In the main bathroom, Art Deco crown molding reminds residents of the house’s past. New fixtures include white laminate cabinets and sinks and faucets by Roger Seller.

In 1962, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill architect Arthur Witthoefft won the AIA's highest honor for a home he built in the lush woods of Westchester County. Having fended off a developer's wrecking ball, Todd Goddard and Andrew Mandolene went above and beyond to make this manse mint again.

“A critical aspect of the project was the incorporation of natural light and ventilation within a broad footprint,” Simpson says. Conventionally private areas, like bedrooms and bathrooms, are therefore reinterpreted with more openness in mind. For instance, this bathroom’s skylights mirror those found throughout the rest of the property. The bathtub, basins, and showerhead were all purchased at the Australian retailer Reece.

Bathed in Light To help disperse light in the newly opened-up interior, the designers clad the roof over the guest bathroom with Danpalon, a translucent polycarbonate that brings in lots of softened natural light. The walls and door are frosted glass. Says Kyprianou: “You can’t see much through the glass—just silhouettes—so our guests don’t mind!” danpalon.com.au Hung Up With the budget running out toward the end of the project, Kyprianou wanted to avoid forking out for a custom-designed walk-in closet in the master bedroom. So he conceived of a simple and cheap storage solution: drilling holes through the wooden roof trusses and feeding inexpensive aluminum closet rods through. junolightinggroup.com

Architects Anne Marie Lubrano and Lea Ciavarra limited the material selection in their renovation of a town house dating from 1899. The powder room on the first floor is located in a former waiting area (the previous resident used the level for his dental practice). It features a custom Alabastro marble sink and fixtures by California Faucets. The architects kept the original marble fireplace, paying homage to the structure’s history. Benjamin Moore’s Super White paint was applied to the ceiling and the White Dove hue to the walls. "Positioning the faucets on the side wall emphasizes the horizontal," Lubrano says. "Wall-mounted fixtures feel less grounded and materials can continue uninterrupted below. We wanted the spaces to feel light, spacious and light-filled."

Their creative confections may ruin our diets, but we’re happy to be their taste testers anytime.

In the new powder room, Jill Malek wallpaper adds graphic punch to custom cabinetry.

Lighting in the bathroom is provided by San Francisco-based Aion LED’s modular fixture system. The linear lighting mimics the redwood siding.

Heath Ceramics tile continues in the master bathroom.

In order to give the redesign a seamless feel, Brigham and Archuleta carried the use of wood throughout the room—including the shower. Archuleta researched types of wood that can withstand a high-moisture environment, and the most visually appealing was coastal redwood. He came across an unlikely source of reclaimed redwood: old pickling vats from a company called Trestlewood. Experience in working with reclaimed wood taught Archuleta that “wood that’s been exposed to liquid for long periods of time pulls in minerals that it wouldn't naturally have access to in its living state.” In this case, the iron bands and nails that held the barrels together reacted with the pickling liquid, leaving behind a rich, dark patina.

"It only cost about $48,000 to build, which was incredibly cheap," says Turner of the Stealth Barn. "We got the Timber Frame Company to supply the shell, then we clad it and fitted out the interior and windows ourselves. The idea was to take the archetypal black tar-painted agricultural building and make an almost childlike icon of that."

The budget was nearly as tight as the space in this cheerful renovation of a 516-square-foot flat in Bratislava. The centerpiece of Lukáš Kordík’s new kitchen is the cabinetry surrounding the sink, a feat he managed by altering the facing and pulls of an off-the-rack Ikea system. The laminate offers a good punch of blue, and in modernist fashion, Kordík forwent door handles in favor of cutouts. “I wanted the kitchen to be one simple block of color without any additional design,” he says.

White tiles envelop the en suite master bathroom.

The entire room is surfaced in white mosaics from Hisbalit; the bath fixtures are brass and sourced from a local Czech retailer.

The subway tile-lined bathroom was kept as simple as possible, with Hansgrohe fixtures and cabinets made of vertical-grain Douglas fir above a top-mounted Duravit sink. Since installing a window was unfeasible given the bathroom's proximity to other properties, Storey added a skylight over the shower.

The minimalist bathroom boasts Cararra marble surfaces, Hansgrohe faucets and shower fixtures, and a skylight by Velux.

The bedroom opens directly into the master bathroom to complete the open feel.

A shallow built-in bathroom shelf.

In the upper-level bathroom, tiles painstakingly fired by DeSimio cover the walls and ceiling.

Brigham works primarily with wood and Archuleta had recently been exploring the potential of glass fiber reinforced concrete, so those disparate but complementary materials became the main focus of the project. Together, the warm wood and the clean, minimalist concrete create a “warm and serene space, reminiscent of a spa,” says Brigham.

Home Renovation Tip: Decide on a Sensible Scope of Work

The focal point of the room is a glass fiber-reinforced concrete sink that weighs 460 pounds. The material is stronger then regular concrete, so the overall thickness of the sink is a mere two inches. By using GFRC, Archuleta was also able to create a more uniform surface with almost no pinholes—important both for maintaining the minimalistic appearance of the room and to avoid leaks in the areas that would be in direct contact with water. Concrete is also incorporated into the bathtub and shower bases.

The renovated bathroom features tiles from Heath Ceramics.

A modular shelf system by Alu provides a more sculptural take on the classic bathroom vanity in this Toronto home.

Across from the entrance is the main staircase, which leads to the bedrooms.

The Heath tiles in the bathroom were hand-selected from boxes of factory seconds.

The property is comprised of a succession of buildings that extend from the street-facing entrance. The 1,215-square-foot main house is the last of the three.

A before shot of the bathroom.

“We really wanted to capture the ruinous quality of this old building rather than do something overtly new,” says Greg Blee, founding partner at Blee Halligan Architects. Before construction could begin, however, he and Halligan had to patch the remaining walls using stones found in the nearby river. Wherever a wall had collapsed, the designers inserted framing to create windows and doors. For the roof, they turned to the original tiles. “My father’s terrible at throwing things away,” Blee says. “We took the tiles off 30 years ago, as it was too dangerous to have them up there. They’ve been sitting in the fields ever since, and this was our last chance to use them.”

Modern bathroom vanities in white bathe the room in light, creating a relaxing atmosphere. Mirroring the kitchen of this home, the bathroom features custom wooden cabinetry and Brodware faucets.

The renovated house is outfitted with a sauna.

Because the house is narrow and long (16 by 68 feet), the design team decided to create a huge open-air space to light the interior naturally. Two retractable motor-driven canvas canopies shelter the space during Singapore’s frequent rains.

Chicago architect Brad Lynch demolished the 1940s bungalow he’d been sharing with his family for nearly two decades, and in its place built a brick-clad structure that would function as a modern counterpoint to its more traditional neighbors.

The clients nixed a powder coating on the stair treads, fearing it would wear away, but approved it for custom, gray steel vanities in the master bathroom. Bathroom floors look like poured concrete but are actually thin, troweled-on microtopping.