The ceramic tiler whose geometric patterns cover a Leederville bathroom

In a compact bathroom off the rear of a Leederville terrace, an arrangement of glazed triangles turns a narrow daily space into something unexpectedly expansive. The pattern rises from the floor, folds around the shower wall and gathers at a shallow niche. Its maker, ceramicist and tiler Elise Tan, treats each tile as part of a larger drawing rather than a repeat placed on a grid.

Tan works from a small studio in Northbridge, producing custom surfaces for homes, hospitality venues and architects across Australia. She trained as a tile setter before moving into hand-making and still approaches a bathroom with the practical eye of a tradesperson. That combination gives her work an unusual balance: the geometry is precise, but its slips, irregularities and colour shifts keep it human.

The Leederville project began when the owners wanted more storage without making the room feel heavier. Their brief was modest, yet Tan saw potential in the leftover wall space and a patch of floor where a standard tile would have been expected. She proposed wrapping the room in a single motif, adjusted to the dimensions of the existing slab and the position of the vanity.

The result speaks to a recognisable Perth condition: small, light-sensitive rooms within older inner-city houses, paired with clients who value both craft and longevity. It also reveals how far ceramic tile has moved in Australian design beyond the white square. Tan’s practice sits between the local renovation trade and the country’s growing appetite for small-run, artist-made material.

A room drawn to its proportions

The bathroom occupies what was once a service room, measuring roughly two metres by 2.4 metres with a single door and no original window. Rather than enlarge the footprint, the renovation team retained the room’s shape and concentrated the visual complexity into one continuous surface. The existing concrete slab and plumbing positions became fixed points around which the pattern could be composed.

Tan divided the walls into repeating triangles, interrupted by bands of solid colour. Half-hexagons negotiate the floor and shower threshold, while smaller square tiles fill the awkward edges around the niche and vanity. Their scale changes with the available space, creating a field that feels active without becoming visually noisy.

“We didn’t want the tile to disappear,” one of the owners says. “We wanted it to make the room feel considered.” A floating timber vanity, brushed brass tapware and a narrow arched mirror temper the saturated pattern. Nothing else in the room competes for attention.

From paper grid to fired surface

Every project starts with a scaled drawing rather than a standard tile catalogue. Tan visits the site, records the dimensions and plots the room directly onto paper. She then produces full-size templates for cutting, allowing the geometry to follow the walls instead of forcing the room into a repeating module.

The tiles are slip-cast in small batches, with the clay, stains and mineral oxides prepared in her Northbridge workspace. Test pieces are fired at a shared kiln in Fremantle, where the heat can subtly alter the edges of the glaze and deepen its colour. “A rectangle can look machine-made if every edge is identical,” Tan says. “Small differences give the surface its life.”

Installation required equal attention to detail. The wet area was waterproofed to Australian standards before the membrane was covered, and the floor was laid to an appropriate fall toward the waste. Movement joints were positioned where the material meets the vanity and wall junctions, while the shower edges were finished with a silicone seal that can flex without cracking the ceramic.

Geometry that changes with the light

Glazed triangles cover the shower wall, catching the bathroom’s artificial light and returning it in fragments. Their reflective surfaces shift from cream to amber as the evening changes, while the matte floor tiles hold a quieter tone underfoot. The contrast keeps the small room legible: the walls appear to move, but the floor remains grounded.

Perth’s strong daylight also shaped Tan’s material tests. Pale glazes were checked for harsh reflections, while deeper oxide colours were developed to retain depth in bathrooms that may be lit for only a short period each day. The brief was not simply to make a patterned room, but to make that pattern comfortable to live with.

That conversation between order and growth connects directly to Perth’s biophilic shift, where natural textures and planting are increasingly used to soften commercial interiors. Tan’s geometric tiles offer a different kind of enrichment, one based on touch, repetition and variation rather than foliage.

Why handmade tile belongs beyond the home

The Leederville bathroom is part of a wider body of work that includes hospitality counters, fireplaces and residential splashbacks. Tan is often brought in after the architecture and interior scheme are established, providing a final layer that brings warmth and specificity to a room assembled from larger industrial components.

For commercial clients, durability is only the beginning of the brief. The surface has to withstand cleaning, heavy use and changing display needs while retaining the character of a handmade object. Working closely with architects, landscape designers and furniture makers allows Tan to tune colour and scale to the wider composition.

Australian projects also place an emphasis on adaptation. Rather than applying one visual language everywhere, designers are combining imported tile with locally made objects, custom joinery and regional materials. Tan sees this hybrid approach as a strength, particularly in cities where old buildings and contemporary additions sit close together.

A maker in Perth’s design network

Colour begins with observation. Tan keeps a notebook of colour combinations encountered during daily routines, from shopfronts and council plantings to the pale stone and brick tones common around Perth. Visits to design-focused Perth cafes provide another source of reference, where tiles, lighting and furniture often reveal how small decisions shape a room.

Her career has moved in the opposite direction to that of many studio craftspeople. Instead of remaining at the scale of a single object, Tan now coordinates an entire surface, from the first sketch to the final grout line. Architects appreciate that continuity, while homeowners gain a feature designed around the particular proportions of their house.

The Leederville project has led to commissions further north, including a hospitality interior in Fremantle and a private bathroom in Claremont. Tan remains tied to the same process: measure carefully, test the materials, and let the geometry respond to the room rather than overpower it.

Contemporary readers can meet Tan and other local architects, designers and makers at Contemporary Wine In Design, the networking and showcase event for Perth’s design community. The program brings together studios, suppliers and collaborators across the architecture and interiors sector.

Follow Contemporary for further profiles, studio visits and conversations with the people shaping Western Australia’s built environment, and join the design community at Contemporary Wine In Design to experience the work in person.