What period of Frank Lloyd Wright? In most of his houses through the 1930s the bathrooms were pretty much utilitarian baths.

I think something like these would work IMO subway tile and hex a mosaics are too busy and especially when all used together.

Is it Prarie style or Usonian? Either way, glass tile would not be a good fit. His bathrooms were simple and unembellished. He often used cork or concrete floors. He used a lot of natural wood, even in the bathrooms. If color was used, it was natural and subdued.

Frank Lloyd Wright used a lot of natural elements in his designs. A lot of wood & real stones.

"According to Wright's organic theory, all components of the building
should appear unified, as though they belong together. Nothing should be
attached to it without considering the effect on the whole. To unify
the house to its site, Wright often used large expanses of glass to blur
the boundary between the indoors and outdoors.[67]
For example, Glass allowed for interaction and viewing of the outdoors while still
protecting from the elements. In 1928, Wright wrote an essay on glass in
which he compared it to the mirrors of nature: lakes, rivers and ponds."

Here are a few bathrooms of his.

Here some photos of his or inspired by his style

I studied Frank Lloyd Wright's style in interior design. He is 1 of
my top favs.

I have a client recently wanting a Frank Lloyd Wright
Bathroom which is exciting. I showed them photos similar to above & gave them 1 of my
books to see more about his style. Nothing has been decided upon yet.

I
suggested if they do not want as much wood, consider bringing in other
elements of Frank's like his window stained glass designs, lamps, long
linear horizontal lines in the design, stone walls, wood trim. or maybe just one wall wood, Here are
some examples.

Frank inspired combined with contemporary

Getting the client to choose from photos for inspiration, truly helps everyone get to their goals faster.

Wishing you all the success to the project.

I saw the same mix of utilitarian and wood bathrooms that others mentioned when I googled "Frank Lloyd Wright bathrooms original." Wood isn't incompatible with "spa," it just may be a different feel from what your client was thinking. The bathrooms I saw reminded me a bit of modern Asian-inspired bathrooms. Teak works well in bathrooms. These photos came from a Houzz search for "teak" in bathroom photos.

Prospect Heights Townhouse · More Info

Master Bath · More Info

Private Residence - Ocean Reef - Key Largo, FL · More Info

MTI Baths · More Info

Great examples artistsharonva and cawaps.

Frank Lloyd Wright did work in Japan & was inspired by Japanese Architecture.

Article about his Japan inspiration

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/frank-lloyd-wrights-japanese-education-180963617/

He actually designed building in Japan,too

Link to his work in Japan

http://wrightinjapan.org/eng_wij/e_wij/wrightflash_e.html

Thanks cpartist.

Artists have a good eye for recognizing another artist's style :)

@palimpsest it was one of his students, but the house was built in the 50's

Most of his 1950s houses for individual clients had pink bathrooms.

@palimpsest It is all blue at the moment. The rest of the house, however, has more traditional elements reminiscent to FLW.

So far, here is my inspiration board on Pinterest. Does it seem that these pictures could be congruent enough in a modern way?

Here is a picture of my inspiration board. Is this congruent yet a modern take on it enough? Or should I push the envelope further?

No pic, Kayla. Is the current bath original? Got any photos of it, if so?

Please upload a picture of the inspiration board. We can't see it currently.

Ok I edited my last comment

Depends on the client's taste. I would show your client, the inspiration board as is & some photos of the pictures others posted. Then watch their reaction & ask for their honest feedback, then you'll have a better idea of what they are expecting & appreciate you bringing their ideas to reality.

Need help from someone in Traverse City, MI. The tiles in the women's bathroom of the Cherry Capital Airport are gorgeous. I don't know if they are true FLW but they are "in the same vein".

>>>

http://www.shopwright.org/category/arts-crafts-tiles  Motawi is available. If you go to this link, you can lots of his stuff. I lived in OP for years. The trust is a great resource:

https://flwright.org/

How would they feel about recreating something very close to what's there?

If the architecture has a strong personality,even though the current bathroom is typical 1950s it may be better to reinvent the original will more modern materials than it would be to do something currently modern.

I ve never seen a Frank Lloyd Wright house with a new bathroom that looks better than the original one. Some are not bad, many are probably an improvement in function. But none of them are actually an improvement esthetically.

Kitchens are different because ergonomics and technologyhave changed really and his kitchens were small and made for an employee.

I think there are three main ways to go with this:

1) Historical restoration

You could try to closely duplicate the style of Wright's bathrooms and might even try to research what the original bathroom of this particular house looked like. This approach would incorporate many of the unique and daring aspects of his designs: Glass or stained glass. Large expanses of stone, wood or slate. Wood paneling for walls. Midcentury modern, flat front cabinetry. Perhaps his signature rust colored stone flooring. If the current blue tile was original to the house you might look in to restoring it. While expensive this approach may increase the home's value for possible future buyers who want an authentic Wright home.

2) Wright influenced modern spa feel

This could incorporate the feeling of Wright's designs and a Japanese influence blended with luxurious modern touches and a general, clean spa feeling. Luxury wood like teak or sapele. Soft, cool colors. Glass and stone. If they want a modern toilet like Toto or a modern handheld shower system then this is the look that would fit best with.

