Wall Street Journal Online
How to Make a Pink Bathroom Chic
By Elizabeth Quinn Brown
ROOM TO GROW In an Alexandria, Va., home, local designer Maria Crosby Pollard created a pink-and-green bathroom that suited a teenage girl but wouldn’t be too childish for her in 10 years. PHOTO: ANGIE SECKINGER
WHAT KEEPS THIS obviously youthful and feminine vanity area from making your teeth hurt? Maria Crosby Pollard, the interior designer behind it, had to balance the teenage occupant’s love of the very Floridian patterns of the late fashion designer Lilly Pulitzer with the room’s decidedly nontropical location of Alexandria, Va. Also on the program: décor that would suit the teen as she ages into adulthood.
First stop was wallpaper that satisfied the yen for Lilly-esque pinks and greens. While an allover small pattern reads sweet, noted Ms. Crosby Pollard, “the scale of this pattern was appealing and fresh, and the dark lines of the branches offer some graphic relief.” Next challenge: bringing in a lot more pink, a color she said suited the client, without getting treacly. Mixing tonalities is the secret. Bubble-gum pink vases dominate the paper pattern; the cabinet’s rosy lilac is clouded with gray; the stripes of the window shade and circles on the tray contribute a deep raspberry and the flower vessel adds a peachy shade. “If all the colors are super clear, they feel a little too show bird-y,” she said. Also anticipating the girl’s older self? Hits of glamour like crystal drawer pulls. Here, Ms. Crosby Pollard’s other strategies for satisfying the needs and tastes of a young woman on the verge of “adulting.”