We recently caught up with Waterworks founder Barbara Sallick over breakfast at SF social club The Battery to take a closer look at her new book, The Perfect Bath. It’s packed with advice on floor plans, fixtures, color palettes, and more; if you have a bathroom redesign in your future, Sallick’s decades’ worth of advice will steer you in the right direction.
Here’s what the grande dame of bathroom design has to say:
Photography courtesy of Rizzoli New York, from The Perfect Bath by Barbara Sallick.

Above: Commune Design founder Pamela Shamshiri’s own Los Angeles bathroom was inspired by a bathing experience in Kyoto.
Remodelista: How has bathroom design changed over the years"

Barbara Sallick: I?ve been doing this for nearly 40 years and when we started, the bath was just a funky space in the house with a tub and toilet?not a space on which anyone building a new house would spend any time or money. But people started traveling more and taking inspiration from bathrooms in Europe, and they’d come back and want to recreate the look at home. So we became evangelists for better bathrooms, and began educating plumbers and architects on what was even possible. And of course, tastes change. In the 1970s, faucets with acrylic handles were popular, as was an avocado and gold color scheme. Today, there?s no question we are in the era of the white bath, but people are now softening the look with art and more natural textures.

Above: Anot...