II have to admit something. Very (very) occasionally, I'm a bit of a hypocrite.

"Design your space first!" I tell clients. "Parents always put themselves last — start with the primary suite instead of ending with it." Excellent advice. I would know. I ignored it completely.

Since moving into our home in 2016, I — Janelle Patton, owner of an award-winning interior design studio — did not touch our primary suite. Yes, for 10 years I lived in a space best described as "90s fabulous." And by 90s fabulous, I mean faucets that barely worked, peeling vanity cabinets, and a shower so awkward that shaving my legs required a routine that would've scored well at a regional gymnastics meet.

Here’s one more confession: our closet was so bad that I stored my socks and undies in plastic Target drawers. You know - the kind you buy your kid for college? And not just any plastic Target drawers. They were broken Target drawers.

So consider this my public penance. I finally took my own advice and finished our bedroom and bathroom. And frankly, I’m a little embarrassed about how emotional I am over decent water pressure. Keep scrolling—I’m sharing all the gory details!

The Floor Plan Fix: A Bigger Shower and Closet Without Adding a Square Foot

The first and most important thing we did had nothing to do with tile or paint. We redrew the floor plan.

It's the lesson we're always giving clients — and the one I always follow myself: before you pick a single finish, fix the plan. It's rarely about how much square footage you have. It's about how that square footage is allocated. And mine? Allocated very, very poorly.

I don't know what it is about Dallas builders, but they sure love to drop a skating rink in the middle of a bathroom. Ours was no exception: acres of empty floor in the center, a tub shoved into the corner, and — to balance it out — a closet so small it could doom a marriage.

BEFORE: The ice skating rink in the middle of my bathroom. Perfect for gymnastics practice, not ideal for storage.

So we moved literally everything — and symmetry was the whole game. It started with the door: shifting the bedroom entry opened a clean center line straight through the room, and we built everything off that axis. Twin sink vanities mirrored on either side. A killer tub moment anchoring the far end. (Yes, the tub is BLUE. More on that later.) The closet and water closet slid to the back, where two symmetrical doors did the quiet, heroic work of hiding a wall jog that had bugged me for a decade.

The result: a shower nearly three times the size and a closet that roughly doubled — all without losing an inch of vanity storage, and without pushing out a single exterior wall. Same footprint. Completely different room.

The Big Swings: A Tiled Barrel Vault Ceiling and a Navy Blue Tub

Next came the fun part.

As I tell clients: once you've nailed the footprint, you get to design up the walls. And the most overlooked wall in any room? The one over your head.

The Ceiling

My ceiling was not good. Mine was, in fact, actively bad. There was a furr-down hiding an AC chase, a very of-its-era angled "clip" where the ceiling dropped to follow the roofline, and a ceiling fan whose light shades I can only describe as frosted floral.

(Quick sidenote, because I feel strongly about this: tall ceilings are not the design flex everyone thinks they are. Want a room to feel genuinely off? Make its single biggest dimension the ceiling height. I cannot tell you how many Dallas powder baths suffer from this — you walk in and feel like an ant peeing in a cathedral. Proportion beats height. Every time.)

So. Something had to be done about my (very ugly) fourth wall — and the math was not on my side. The ceiling clipped at 8'6", the room capped at 10'. For a traditional pitched vault, that's a stingy little rise: less "architectural detail," more "the ceiling is mildly disappointed in you." I was flummoxed.

Enter the barrel vault. No peak, no pitch, no begging the ceiling for height it didn't have — just one smooth curve from wall to wall. It's the rare detail that actually loves a low, tight room.

There was just one catch. Done wrong, a barrel vault reads very traditional. Like, turret-and-drawbridge traditional. And as much as I love a good castle, castles belong in the European countryside — not a primary bathroom in the Dallas suburbs. (Ahem. I'm looking at you, Southlake.)

That's when I had the idea to tile it.

Here's a thing I tell every client: every project needs a jumping-off point. The one selection that makes the space — the thing you fall for first and build everything else around. For this bathroom, it was the tile that would wrap that ceiling. Love at first sight. I entered into a committed relationship (very committed, given the cost and the lead time on the darn stuff) and never looked back.

The Tub

So the ceiling was solved. But we still had a focal point to reckon with. Remember, this whole bathroom was built around a single center line —

— and a center line like that creates one heck of a focal point. Whatever landed at the end of it was going to be the first thing your eye hit walking in. A plain white tub simply wasn't going to cut it. No — my tub needed COLOR.

Now, see here. I know color isn't for everyone. (It should be for everyone — color is joyful, it's optimistic, it makes a room feel alive and lived-in instead of like a showroom nobody's allowed to touch.) But it is definitely for me. I love color so much that my team once got me a piece of art for my birthday that reads "you don't offend me, but all the beige you wear does." Enough said.

And while I genuinely cannot claim a single favorite color — go ahead, try to name one I don't like. Orange? Stunning. Yellow? The happiest color in the room — I do gravitate, again and again, toward blue. Shocked gasps all around. I know, I know. Obvious.

