Bathrooms: Good Ideas (Good Ideas)

Rating:
Summary: Lots Of Style, Little Substance
Review: I bought this book because I am looking for ideas for a pending bathroom remodeling project. The book is generally shrink-wrapped in stores, so the contents are somewhat elusive; Amazon's price is great so I took a gamble on it. While there are some ideas illustrated in the book to recommend it, in general I am a bit underwhelmed. The book is full of color photographs (which are generally good, although the quality varies) but essentially no text. My biggest complaint about the book is that it has sections like "Fittings and Accessories," which illustrates things like faucets, but rarely does the book tell you what you are looking at or even who the manufacturer is. The architects involved in the projects are generally referenced; in fact many of the bathrooms look like promotional photos for architectural firms. The strongest section of the book is the section on small bathrooms, which is good for a lot of remodeling projects that don't have a 500 square foot footprint to work with.

The book is stylish with a clear plastic cover over very colorful illustrations, making for a unique effect. The book looks very cool, but if I had to do it over again, I would skip it and look for a book with more information on the materials and fixtures in the photographs.


Rating:
Summary: Only bathroom book out there that's exclusively contemporary
Review: We're building a bathroom in our house and desperately searching for contemporary ideas. Well, this book certainly has them, loads of them. However, if, like me, you buy design books regularly, you'll recognise many of the bathrooms from them - this is really more a compendium of images already published than a brand new collection. The result is that it offers little information on what fittings are used, who makes the mosaic tiles on that wall, where you can get that vessel sink, etc. On the other hand, the title is honest: these are just ideas to get you started, good ideas, really good ones, and all of them very of the moment and beautiful. I give it four stars because the quality of the pictures is uneven - I suppose because some were scanned from other people's books.