The Roaring ’20s marked an era of profound societal and political contrasts alongside upheaval and innovation, which included women winning the right to vote, prohibition and innovations — the fridge, traffic lights and radio channel broadcasts — which revolutionized life. The bathroom designs of this decade proved equally as diverse, with a mixture of rainbow-colored bathroom-plumbing fittings in shades of pink, butter yellow, blue and green, and lavish designs inspired by the Art Nouveau and Art Deco of the Jazz Age.
Tile,Tile Everywhere
Many homes of this 1920s had bathrooms with the walls and ground completely tiled. In an understated bathroom, you might come across a subtle edge trim close to the base of the floor-to-ceiling deluxe wall paired with elegant corner shingles on door trim. New tub fashions were released — typically heavy-duty cast iron with a porcelain overlay — containing corner-style tubs with a curved corner which faced the room. A pedestal sink having a big, broad large basin outfitted the majority of ’20s bathroom designs.
A Rainbow of Colors
Together with the innovations in manufacturing through the 1920s, plumbing fixtures or shingles took on the colours of the rainbow, together with black, gold and white. An advertising flyer to the era depicts a bathroom having a black-and-white checkerboard tiled flooring, with white field-tiled walls flanked in black tiles around doors, windows and along the baseboard. A black marble vanity supported by gold-trimmed legs along with a dressing vanity to coincide with a gold-trimmed mirror designed the bathroom a place of luxury.
Green Tile Wainscoting
An Art Deco stained glass window above the cast-iron tub sends colours dancing everywhere as soon as the light catches it just right in a bathroom decorated with jade green tile wainscoting all around the room. Over the tile, a hand-painted floral wall mural surrounds the room with even more color in touches of burgundy and deeper greens. An integrated porcelain soap dish and toothbrush holder sit under a porcelain shelf, overlooked with a gold-trimmed arched mirror over the wainscoting and flanked with two light sconces on both sides.
Butter Yellow Plumbing Fixtures
Butter yellow plumbing fixtures — a niched cast-iron tub and pedestal sink — are surrounded by mixed colors of pink flamingo wall shingles put on the diagonal. An almost navy blue tiled flooring contrasts the diagonal wall tiles when laid at a standard pattern. The dark blue shingles go up the wall to make a border topped with smaller diagonal blue tiles which lead to pink. Navy tiles also edge the doorway with a ceiling painted a tinted shade of light navy.
