Pink Bathrooms are back in Vogue
Everyone has seen a carnation pink bathroom either in their Grandma’s house or in their parents home before it was remodeled. Pink, Robin’s Egg Blue and Avocado Green were the mid-century ”it” colors. Cast iron bathtubs, 4×4″ wall and floor tile and sinks were cast in these colors making them unforgettable. The homeowner either liked the decor or hated it.
But within the last five years, pink has come back into vogue, with more people embracing their vintage pink bathrooms rather than taking a sledgehammer to them. Moreover, interior designers now advocate flattering rosy hues for new or renovated bathrooms. And manufacturers of bathroom tiles and fixtures have been introducing more pink options. Noticing the trend, the color authority Pantone this month decreed that hot pink will be the “it” color of 2011.
“Pink makes you happy,” said Ms. Burns, who plays up her pink bathroom with a pink-poodle shower curtain, ceramic pink poodle figurines, pink towels and even a vintage pink bathroom scale.
While pink bathrooms started appearing as early as the 1930s, many credit Mamie Eisenhower with popularizing them in the 1950s. She decorated the White House with so much pink when her husband took office in 1953 that the staff began referring to it as the “Pink Palace.”
Pastel pink or “Mamie pink” soon became the era’s iconic bathroom color. While it is difficult to find colorful plumbing fixtures today, back then manufacturers like American Standard, Crane and Kohler all carried pink toilets, tubs and sinks (albeit in slightly different hues).
“That color palette languished for years, and now I can’t keep pink toilets in stock,” said John Vienop, operations manager for DEA Bathroom Machineries, a seller of salvaged plumbing fixtures based in Murphy’s, Calif. “We’re shipping them all over the United States.”
It’s unclear what is driving the recent rethinking of pink, but one factor could be the high visibility of midcentury design due in part to the popularity of “Mad Men” (the Drapers’ downstairs powder room was pink) and Atomic Ranch, the retro architecture magazine.
And since pink bathrooms are associated with a time of prosperity, perhaps there is also an element of nostalgia for rosier times, said Pam Kueber, who started a blog,savethepinkbathrooms.com, in 2007.
Of the more than 500 people who have left comments on her blog, many fondly remember a grandmother, great-grandmother or favorite aunt who had a pink bathroom.
High-end European designers of bathroom fixtures and tile have recently begun offering arty lines that are predominantly pink. Examples include a hot pink and white bathroom by the Swiss company Laufen and a stunning contemporary bathroom, by the Italian manufacturer Bisazza, that is lined from floor to ceiling with pink glass mosaic tiles.
“Bath design has been trending toward pink over the past two or so years,” said Scott Cook, manager of the Bisazza showroom in SoHo. “It’s very warm and makes your coloring look better in the reflected glow.”
The interior designer Brooke Giannetti, 45, and her architect husband, Steve, also 45, achieved that warmth with nothing more than a coat of paint. They painted the bathroom of their shingled beach cottage in Santa Monica, Calif., seashell pink a few months ago; for years it had been a spa-like all white. “You don’t want to be assaulted by that kind of starkness first thing in the morning or right before bed, which is when you spend the most time in the bathroom,” Ms. Giannetti said. “We’ve found the pink to be much more soothing and enveloping.”
And pink is complimentary, too. Tamelyn Feinstein, a 50-year-old photographer, painted the bathroom in her Nashville condominium bubble-gum pink in 2001. She was so happy with how she looked in there that she used the bathroom as the backdrop for a series of 365 self-portraits that she shot daily a few years ago.
Share Email this page to a friend.
Leave a Reply