Call it sour grapes if you like; I won’t be crushed. Everyone, as they say, is entitled to an opinion. Everyone’s entitled to their thoughts as well; but we keep those to ourselves. My thoughts are sure going to be wandering around in digital walking boots, opining themselves all over the place. They’re already inside where you live. Invited, of course. They’ve taken their boots off at the door, but don’t get all offended when they splay themselves out on the couch and help themselves to the fridge.

That’s what happens when you’re curious enough about the views of others to let them in. You often think you know what you’re going to get. Before everyone gets really comfortable: that’s when surprises happen. Precisely what makes a surprise a surprise is its appearance when and where you least expect it. Otherwise it’s just a normal part of something normal; not a crowd of people hiding, ready to yell the one word that it is, in unison. Right at the moment you’re sure the night ahead will be slouching around in trakkie daks, sliding something family-sized down your throat and binge-watching Bojack Horseman.

The Nature of Opinions (and Why Taste Can’t Be Bought)

The surprising thing about such a surprise is that it started with someone’s opinion of what you’d enjoy most. Apparently, good and valid opinion is objective and emotionally neutral. What kind of soft off-white suggestion is that? Opinions arise because thoughts and hackles rise. What makes them good and valid is being the same as yours.

It’s true that money can’t buy taste. That taste is subjective must have originally been uttered by someone with no taste, as a first and final line of defence. A petulant punch, slamming the door on any further exchange or debate. “You can think what you like” does the same.

That’s right; you can. I can. And in thinking what I like, I like to think that there are too many people with untold wealth inflicting their tasteless taste on a world far too full of ‘dream boards’ abundant with unmitigated ugly.

The World’s Ugliest Luxury Bathrooms

If any doors need closing, they’re the ones belonging to the bathrooms of the rich and fatuous. Nobody should ever have to see them, barring those in immediate need of the facilities. Then at least eyes can close in silent gratitude for no unfortunate and permanent embarrassment. The irony of course, is doing it inside a shrine to exactly that.

Have you seen the Guinness Book of Records’ most expensive bathroom in the world? A composed oasis of tranquil beauty and innovative design it is not. No bespoke toughened glass panels of mesmerising artwork inspired by nature. No eco-friendly shower that cleans, recirculates and maintains water temperature once you’ve soaped or shampooed. Nothing sleek, chic or award-winning. Just an ostentatious, tacky temple of excess. Gold ingot walls, and a 24-karat, $US3.5m toilet with bath and basin to match.

All in all, two tonnes of the stuff. With a ceiling garishly decorated with 6,200 rubies, emeralds, sapphires and amber. Whatever compelled the entrepreneur to create such a crass crapper couldn’t have been far from the incentive that essentially had it melted down (sans the pan) only two years later: the stratospheric rise in the price of gold.

Marble: When Beauty Turns Banal

Unlike prankster artist Maurizio Cattelan’s (stolen and never located) 18-karat toilet America as a critique of capitalism’s stop valve between the rich and the poor, the excess and absurdities of wealth distribution can be seen in digital marketing insights every one of the world’s most expensive bathrooms.

All of the top ten would have Bacchus on the wagon. Or the flagon. Whichever it took to erase the vision of the vision that was brought to fruition; some hideous sight that had no right leaving the mind of the mind’s eye that concocted it.

Without apology, anyone wanting a marble bathroom has completely lost all theirs. Other than an exquisite example of a captivating, spherical marble plaything, no matter the colour or price those veins are varicose ugly, swirled in a slab. As a symbol of wealth and luxury, it needs to be as abandoned as an 18th-century pineapple.

Inarguably, the world would be a much lesser place without the Parthenon, the Pantheon, the Taj Mahal, the Tower of Pisa; and all the monumental monuments in marble we marvel. Beauty is captured timeless in Michelangelo’s David. The breath of Aphrodite has held for two millennia in both Venus de Milo and Venus de´ Medici; the intense agony of Laocoön and His Sons would never have translated in wood. True artistry is no better seen than by Bernini’s hand, rendering dynamic emotion in Proserpina’s yielding flesh as Pluto destines her to the underworld.

Undoubtably, marble has a place—just not within coo-ee of a 21st-century bathroom.

When Designers Go Astray

The prolific career of French industrial architect and designer Philippe Starck is a vast catalogue of the eclectic, accessible and functional. His populist vision brought the Ghost Chair to life, and made juicing so much juicier. In his overhaul of Le Royal Monceau Raffles, Paris, in 2010 he redesigned the bathrooms. Whatever was cogging and cranking in his creative mind slipped into somewhere so jarring, Alice would never have made it through that looking-glass.

Each is a narcissist’s utopia meeting Escher on the way back from never leaving. Between the custom mirrored furniture and strategically lit floor-to-ceiling mirrored walls, infinite reflection swallows and swallows and swallows everything within its bath-osphere. Mirrors certainly give the illusion of space. It should never be confused with having the delusion of a space from which the certifiably sane won’t run screaming.

The Problem with Trends

Sacré bleu! Why do the most ridiculous ideas get such undeserved traction? Ideas that become popular aren’t the ones that challenge us, or scrutinise assumptions. They’re the ones that require no intellectual exertion because who has time for that? It’s resorption. The sense of ‘belonging’ outweighs any recognition that the practice, and capacity for critical thinking is flatlining.

Content doesn’t matter—only the tribal signal does. The call of confirmation to the herd: that place Nietzsche said where madness—rare in individuals—is found.

Nobody has to listen to a man with a moustache that surely had its own Heimatscheine, if they don’t want to. Nobody has to flood themselves with so many designs of other people’s bathrooms that they end up with one so boringly the same either. “On trend” is braille for the fumbling fingers of the sighted in the dark, who never take the time to turn on the light to find their own ideas and interests and talents.

The Only Bathroom That Matters

Those people are not going to be spending any time at all in your bathroom. You are. If you’re redesigning it, ditch the cookie-cutter colour charts and choose the hue that inspires you. And dual sinks—really? Is there no privacy and a bit of time for contemplation? If I wanted the ugly sight of someone spitting toothpaste next to me every day I’d live in a dorm.

Just an opinion. You can think what you like or if you’re tempted, you’re better off exploring practical bathroom renovation ideas instead.