If you think modern bathroom design is rapidly moving towards hi-tech gidgets and gadgets, then you should read this article. You may be surprised to learn that a great number of designers and homeowners are approaching the bath like you might do with your living room. That’s right. The bath oasis is being outfitted with creature comforts such as area rugs, paintings, couches, fancy chairs, and lamps. Helen Kirwan-Taylor of the Wall Street Journal interviewed several leading interior designers to learn more about this unusual modern bathroom design trend.

What’s New In Modern Bathroom Design

“They are another room in the house where you might put in chaise longue and a table, and have a discussion while you or your child is bathing,” says Martin Brudnizki, the London-based designer whose low-tech, country-inspired designs for Soho House’s Cowshed Miami Beach spa helped prompt a defection from the high-tech home spas and pretentious hammams of recent years. “I see many couples choosing not to have separate bathrooms anymore because this is the only room where they can talk face-to-face,” he adds.

Like many designers, Mr. Brudnizki is veering away from a built-in, uniform look and toward low-tech, old-fashioned freestanding baths and shower stalls, and vintage storage units, borrowed perhaps from a study. Marble and mosaic are used sparingly. Most importantly, he says, his bathrooms never need an instruction manual. “The last thing anyone wants is to wrestle with yet another high-tech piece of equipment that does your head in,” Mr. Brudnizki says.

Baths run by remote control and showers with complicated functions are falling out of favor, replaced by easy, sleek designs that would look just as at home in the living room. “Bathrooms should not require an IT department,” says Roberto Gavazzi, chief executive of Boffi. “They should be a place you gather your thoughts, not a source of frustration.”

In fact, bathrooms are breaking out of the mold so dramatically that one sometimes has to search for water features. Italy’s Agape is one of the companies revolutionizing the approach to modern bathing. Their “FLAT XL” series of interconnecting cantilevered units in multiple configurations doesn’t even vaguely look like a bathroom; you have to concentrate to notice the taps and boxy basins. Their in-situ bathroom suites feature curtains, paintings, vintage lighting and Mies van der Rohe chairs.

This idea of the bathroom as a luxurious room prompted Italian company Antonio Lupi to create a range of waterproof oriental carpets. In their international showrooms, bathrooms not only feature carpets, but also oversized throne chairs and chandeliers. The advertising campaign for American brand Kohler’s Shaker-inspired “Tresham” collection, meanwhile, features bathrooms with books propped on floors, paintings and personal memorabilia on the walls, and even dogs sprawled across floors. There are shag carpets, armoires, suitcases, knickknacks, storage units and lots of furniture, to which they added a bathtub, shower and sink, almost as an afterthought.

Bathrooms are increasingly important when it comes time to selling a property, too—enough to warrant stealing space from the master bedroom, or taking it over completely. “People are really investing in master bathrooms,” says James Lentaigne, sales and marketing director of Drummonds, British makers of handcrafted, classic bathroom fittings. “They’re spending money on freestanding basins with their own legs and large towel rails and deep, freestanding bathtubs that defy trends,” he adds. “They’re so worried about things going out of fashion that they’re now veering toward durable, traditional designs that never go out of style.” Original article.

So what you do think? Are you now more inspired to update your modern bathroom design with living room features and comforts? If you’re one of those people who loves to escape into their bathroom, it can certainly be done. There now seems to be decorative solutions that address water and moisture concerns.