It’s always nice to fill your home with pieces that evoke memories, and the bathroom is no exception – you can buy a bathroom suite, wallpaper, tiles, flooring and free-standing furniture that has a retro or vintage vibe.

The key, as ever, is not to go over the top. You don’t want your bathroom to look exactly like one from the 1950s or 1900s – just retain some elements and combine them with modern design and technology.

Remember that when it comes to retro, a little goes a long way. If you’re fitting retro-inspired lino on the floor, make sure the rest of the bathroom is fairly cutting edge.

And if you’re going for a Victorian-look roll-top bath then teaming it with modern striped blind and plain brightly coloured walls can look better than creating an entirely mock-Victorian room.

The best advice, which I talk about time and time again on this blog, is to play it fairly safe with the big ticket items such as the bathroom suite.

The Ropar bath from BathEmpire has 60s-style curves

You can opt for funky retro shape free-standing baths or beautiful roll-top tubs, but always choose white so you can change the look with paint effects or new soft furnishings whenever you like.

Freestanding baths with curvy shapes evoke the mid decades of the 20th century. Groovy baby.

Often giving the room a retro or vintage look is simply about choosing the right shapes. The 60s was all about big bold curves, while the Victorian era is more about scrolls and more subtle curves (see my previous blog post on vintage bathrooms). The 70s look is more hard-edged and geometric.

Just bearing this in mind when shopping for your bathroom can help you create the atmosphere you want.

The Victoria traditional towel radiator from BathEmpire

As well as general shapes, think about incorporating pieces that are replicas of traditional pieces from the past. An old fashioned towel radiator, for example, can look very chic in a modern bathroom.

Once you have a white suite in place you can go to town with colour. Think of hues which would have been used in your home when you were a child, or take a look in any DIY store and you’ll see vintage paint ranges.

Orange, yellow and pastel shades, if used correctly are great for evoking previous decades. (For inspiration see my previous blog post on jewel tone bathrooms).

If you’re on a budget then opting for a vintage or retro feel bathroom is a great idea as you can mix in pieces you find at second hand or vintage shops, or on ebay, and you can even scour your own attic for items to put in the room.

We love this funky retro bathroom as feature on redonline.co.uk

A funky twist is to use furniture that wouldn’t traditionally have been found in a bathroom.

For example, we love if you click on the retro bathrooms feature at redonline.co.uk, you’ll spot a bathroom where a vintage office filing cabinet has been spray-painted to give it a new lease of life. We think it creates a fab look.

I hope this post has inspired you to create your own vintage or retro-look bathroom, and made you realise that having a little bit of the past in your bedroom doesn’t mean you have to install an avocado suite!

But a funny thing has happened over the past couple of years. We’ve started hankering after old-fashioned design and pretty vintage interiors – from quaint floral fabrics to roll top baths, and from traditional teapots to antique chairs.

Trend commentators have suggested that this desire for vintage is being fuelled by the recession. As we have less money, flashy modern home furnishings seem inappropriate and we all want to surround ourselves with nostalgia.

Inspiring the trend: The King's Speech

There’s now a new driving force behind the trend though…

Unless you’ve been living in a box, you’ll know that The King’s Speech is the film everybody’s talking about right now.

The hotly-tipped Oscar runaway, starring Colin Firth as a stammering King George VI, is set in a pre-World War Two London where home furnishings are reassuringly elegant and typical of the 1930s.

Then there’s the runaway TV success Downton Abbey. Set in 1914 as Britain is on the brink of war with Germany, we all fell not only for the drama but also the splendour and beauty of Downton Abbey itself.

These period dramas have made us want to steal some of the style of the early part of the 20^th century for our own homes.

Traditional towel rail radiator 4 column white and chrome, Victoria

One of the best ways to do this is in the bathroom, where you can use roll top baths vintage-style heated towel radiators and traditional taps to create a look that’s both vintage-inspired, but also perfectly suited to modern life.

Style the room up with a floral blind, heaps of towels in faded tones, and paint the walls with Farrrow & Ball bathroom emulsion.

Be warned though – you may get location scouts knocking on your door when they’re looking to film the next series of Downton!