- Josie Smith
- Blog
- 8 Oct 2026
There is a quiet revolution happening in interiors. After years of smooth, reflective, minimal spaces, something is shifting. Natural materials that invite touch, fluted glass, ribbed ceramics, brushed metal, honed stone, are appearing everywhere from high-end hotel lobbies to everyday kitchens. Colour palettes have softened from stark white and contemporary grey into warm terracotta, sage green and dusty olive. And the space where these changes are most visible, and most personal, is the bathroom.
This isn't decoration for decoration's sake. Environmental psychology research, from Roger Ulrich's foundational work on nature and stress recovery to more recent biophilic design studies, consistently links tactile, nature-referencing spaces to lower stress responses and improved emotional regulation. We are, quite literally, reaching for materials that make us feel better.
Biophilic design has grown up
Biophilic design, building our connection to nature into the built environment, isn't new, but it has evolved. Where earlier iterations focused on houseplants and natural light, today's interpretation is more material: the grain of a timber vanity, the ripple of a fluted surface catching morning light, the weight of a solid brass fitting in the hand.
Colour psychology has moved the same way. Soft olive, warm stone, clay and aged copper have dominated trend forecasts for two years running, and it's not accidental, these are the colours of soil, bark and dried grass. In a visual landscape that's increasingly screen-bright and saturated, they read as safety and rest.
The bathroom has a structural advantage here: it's a contained space, designed around one person and one purpose, which makes it the ideal canvas for considered, emotionally intelligent design. Remote and hybrid working has changed how people occupy their homes, and wellness, daily ritual and sensory wellbeing, not just health, has become a mainstream priority. Homeowners who once put renovation budgets into kitchens are now looking seriously at bathrooms.
The product market has responded in kind. Fluted basins and vanities that would have felt decoratively bold five years ago now feel of the moment. Earthy, tonal hardware, muted brass, warm pewter, brushed bronze, has overtaken chrome as the specifier's first choice in premium projects.
designing with nature in mind
When we developed Safari, these weren't trends we were chasing — they were principles we built from. Fluting, one of the collection's signature details, is texture doing genuine design work: the rhythm of the form catches light differently through the day, so the surface is never static, and it has the quality of something crafted rather than manufactured.
The palette follows the same logic. Cashmere, the collection's master tone, sits at the point where green, grey and brown meet, distinctive without demanding attention. Paired with terracotta and deep charcoal across the range, it creates a palette that feels curated without being prescriptive. Every element, vanity, basin, brassware, accessory, is designed to work together across combinations, so the person specifying the space keeps creative control.
A definition of luxury
For much of the last two decades, bathroom luxury meant scale and sheen, the oversized freestanding bath, the mirrored surface, the spa-hotel reference. That language still exists, but it's no longer the whole conversation. Increasingly, luxury is about quality of experience over display of expenditure: a bathroom that grounds you in the morning and settles you at night.
Sustainability sits inside that same thinking rather than alongside it. Safari's FSC-certified timber, flow-regulating brassware and cold-start basin mixers weren't added on, they were part of the brief from the start.
Texture, then, isn't simply a surface trend. It's a signal of a deeper shift in how we define comfort and the kind of environment we want to come home to, and the bathroom is where that case is being made most powerfully.