to a second home perspective, I view storage as an important aspect for my new place.

Eg, in the bathroom, I need storage for the spare shower gel, shampoo, toilet rolls etc.

I dont like the idea of getting caught in the midst of action and scampering around the house to get the new roll from the store.

Ask new home makers, slowly but surely possession grows with or without reason.

You have seen Mr. Foo.'s place and I believe his cement screed look feature wall storage had solve quite a fair bit of his storage issue.

Yes first time! Haha I guess it is probably quite obvious, all the ideas running wild and know nothing about feasibility.

Well I hope to not have kids but would like to keep a few pets of the furry kind.

I was intending to keep those toiletries in a separate standalone type of cabinet, kind of like the Fabrikor cabinet from Ikea but again not sure if there will be enough space. But if not then maybe some trolley under the pedestal? I think me wanting to not have under sink cabinets stems from some mindset that the stuff inside will smell musty after a while. Not sure if this is true because I've never had under sink cabinets.

Yes his cement screed feature wall is very nice! For me I am minimizing storage space because of cost and also because I feel that if there are cabinets, we will have a tendency to hoard things and in the end we end up keeping a lot of stuff inside the cabinets that we don't use yet don't throw away because there is still space in the storage cabinets.

[Dwinsplace 48]

I also wanted that treatment for the shower area. Do away with the glass. More open, more unique and less glass to clean.

But in the end the footprint of creating a brick wall was too big. Also we would have to build the wall till at least shoulder level to prevent too much water splashing out of the stall and that meant cutting a lot of light off.

So in the end? Glass. sigh.

[Puggy 13]

I also wanted that treatment for the shower area. Do away with the glass. More open, more unique and less glass to clean.

But in the end the footprint of creating a brick wall was too big. Also we would have to build the wall till at least shoulder level to prevent too much water splashing out of the stall and that meant cutting a lot of light off.

So in the end? Glass. sigh.

Hi Dwinsplace, was the only concern the lack of light? How about space-wise? What were your other concerns regarding this design?

[Puggy 13]

In most of the Scandinavian living room pictures I come across on design blogs, a piece of furniture that they tend to have in their living area is a glass display cabinet, usually displaying cutlery, like so:

I really loved the idea of using a wood glass-fronted cabinet as my shoe storage. So I started looking out for similar pieces of wood glass-fronted cabinets for that purposes. Places like Originals brought in containers where they sell rather distressed furniture made from recycled wood and I was actually eyeing a piece that they had. But it was a tad pricey at around S$2.4K. So I was still looking around for cheaper alternatives.

Earlier this year when they had the IFFS, I wanted to go down to check out the stuff on the day that they opened to the public, but was unfortunately occupied and could only go down 1 hr before the closing time. We didn't have time to go through the whole place and most of the stuff were already sold anyway, but I came across this vendor who sold this white cabinet which fit what I was looking for almost to a T and the price was reasonable too, so just buy la!

[Miss Lee 0]

(Quote) I really loved the idea of using a wood glass-fronted cabinet as my shoe storage. (unQuote) - NOT a good idea. Unless you are Imelda Marcos, don't display shoes visible to the eyes (thru glass). These glass cabinets are most for display so find something worthy of display like fine chinaware, cultural artifacts etc (not Doremons or Star Wars figurines, and NOT Hello Kitties).

PS. If you have a pair of McQueen of course it will be another story.

Edited June 26, 2014 by Miss Lee

[Dwinsplace 48]

Hi Dwinsplace, was the only concern the lack of light? How about space-wise? What were your other concerns regarding this design?

Well for us, we thought purpose of a wall was to keep water from splashing primarily. So needed to be at least shoulder height if not higher. That cuts light and makes the visual space much smaller.

Also, the floor trap for our bathroom was just after the toilet and so it would be awkward to fit the wall there. Either too close to WC and you won't be able to sit comfortably. Or if we built the wall after the floortrap and ducted the water out, it would still be too close to the other wall and make showering diffcult.

The width of the bricks just took up too much space in our limited toilet.

Hope that you can do it though! its kinda old school and looks really interesting

[Puggy 13]

(Quote) I really loved the idea of using a wood glass-fronted cabinet as my shoe storage. (unQuote) - NOT a good idea. Unless you are Imelda Marcos, don't display shoes visible to the eyes (thru glass). These glass cabinets are most for display so find something worthy of display like fine chinaware, cultural artifacts etc (not Doremons or Star Wars figurines, and NOT Hello Kitties).

PS. If you have a pair of McQueen of course it will be another story.

Hi Miss Lee, any reason why you don't recommend displaying shoes in a glass cabinet? I've seen it done in interior design blogs, although it is true that perhaps their shoes are far more expensive than mine but these days you can get designer knockoffs from taobao as well.

Anyway what is worthy is subjective. I don't collect Hello Kitties but those who do may find them worthy of displaying. My other half displays his Marvel toy collection in glass cabinets in his place currently.