Our Projects

The cloakroom is a room for people to hang their coats, cloaks or other outwear when they enter a building. So why does Brits call cloakroom a downstairs toilet? 

“It seems that in early Victorian times a pioneering and fashionable move made by some upmarket establishments, such as restaurants, was to offer indoor facilities to ladies on arrival to enable them to freshen up. This was a room where upon arrival ladies could remove their outer coat (or cloak) and freshen up. It was called the ‘ladies cloak room’. Over time, of course similar facilities began being offered to men and the phrase appears to have gradually morphed into ‘cloakroom’ and used to describe a room where there is a toilet, basin and mirror area designed primarily for visiting guests.”*

In the modern days, it is quite common to find storage for coats, shoes, umbrellas under the stairs when people entering the houses to leave their belongings. Some people are converting this space into a downstairs cloakroom – a toilet.

My client required a downstairs toilet as she has lots of friends visits and didn’t want them to keep running upstairs to use a toilet. The only space that we could use, was using the space underneath a stairs and taking a little bit of space in a kitchen.

With such a tiny available space we managed to fit small bathroom with integrated basin and toilet!

As the space was very small, we decided to use beautiful patterned mirror tiles on one whole wall, so the space looked bigger. They do match perfectly with modern patterned floor tiles.

The space underneath the stairs is lower but we wanted to use all of it. We designed two types of storage – one cupboard with removable shelves and access to underneath home and second storage as pull out drawer for shoes.

We took away old balustrade and designed full height bespoke shelves unit to keep books and for vintage displays like sewing and writing machines that client love to collect but she didn’t know where to find a place for them.