Palm fronds, feathery ferns, flowers in bloom, and a colour palette that’s as energising as it is harmonising – that’s botanicals for you. Throw them into your bathroom and what do you get? A space that looks good and makes you feel even better, because the botanical bathroom trend is one that delivers on all fronts. And nailing the look is actually a walk in the park. Over to Ca' Pietra's Head of Creative Grazzie Wilson to chat all things botanical in bathrooms.

Nature Therapy: Do it via your Decor

Being in nature is like a balm. Biophilia and naturotherapy are all rooted in the power of being in nature and what it does for the human mind, body and soul. It’s grounding, it’s calming, it’s restorative and it helps us to hit reset. It makes sense then that the room in which each day is kickstarted and rounded off would benefit from an aesthetic that can make you want to seize the day and later put it to bed as you, quite literally, come back down to earth. In brief, botanicals x bathrooms: they’re a match made in zen heaven.

How to Design a Botanical Bathroom

A patterned tile is your best friend here. With a botanical tile in hand, the scheme your heart desires is already on its way. But what you do with it? The sky is the limit.

Go All Over

Truly immerse yourself in Mother Nature by laying botanical tiles from ceiling to floor. While the patterning is heavy, you’ll feel wrapped in nature and held by her too, with a forest floor below and a tree canopy above. Make it even more sensory by creating a divide – for example, one part of your bathroom could be decorated in totally different tiles with your shower enclosure being the botanical patch. Consider your waterfall or rainforest shower head to get a serious upgrade.

Make it a Wallflower Thing

From hexagonal mosaic tiles to square or rectangular wallpaper tiles, keeping your botanical theme to your bathroom walls alone will stop the theme from running away with itself. It also gives you that wallpaper effect without having to go down the wallpaper route that doesn’t always perform so well in wet rooms and the like.

Bring in Some Contrast

Just because you’ve got a decorative tile on your walls, doesn’t mean you have to go for a large format, neutral floor tile. Take this bathroom as a case in point where we’ve mixed up walls in Clarissa Hulse’s Willow tiles and then a minted green textured floor with row after row of our rectangular Reform tiles. Too busy? Not a chance.

Notes on Botanical Colour Schemes

Starting with the obvious: green. Naturally (pun intended), green is the go-to hue when dreaming up a botanical bathroom. It’s the superstar of the colour palette show, and even without any pattern in sight, a green bathroom will almost always be assumed to have nature as its muse. But don't go thinking green is the only colour to be seen with.

PINK: think sunset skies, think petals and think of the natural combination of green with pink as you walk through fields, parks or meadows. Complement a tile like our Floris Rose with a textured marble, or, go all out and add in further pink with Carter Rose.

BLUE: from forget-me-not and bluebell blues to bottom-of-the-lake blues and those aligned with the midnight or daybreak skies, blue is somehow a slightly forgotten about shade when it comes to botanical colour palettes. Florals come in all manner of blues but remember too that without the blue of the water and the light from the sky, nature would be no such thing, so an ode to blue is a worthy one for sure.

NEUTRALS: neutrals always have a habit of winding their way into most trends (even somehow maximalism when you go mega with shapes but muted on tone). In the land of botanicals, draw inspiration from rockeries and sandy landscapes to welcome tones of beige, grey and even warming whites. There’s a narrative here not to be ignored. 

Four Tiles to Do it With

Ask us to pick our top-of-the-charts botanical tiles? These are the contenders coming in strong:

Glass House: a porcelain player that taps into the neutral palette we just left off from. A sweet 20x20cm size, it’s cute, compact and cuts a calming selection of whisper-soft falling leaves for a bathroom that’s low in tempo.

Woodland Glade: ready to make a statement? This porcelain hexagonal hero is the one to welcome into your life then. Part of our bestselling National Trust collection, it blends leaves, plants and florals in a mix of green to pink hues. Suiting walls and floors, we love the cascading look with these tiles where only part of the surface gets the botanical treatment while the rest gets a pared-back tile partner.

Jungle: another botanical beauty by artist Clarissa Hulse, this is a tile that captures the lushness of a tropical rainforest – ferns, dewy leaves and all. Inspired by a botanical research trip she took to the cloud forests of Costa Rica, a bathroom tiled in these will transport you someplace far away.

Capri: want your botanicals on the Mediterranean side? Who can blame you? Capri takes you there with its lighter, zestier mid-green palette decorated with olives and their spindly leaves as well as lemons on leafy vines. Time to take yourself to Italy, one tile at a time.