3) A simple, utilitarian, 1930s style bathroom

This would fit with the look of Wright's early designs and the utilitarian bathrooms of the 1930s and a Mission or Prairie look. While old-fashioned this look has many contemporary fans. Off white ( not true white) subway tile for the walls and small hex tile for the floors. Matte off white wall color. White porcelain fixtures. Natural wood vanity, cabinetry and trim in a traditional wood like walnut or cherry. Mission or Prairie style light fixtures ( perhaps Wright replicas ) . While simple this would be an inoffensive and classic look.

.....

Make an inspiration board for each of the three looks. The first would just be photos of Wright's original bathrooms. The second could be picture like those posted by Cawaps and others. The third would be pictures like the one I posted or any standard 1920s/30s era utilitarian bathrooms. Try to see which of the three looks the clients lean to. ( If budget is a concern for these clients option 3 would likely be the easiest and cheapest to source and option 1 would require the most specialized labor including research ).

I collect a lot of real estate pictures, so I see a lot of houses "as is".

These are all bathrooms from Wright houses, mostly not original. His Usonian houses were meant to be budget-friendly (while his houses for individual clients usually spiraled out of control price-wise). So some of the original baths probably weren't that great if they were building a Usonian plan.

With the exception of the last house, these are all Post War houses.

This one is probably partly original but that octagonal sink is late 70s at the earliest

Total fail, but probably following the trends of the area and period.

Here, they probably thought by keeping it simple, it would fit in, but the black and white is kinda harsh:

Probably original with a Crane sink. \/

This is a Wright inspired bath in a Wright house, but sorry, I think these finishes are fails. They are totally overwrought and carry the faux prairie-ness too far. Plus, they are referencing Wright houses not of the fifties really, but earlier.

Here's a bath in an earlier Wright house which is a combination of original and new, I think.

I always have a hard time guessing the date of baby blue tile.

It was popular in the 50s but was still being done in the 60s and even the 80s.

It's not like that naples yellow tile color that only shows up in the 1930s where you can guess the date ( every era had its own peculiar kind of yellow).

So I really wonder if this blue bathroom is original. Maybe a past owner of the home would know? Or maybe an elderly neighbor has a similar house and might know.

It's always nice to preserve original features. But if the blue tile is from a past renovation and the clients don't like it then IMO start fresh and create something that fits their tastes.

If the home is not an original, but only "inspired," then you can do what your appeals to your client. It's not going to affect the historical significance of the home.

Kohler offered blue fixtures from 1938 until 2012.

Since my house had had one pinkish bathroom originally and others by the architect nearby had blue I was going to do a pink or blue bathroom, but unfortunately I did not get started until after 2012, when both pink and blue fixtures were discontinued by Kohler (as was yellow). My main bath was a mustardy yellow and black and white with gold sparkles. I could actually have recreated the whole scheme (the sparkly tile is still available), using black fixtures instead of mustardy, but I though the scheme was harsh. (I only have broken tile evidence of both original bathrooms. Both had been remodeled when I bought.

Here is one of the Ennis House bathrooms. I believe this is original to the home. The home was recently restored at a cost of $17 million.

I don't think it's a matter of affecting historical significance so much as creating a bathroom that looks compatible with the house long-term. The original bathroom will always look "correct" in a house, no matter how old it is, because it's what the house came with. Replacements can be problematic. I doubt the people who put the remodeled baths in the FLW houses I've shown above thought they looked as out of place in the 1980s or 1990s or early 2000s as they look out of place now.

Everything about the bath the OP has pictured says "original". Often the toilets got replaced, but that tile-in sink, faucet, the vertical tube lighting, and the Hall-Mack recessed soap dish, cup/toothbrush holder (which you can sell on eBay--a new-old-stock one is listed for $175), speak to the era of the house.

I don't think the OP has to recreate the original bath, but the closer in spirit the bath is to the original house, the less likely it will look dated and out of place in seven years. It might still look dated (like the original looks dated) but not out of place, so much. I really would not use any tile that is trendy enough to say 2010s for example.

I am beating a dead horse probably and discussing stuff only of interest to myself, or at least probably not the OPs clients, but here is a relative time line of Wright bathrooms from his own house, 1890s and 1911 remodelings to the last house built finished in 1968 nine years after Wright's death.

The key thing for me, is that the finishes in the bathroom that are unusual only reflect the architecture of the house, and it's only the envelope or shape of the bathroom that reflects the house. Essentially the bathroom is a bathroom that fits in the house and it depends on whether the house is plain or fancy whether the bath itself is plain or fancy, and they all reflect the period the house was built. The 1900 bathroom looks like 1900, the 1960s bathrooms look 1960s. There is nothing about them that references anything else. (Also you have to keep in mind that most of the houses he built after Fallingwater were considered pretty "old hat" by his modernist contemporaries, since he had developed the essential details of some of these houses early in the century).

Frank would never have forgotten about the drain.

I stand corrected! I said that glass tile would not be a good fit but I just toured the Meyer May house in Grand Rapids and he used glass tile instead of mortar on the fireplaces!

The bathroom was 1x1 tile, all laid individually! Gah!

And no, I don’t know what kind of waterproofing method was used...