Interior designer Lisa Konjicek-Segundo had worked on the rest of the grand house in the Gold Coast area of Alameda, California, over time, but somehow this outdated powder area evaded her touch until lately. “I returned to work on a few of their daughter’s chambers and told them it was high time we did something about it,” she says.

“My clients love New York City, so we chose to make it an ode to the city, with a industrial vibe and photography,” she describes. The powder room is quite a divergence from the more conventional style of the rest of the house. “Because the door swings out to the hallway, it is always closed. People open the door, flip on the light and are extremely surprised,” the designer says. Here’s a peek behind that door — brace yourself for the unexpected!

Powder Room at a Glance
Who uses this A family with 5 children
Location: Alameda, California
Size: Approximately 4 feet by 10 feet
Budget: About $10,000

Before Photo

BEFORE: The teeny room featured a outdated white porcelain shell spout having a dated splatter-painted surround, an odd niche filled with air fresheners, a shell-motif mirror plus a lot of randomly hung artwork.

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AFTER: For the wall-size picture, Konjicek-Segundo turned into MegaPrint and selected a photo of New York’s Spring Street subway station. “Fortunately my clients are forward thinkers, and they have great senses of humor, so they thought that the fact that the bathroom seems like it is sitting on the metro system was hilarious,” she says.

The perspective adds thickness to the very small room, as does the large customized mirror onto the left side, which extends from the bottom of the sink into the ceiling. Konjicek-Segundo combined an extremely low-profile, contemporary bathroom with old-school hex tile that looks like something one would see in a subway station.

Tile: San Francisco Greatest Tile

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Konjicek-Segundo pulled the green color from the picture for those walls. “People always believe lighter colors will add thickness, but it’s darker colors that do — I mean, consider the earlier picture,” she says.

For the same reason, she painted the ceiling. The metal lighting fixture, from Policelli, adds an industrial touch. The couple had the sign, which fits right in over the doorway.

“The husband is a mathematician, so I pitched this toilet paper installation to him,” the designer says. It is inserted between the studs, and the rolls produce circles in the boxes. The bottom of the niche has a toilet paper dispenser and two shelves for magazines. The installation is framed in ebony.

More clever places for the t.p.

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“The husband actually wanted a vessel sink, that was tricky — we had a space saver,” Konjicek-Segundo says. She found this one through San Francisco’s DJ Mehler and had it imported from France. Mounting the faucet into the side instead of between the vessel and the wall saves space. A built-in pub for a hand towel stored them from cluttering up the wall with you. “During big parades in my clients’ street, people knock on the door and ask to use the restroom,” Konjicek-Segundo says. “Once they see it, they frequently call out to their buddies in the street and say ‘You’ve got to come see this!'”

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