These bathrooms each share the same clever flooring detail – I'm convinced its the coolest micro-trend right now

Wanting to introduce the luxe look of marble to your bathroom floor but don't want to break the bank? I'm sold on this flooring trick that cleverly uses a smaller fragment of marble within the flooring, creating zones, wow-factor, and beautiful tactile curves.

Instead of using marble or other similar natural stones across the entire floor, designers have been creating feature flooring elements in their modern bathroom designs.

This creates shape and curves in the room, helps zone the space, and really helps the marble really shine as a material. Here's what you need to know about this bathroom micro-trend. 

Isolate the marble flooring to give it more wow-factor

(Image credit: HDP Photography. Design: NC Design & Architecture)

Nelson Chow of NC Design & Architecture is one such designer who has used this idea, creating a beautiful focal point around the bathroom vanity in this Hong Kong apartment. 

The brief was that the clients wanted the home to be beautiful, functional, and age well, an oasis from the hustle and bustle of the city. The bathroom is the star of the show of this Hong Kong apartment, a relaxing temple of tranquility away from the busy city streets below. 

The rounded semi-circle shape on the bathroom floor allows the material to stand out, and creates a focal point that highlights the design highlight in the room, affectionately dubbed 'the alter' by Nelson and his team.

(Image credit: HDP Photography. Design: NC Design & Architecture)

'The bathroom space is meant to look very sculptural and integrated, away from the tradition that they are different elements,' explains Nelson. 'A bathtub and elliptical bronze bathroom sink have been incorporated into a marble counter. It's topped by a series of arched mirror, echoing the vaulted niche in a church that typically accommodates an altar.'

The space below the sink is used as handy storage that is tidied away to create a minimalist bathroom feel. The glass panel is added to prevent humidity from entering the rest of the bathroom as its located next to the closet area. 

Use the floor layout to bring curves to the space

(Image credit: Saransh)

The use of a semi-circle marble base on the floor is a design feature that really creates shape, curves, and brings elegance in abundance to the bathroom. 'The focus is drawing to the forms and shapes and it becomes more precious when it is used in strategic locations,' says Nelson.

In this example, the technique is adopted to help create distinct zones. 'This bathroom is finished with materials and elements in shades of grey with some capsule-shaped marble highlights spread over the surfaces,' explains Manish and Malini Doshi of Studio Saransh. 'These highlights move across surfaces of floor and wall to frame the bathroom mirrors as well as the WC area.'

Use marble flooring to zone your bathroom

(Image credit: Hoban Design)

Using this flooring technique is also about zoning and creating distinctive areas within the bathroom that echo the function.

In this design by boutique architect, Hoban Design, the marble bathroom flooring appears almost like a rug under the bathtub, but helps delineate the zone for bathing. 

'The goal in layout was to place the bath as the focal point on a base of book-matched marble and then have the vanity as a focal counter to it,' says Chris Chapman, director of design at Hoban Design.

The beautiful marble flooring is complemented with the finely fluted walnut. 'We have a ‘fluted’ walnut theme for the kitchen island downstairs – to play on this theme we turned it into ‘ribbed’ walnut on the front of the main vanity. The warmth of the wood was countered by the depth and intensity of the feature marble.