(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- When you walk into Coqodaq, New York’s buzzy fried-chicken-and-Champagne emporium, the first thing you see is not its gleaming arched ceiling, its golden nightclub glow or a glamorous host.
It’s a row of sinks.
These aren’t just any old sinks. Directly inside the front door, they’re built into a soapstone hand-washing station outfitted with weathered bronze Italian faucets and a half-dozen high-end hand cleansers, including Le Labo and Loewe. Oval tinted mirrors are surrounded by soft lights; look into one and you instantaneously become the star of the party.
Coqodaq designer David Rockwell put the washroom front and center to provide a soothing transition from Manhattan’s hectic streets to a clubby dining experience.
He didn’t necessarily intend for it to be a selfie station—but these days, what well-lit mirror isn’t?
“In bathrooms, our goal is to create a flattering three-dimensionality to the face,” says Rockwell, whose portfolio includes Nobus around the globe, the Cosmopolitan hotel in Las Vegas and Marina Bay Sands Casino in Singapore.
Lisa Grape, co-founder of Joyn Studio, who designed Chez Fifi in New York as well as the acclaimed Frantzén in Stockholm, also focuses on luminosity in a loo.
“One of the most important things when designing bathrooms is the light. You want the customer to feel beautiful, confident and sexy when looking in the mirror.” She adds: “The perfect light for a selfie but at the same time not too bright so that the light reveals too much, so that you might want to go home.”
Over-the-top bathrooms are proliferating worldwide as restaurants look for ways to turn anyone with a social media account into an unpaid marketer: There are more than 9 million #bathroomselfie hashtags on TikTok and almost as many instructional videos on how to take the best ones.
A place that got the memo is Giorgia Trattoria in Munich where every inch of the walls are covered in small reflective tiles and dozens of disco balls hang from the ceiling.
In London, the Mediterranean-inspired Bacchanalia, from famed restaurateur Richard Caring, has given diners a good excuse to be excused since it opened in December 2022. The design, in partnership with Martin Brudnizki Design Studios features marble-tiled floors in the bathroom spread out like flower petals while painted vines cascade from the ceiling. A circular sink glows in the center.
The pair’s latest collaboration is Sexy Fish Manchester, the popular Japanese seafood concept, decorated with enormous sea creature sculptures from Damien Hirst. The concept extends to the bathroom, which is presided over by a giant mosaic mermaid and ablaze in pink and blue hues.
Unsurprisingly, Brooklyn’s Williamsburg also has a destination restroom: The year-old elNico cheekily calls its neon-drenched bathroom the Selfie Station on Instagram.
A dramatic bathroom can be an easy way for a restaurant to make an enduring impression, says designer Megan Power of Workind Studio in Southern California. That’s why she wallpapered the ones at Le Coq in San Diego with psychedelic designs and embellished the glitter-tiled hallway that leads to it with two extravagant taxidermic roosters. “They can be the most photographed area of the restaurant,” she says, “and something people love to talk about with their group.”
It’s unclear who put the first restaurant bathroom selfie on the map, but an early inspiration was London’s opulent 20-year-old Sketch, whose dozen single toilets are still one of the city’s most photographed interiors. Shaped like giant white eggs, the johns resemble futuristic intergalactic travel pods. Sketch’s chief executive officer, Sinead Mallozzi, says owner Mourad Mazouz was inspired by the 1980s New York club Paradise Garage, where he remembers DJs playing in the restrooms.
Attention to the bathroom experience can show more subtly, too. At the lauded new upstairs seafood counter Penny, in New York’s East Village, co-owner Chase Sinzer says he spent more time thinking about the toilets’ soap and candles than almost any other feature of the restaurant. “If you take pride in curating your restaurant, bathrooms are a good place to show that,” he says.
But going bold can be irresistible. At the new Xanadu Roller Arts, a skating rink and nightclub in Brooklyn, one highlight beyond the gourmet hot dogs will be Club Flush—a red bathroom with its own DJ, custom sound system and dance floor. “Everything is better with a DJ,” says founder Varun Kataria.
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