Why designers are borrowing Piero Portaluppi's 1930s Milan bathrooms

The pale, marble-sheathed spa bathroom may be losing its grip. Architectural Digest traces a turn towards something moodier: deeply veined stone in dark green or dusky red, sculptural Art Deco fixtures and warm woodwork. The touchstone is 1930s Milan, and above all the Rationalist architect Piero Portaluppi, whose bathrooms at Villa Necchi Campiglio and Casa Corbellini-Wassermann turned plumbing into theatre.

At Villa Necchi, mirrored walls multiply swirling Arabescato Orobico marble; at Casa Corbellini-Wassermann, vivid Verde Challant sits against graphic black stone. Athena Calderone visited the villa while reworking her Tribeca apartment and came away admiring how Portaluppi pieced rooms together from smaller stones and embraced irregular veining, rather than chasing perfect bookmatched slabs. Her powder room now has a pedestal sink in Verde Alpi marble.

Gregory Rockwell, with Hester Hodde, gave Paloma Elsesser's Brooklyn town house burgundy Rosso Francia marble, walnut-and-mirror panelling and pistachio walls, a mix he admits is slightly strange. In Milan, Giampiero Tagliaferri drew a green pedestal sink from Rationalist forms, insisting the point is reinterpretation, not copying. The piece closes with a run of tiles and fittings in the same spirit.

Worth reading for anyone planning a bathroom, and a nudge to see the Villa Necchi original on a trip to Milan.

Our summary of a story from Architectural Digest, published 26 October 2026. Read the original