Bathrooms in Goa

A Goan bathroom is usually wet twice over. There is the water you use — a shower that splashes across an open floor, a bucket bath, a washbasin by the window — and there is the water in the air, which from June to September keeps tiles, grout and anything made of fabric damp for days at a time. Many older houses have small, high windows with no exhaust fan; many new flats have a window onto a shared duct or a neighbour's wall, a metre away.

So the questions here are different from every other room. Who can see in, and from where? What will get splashed, and what only gets steam? What can be wiped down, and what has to come off and go in the machine? A fabric that is perfect at a bedroom window will be grey with mildew at a shower within a single monsoon.

We also do a lot of en-suites for homestays and rental villas, where a bathroom has to look fresh for every new guest and survive people who don't know to open the window. That changes the brief again: fewer fabrics, more wipeable surfaces, nothing that needs explaining.