Designing Your Bathroom Around the Vanity

Storage to the max. There's lots of leeway in the way designers are incorporating these trendy furniture-look pieces. "In the master bath, I'm using vanities to maximize storage, with different height elevations for the storage elements and different depths so it's not just a long landing space," says Tucson's Carroll, who describes her style as "clean and contemporary with eclectic accents."

In her more traditional style, Gargano's using full-size vanities in the master bath at client's request. "They want the vanity to take the place of a linen closet," she says.

Yours, mine, or maybe ours. Though the design of the actual vanity might vary considerably, a lot of couples are opting for "his and hers" combinations in the master bath. Sometimes that means one large vanity with two sinks, but more often lately couples are opting for two separate furniture-style vanities, like a set of two Timberlake Cabinet Company architecturally-detailed Sonoma maple four-drawer base cabinets flanking a pedestal sink.

"One thing that we're looking at more and more is husbands asking for a little taller master bath vanity," says Carroll. "When he's 6'6" and she's 5'5" I could tweak his vanity all the way up to like 37 inches. That's much more convenient for a tall person than the traditional 34-35 inches."

Carroll says she uses a center element in between the varying heights so the discrepancy isn't as noticeable. "I might create a makeup area or maybe a taller vanity with drawers and doors or a combo of the two."