The Portaluppi Bathroom Is Design's New Status Loo

The gray-and-white "spa bathroom" — spare, white, flooded with light, sheathed in Calacatta Viola marble — is losing its grip on high-end interiors. In its place: dramatically veined stone in dark green or dusky red, sculptural Art Deco-style fixtures, and rich woodwork. The reference point is 1930s Milan, where bold material combinations and precise geometry turned utilitarian rooms into showpieces.

The look traces back to one architect more than any other: Piero Portaluppi (1888–1967), the Italian Rationalist behind Villa Necchi Campiglio and Casa Corbellini-Wassermann. His entry halls and sweeping stairs have inspired designers for decades. Now it's the rooms with plumbing that are having a moment.

What do the original Portaluppi bathrooms look like?

At Villa Necchi, mirrored walls multiply the swirling patterns of Arabescato Orobico marble. At nearby Casa Corbellini-Wassermann, Portaluppi set vibrant green Verde Challant marble against graphic black stonework.

"He frequently used contrasting materials to frame hallways, thresholds, and architectural elements, allowing these moments of juxtaposition to draw the eye and bring a sense of ceremony to the space," says interior designer Athena Calderone, who visited Villa Necchi with architect Danielle Siggerud while reimagining her own Tribeca apartment.

How are today's designers applying it?

AD100 designer Gregory Rockwell, with colleague Hester Hodde, designed the primary bathroom of supermodel Paloma Elsesser's Brooklyn townhouse. The palette: burgundy Rosso Francia marble, walnut-and-mirror paneling, and pistachio-green walls.

"It's a slightly strange combination when you think about it, but I love the colors together," Rockwell says. "What I love about Portaluppi is how controlled everything is architecturally, but then he'll do something extravagant with the marble or an unexpected color."

Calderone took a different lesson from the stonework. For her primary bathroom she edged pale stone with intricate inlaid tile borders and added Art Deco-inflected fixtures and geometric mirrors. Her powder room features a pedestal sink in deeply veined Verde Alpi marble.

"There was such ingenuity in the way Portaluppi clad entire bathrooms in stone, often using smaller, individually composed pieces," she says. "It feels almost at odds with how we approach stone today, where expansive, perfectly bookmatched slabs have become the prevailing ideal. He embraced the irregularity and variation in the veining."

In Milan, designer Giampiero Tagliaferri recently used a Verde Alpi pedestal sink in the powder room of a pied-à-terre he designed for a young art collector. "The custom pedestal sink takes its bold, geometric form from Rationalist architecture, but we kept the lines clean and the layout modern," Tagliaferri explains. His takeaway for the trend at large: "Reinterpretation is about extracting a period's core DNA, not literal replication."

Can you get the look without a renovation?

The Portaluppi vocabulary is moving beyond bespoke interiors into retail products:

• Artistic Tile — Calacatta Gold marble mosaic brings Calderone's inlaid-border intricacy to walls and floors.
• Kelly Wearstler for Ann Sacks — oxblood-hued Treillage tile puts a dimensional spin on Elsesser's burgundy tones.
• Clé Tile — Reath Design created marbleized patterns evoking the movement of natural stone.
• Charles Edwards — an alabaster dish light with an Art Deco-inspired silhouette.
• Crate & Barrel — a Verde Green marble soap pump and tissue holder scale those Verde Alpi sinks down to countertop size.

Whether it's an entire room wrapped in marble or a single detail, the impulse is the same. "I've never really understood why bathrooms should be any less interesting than the rest of the house," Rockwell says. "They might as well be beautiful and exciting." With tiles, lighting and accessories now carrying the look at retail, the 1930s Milan aesthetic no longer requires a full-scale renovation — or a client with an AD100 designer on call.