Of all the domestic rooms that human beings have at their disposal, the bath is the perpetual underachiever. Think about it: Ablutions only take so long, no matter how exquisitely hand-milled the soap or costly the unguents, and very often a bath, however expansive its footprint or refined its materials, is basically about plumbing. Why shouldn’t this utilitarian space be paradisiacal, like the Beverly Hills bath of fashion photographer Steven Meisel with its pearl-clutching concentration of comfortable armchairs, flowing eau de Nil green curtains, gilded Jansen desk, and shower walled with glass and onyx? (Architectural Digest, October 2012)

One could always follow the example of Meisel and his interior designer, Brad Dunning, though why not take a giant step backward to their arguable source, Elsie de Wolfe? The American interior decorator and international grande dame, who lived from 1865 to 1950, firmly if eccentrically believed a bath could accommodate private and public activities—dressing for dinner, writing letters, even, believe it or not, entertaining one’s friends, a habit she likely picked up from reading about the adventuresome attitudes of certain racy mesdames in dix-huitième siècle France.

Proving that point, in the late ’20s De Wolfe equipped her Paris penthouse at 10 Avenue d’Iéna with a salle de bain so luxuriously outfitted and willfully idiosyncratic that it became an essential stop on any City of Light checklist, as desirable as a fitting at Molyneux or a private appointment with Louis Cartier. The New York Times reported, presumably with some disbelief, “Ambassadors, statesmen, famous artists and authors, even royalty, have admired it and have enjoyed tea parties and after-dinner coffee surrounded by its beauties.”

Near De Wolfe’s tub stood a slender mirrored-glass secretary from the workshop of French artist Max Ingrand, its reflective surfaces spangled with mermaids and sea monsters splashing in a verre églomisé sea that echoed the room’s mirrored frieze and mantel. An L-shape sofa, scattered with tiger-stripe cushions, offered the promise of sumptuous repose. Curtains of silver lamé, walls sheathed in white marble, and a fantastic cocktail table by Pierre Legrain in the shape of a globe rounded out the shimmering scheme, which the lecherous Sir Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists, called “one of the most voluptuous settings it was possible to encounter.” (The political persuasions of De Wolfe’s companions meant nothing to her, only the level of their fame.) Small wonder the fashionable world gladly sipped cocktails in the company of a plumbing fixture De Wolfe usually euphemistically described as “the unmentionable” and which she typically camouflaged with an elegant chair-like contraption known as a chaise percée.

De Wolfe’s precepts were fixed firmly in mind when my husband and I turned a bedroom on the second floor of our country house into a bath. (FYI: For a truly livable bath, square footage matters, so think spacious if you are planning to renovate.) There, an American Empire–style oval mahogany table is placed against a painted beadboard wall, beneath early-19th-century herbarium pages in gilt-wood frames. Nearby stands a curvaceous Louis-Philippe armchair with a low marble-top table at its side, perfect for setting a cup of morning coffee or an after-dinner cocktail as the claw-foot tub slowly fills. Rolled out beneath it all is an Oriental carpet of uncertain vintage but with a pleasing combination of autumnal colors, and at one end of the tub hangs a wall-size Chinese Chippendale-style mirror, flanked by potted ferns on pedestals. Stylistically the room is a bit of a dog’s breakfast but it is inviting and much admired, if the comments of our guests are to be believed.

Another fully dressed bath worth recommending belonged to Nancy Lancaster (1897–1994), the Virginia-born owner of London’s taste-making Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler interior-decorating concern—and a woman whose baths blended New World efficiency with Old World coziness. A photograph dating from around 1955 illustrates a welcoming atmosphere enlivened by gently clashing leaf and floral patterns that acknowledge the bucolic surrounds: Haseley Court, Lancaster’s country house in Oxfordshire.

Stretched above the white wainscot and also used for the curtains is Haseley Acorn chintz—sadly discontinued—a glazed cotton whose gray-and-white moiré ground is scattered with oak sprigs bearing pink acorns. Mismatched old rugs woven with hearty flowers and leaves dapple the neutral fitted carpeting, another leafy fabric covers the seat of a Georgian side chair, and small painted tables are tucked where they can be most useful—alongside the sink, at the foot of the chaise percée. And a flounced dressing table is sensibly placed in front of a window to take advantage of the clear morning light.

Art is everywhere. Most of it is sentimental, namely family silhouettes and sketches of Lancaster’s sons. Two especially beloved images hang at the foot of the tub, poignant reminders of where this spirited expatriate would rather have been, even when she was soaking. Likely both watercolors, they depict Mirador, her grandfather’s plantation in the Blue Ridge Mountains. “I’m not really interested in England or America, only in Virginia and Mirador,” said Lancaster, who spent most of her long life in England, after marrying a Brit in 1920. “They’re my roots and my soul.” Which also explains why her Haseley Court tub fittings are plainspoken laundry taps, utilitarian basics she remembered from her childhood—and which, unlike English taps, allowed hot water to profligately gush rather than wanly trickle.

British interior designer David Hicks (1929–98) once complained, “[M]any beautiful houses are sadly marred by the drabness, unoriginality, or plain discomfort of their bathing arrangements.” Given that opinion, it comes as little surprise to learn that his bath at Britwell House, an 18th-century mansion in Oxfordshire, was a bracing lesson in squirearchal splendor.

The high ceiling and raised paneling contributed mightily to the charm of the chamber, which Hicks’s architect son, Ashley, suspects originally had been a bedroom or a closet, in the old-fashion meaning of “an apartment or small room for privacy.” Dead center, perpendicular to the fireplace, stood a boxed-in tub from which the recumbent tastemaker could take in an inspiring tableau: paneling sponged to resemble granite; tables topped with shapely lamps; fitted carpeting with a jazzy geometric pattern; a grandiose mahogany cabinet filled with mementos; Directoire, Georgian, and Gothic Revival chairs; a handy telephone table within arm’s reach, and—yes—much more.

Some observers might find the layered, library-like decor of Hicks’s bath a bit excessive, but each and every element contributed to the designer’s ideal definition of a bath, one that really should be the standard against which all such spaces are measured: “a room in which to perform certain rituals and in which to relax.”