So I pulled the trigger: a navy blue tub. Benjamin Moore Hale Navy, to be precise. Would a client have let me do it? Let's just say it would've taken some convincing. But when you're your own client, the convincing goes a lot faster.

The Light Fixture

Once the tub was settled, one piece was still missing — the thing that would tie the ceiling and the tub together into a single focal point: a killer light fixture.

And because I'm a designer who sources lighting literally every day, I felt the pressure. This could not be just any fixture. It had to be unique. Special. A unicorn, so to speak.

So I did what any reasonable person does. I started stalking niche, boutique lighting designers on Instagram. I hashtagged to death. I scrolled and saved and scrolled and saved and scrolled and saved some more. Nothing was quite it.

And then, on a quick getaway to New York, I wandered into the Anna Karlin showroom.

Hello, lover.

It was perfect — every bit of balance the room was missing. It was the modern note in an otherwise traditional space. The organic shape against the geometry of the tile. The one oversized gesture in an otherwise small(ish) room. In other words: kismet. Next big decision made. Welcome home, Anna Karlin Sketch light. Please don’t tell my husband what I spent on you. (You hear that internet? Shhhhhh!)

What Went Wrong (a Preview)

Now. I'd love to tell you this all went off without a hitch. That the tile met the center line perfectly the first time, that every outlet landed exactly where it should, that no grown men questioned their career choices over the tile on my barrel vault.

Reader, it did not.

There was the pretty Prado outlet I installed sideways (my blow dryer plug doesn't fit — cool, cool). There were the can lights I made the poor tile guys hand-cut around. And there was the framing that came in 3/4" off, discovered only after the tile was fully laid — which meant demoing and redoing all of it to save the center line.

(Yes. That center line.)

It's a whole saga, and it deserves its own post — so I'm giving it one. Next week: everything that went wrong, what it cost me in tile and dignity, and what I'd do differently.

And the week after, for the truly nerdy among us (hi, it's me, I'm truly nerdy): the mechanics. How we hid the air vents inside a tiled ceiling, how the shower transom keeps everything properly ventilated, and all the unglamorous engineering that makes the pretty stuff actually work.

Two reasons to come back. You're welcome.

Get the Look: Every Source from My Dallas Primary Bathroom Remodel

A note before the list: some of these had long lead times or are custom, so I've flagged those. Where something isn't easily shoppable, I've noted a similar option.

Tile

Barrel vault ceiling, walls & shower — Maison Surface "Flanagon" mosaic in Cloud, Mist & Frost (long lead time — plan ahead) → maisonsurface.com
Bathroom floor — Ann Sacks Willow Heights by Studio McGee, Rylee Mosaic in Calacatta Bardiglio, Honed → annsacks.kohler.com
Shower floor — coming soon (still tracking down the source!)

The Tub

Tub — Vintage Tub & Bath, Randolph Morris "Ashley" 59" Cast Iron Double-Ended Skirted Tub (RM-Ashley), no faucet drillings. Custom exterior in Benjamin Moore Hale Navy (glossy); white interior → vintagetub.com

Lighting

Chandelier — Anna Karlin, Sketch Light Small → annakarlin.com

Paint

Walls — Benjamin Moore Simply White, matte
Wainscoting — Benjamin Moore Bachelor Blue 1629, satin

Plumbing & Fixtures

All Waterworks in Nickel, unless noted.

Lavatory faucets — Ludlow Lavatory Faucet with Lever Handles (LDLS10) → waterworks.com
Sinks — Universal Drop-In/Undermount Rectangular Curved-Bottom Lavatory Sink, White (UNLV22) → waterworks.com
Tub filler — Ludlow Floor-Mounted Exposed Tub Filler with Handshower & Cross Handles (LDXT60) → waterworks.com
Shower arm & flange — Ludlow 6" Wall-Mounted 45° Shower Arm with Flange (LDWL06)
Showerhead — Universal Transitional 5" Showerhead with Adjustable Spray (USH305) → waterworks.com
Thermostatic control — Ludlow Thermostatic Control Valve Trim with Lever Handle (LDTH11) → waterworks.com
Handshower — Ludlow Hand Shower on Bar (LDHS10) → waterworks.com
Shower drain — Universal 5" Square Shower Drain (UNSD05) → waterworks.com
Toilet — Toto Neorest AS 0.8 → build.com

Stone

Countertops, wainscoting cap, window casing & shower jamb — 3cm Calacatta Cremo Delicato, Honed (similar linked) → thestonecollection.com

Doors & Hardware

Doors — Custom by Builder's First (Coppell): 8'0" solid select white oak
Levers — Lo & Co "Tubby" Lever, Tumbled Brass → loandcointeriors.com
Privacy turns — Lo & Co Privacy Turn, Tumbled Brass → loandcointeriors.com
Hinges — Lo & Co Hinges, Tumbled Brass (75 × 100mm)

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