Four Ways the American Bathroom Is Changing Right Now

Elle Decor has put forward four directions for the bathroom, and two of them sit at opposite ends of the scale. One is a stripped-back austerity, the room reduced to the essentials and finished with the restraint of a cloister. The other is color, specifically a warm, saturated orange, applied without apology to a room that has long defaulted to white. For a house that is going to market, the bathroom is one of the first rooms a serious buyer opens the door on, which is why a shift in what is considered current there matters beyond the decorating pages. Whether the owner of a Palm Beach estate or a Beverly Hills remodel leans toward quiet or toward heat, the point of the piece is that the room now has a real choice to make.

With reporting from Elle Decor.