A room with a new view - bathroom design

Sunset, May, 1994 by Daniel Gregory

A mirror makes the difference in this bathroom

FINDING A VIEW CAN BE A challenge when a room faces the wrong way. But with ingenuity, the view can find the room.

That was San Francisco architect Jonathan Cohen's thinking when he designed a new bathroom for his own house in the Berkeley hills. (The bathroom is part of a second-floor master suite addition.) "Even the room facing away from the view gets the view," Cohen says.

The wall of windows in the 9- by 12-foot bathroom faces south, rather than west toward San Francisco Bay. The trick was to see around the corner of the bathroom and bring the western view (blocked by the master bedroom) deep into the room.

Cohen, designed the flush-mounted mirror as an extension of the window: both the mirror and window are 8-foot-wide by 3 1/2-foot-high bands of glass that intersect at right angles to one another. The mirror occupies the bathroom's east-facing wall and reflects the entire window and part of the bay view that is visible through it. The result is an illusion of spaciousness; it's difficult to tell where the window stops and where the mirror begins.

To reinforce the illusion, Cohen treated the room's other surfaces in a subdued manner. He used Vermont green slate for floors, wainscoting, and tub platform; charcoal gray plastic-laminate for the cabinet fronts; and polished granite for the countertop.