How our infatuation for a Moroccan bathroom led to us tiling a BIG BOLD STAR slap bang on the wall!

We’ve started our own little home interior design project in our flat in Edinburgh!

If you've been following the blog recently then you'll know that we've been eagerly renovating and decorating our flat here in Edinburgh, since moving in October last year. We've been creating feature walls with my Mairi Helena wall coverings in both the living room AND the bedroom!And the feature walls have not stopped here.In April we also started renovating our bathroom. This has been a very exciting bathroom project as we decided to make it a Moroccan themed bathroom (introduced in an earlier blog 'Choosing Tiles for the bathroom') We found the most amazing Moroccan hand painted bathroom sink on eBay which really confirmed our need for a Moroccan theme, giving us the excuse to introduce a bit of yellow and blue pizzazz!Well now we can reveal....

WE HAVE NOW FINISHED OUR MOROCCAN BATHROOM!!!!

But first just to recap, this is what our bathroom looked like before, it was all a little bit beige...

Then we took a hammer to it:

And it was beige no more - progress step numero uno!

And so our Moroccan Bathroom Journey BEGAN...

WITH TILES INITIALLY.....and lots of them.

DECORATING FOR A MOROCCAN BATHROOM

Let me take you on our journey, with a few ideas on how we looked to introduce our own Moroccan bathroom theme

MOROCCAN STYLE IDEA NUMBER ONE - CONSIDER TILES

We had been inspired by the Moroccan Riads - the traditional Moroccan houses with beautifully tiled courtyards and back gardens. Richard has been lucky enough to stay in Morocco and experience the real deal - I've just been enthused by the pretty pictures from books, travel magazines and through googling the good old world wide web. We love the artistry of the hand painted tiles, the strong & bold colours, the warm textures and the geometric patterns. We've been especially inspired by the 8 point star shaped pattern which seems to be a running theme throughout.

So after several mood boards, multiple bathroom shop trips, endless floor and wall tile decisions later, we finally decided on our colours, tiles (so many tiles!!) and overall layout.

When it comes to the bathroom tiles, we've gone for:

Trevetaine mosaic tiles on the floor
A larger trevetaine on the walls

Winchester turquoise blue tiles for the feature wall (yes! We have another feature wall!)
A 3 tile wide strip of hand painted patterned tiles to stand in line with the shower head

and the best bit of all?

A bronze star made from bronze metallic mosaic tiles! YES WE HAVE OUR MOROCCAN STAR!

MOROCCAN STYLE IDEA NUMBER TWO - CONSIDER A WALL STENCIL TO ADD GEOMETRIC DETAIL

A wall stencil is a fab way of packing a punch and adding geometric pattern (see recent post here!)** TOP TIP ** There's an amazing site called Royal Design Studio Stencils for anyone looking for an inspiring pattern for the walls - Amazon is also amazing, which is where we ended up sourcing ours).We wanted to use a wall stencil for several reasons

to break up and soften our bold yellow paint
to tie in with our strip of hand decorated tiles and hand painted basin
to add a hint of bronze metallic to tie in with our bronze tiled star
to add pizzazz

MOROCCAN STYLE IDEA NUMBER THREE - CONSIDER AN UPCYCLE WITH A WOODEN LATTICE(This is still in progress!)Our vanity unit was looking a bit plain amongst the geometric patterns from the tiles and stencils, so we are planning to up cycle the unit and place a wooden lattice to add detail and effect....

MOROCCAN STYLE IDEA NUMBER FOUR - CONSIDER AN ORIGINAL BATHROOM FEATURE

We absolutely loved these Moroccan hand painted basins which we discovered on eBay. There's an option to lower it into a vanity unit, but we decided to sit it proudly in place on top of the unit, so that it's one of the first features you see when you walk into the bathroom.MOROCCAN STYLE IDEA NUMBER FOUR - CONSIDER THE DETAILSIt's always all in the detail and getting those finishing touches bang on.

Lanterns always remind me of Morocco and they're very effective in clusters of varying heights

Soaps

Towels and Accessories

Taps

MOROCCAN STYLE IDEA NUMBER FIVE - CONSIDER THE LIGHTINGIn this case, we were a little limited with the style of light we could implement, given the spot light overhead lights which we have throughout our flat. I would have loved to place an authentic Moroccan lamp - inspiration taken from my favourite Moroccan restaurant Momo's in London which has the most amazing feature of decorative lanterns hanging from the cafe ceilings (their Moroccan afternoon tea is fab!) from which would spread a decorative pattern of light over the room. Instead, I will have to settle for placing tea lights in our Moroccan lanterns...which I hope will give a similar effect!MOROCCAN STYLE IDEA NUMBER SIX - CONSIDER THE COLOUR PALETTEWe've decided to work with turquoises, deep blues and yellows, keeping traditional with those colours that feature most prominently within the Moroccan riads.

And that is how we ended up tiling a whopping big geometric star on our wall. Our infatuation for a Moroccan style bathroom led us on a journey of tiles, stencils, lanterns, basins and furniture creations. It's been a fun ride and I hope you've enjoyed it too.Now which room's next.....X

How our infatuation for a Moroccan bathroom led to us tiling a BIG BOLD STAR slap bang on the wall!

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