Room design in Batumi: kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and balcony

Room design in Batumi: studio, 1+1 and 2+1

Before drawing a single room, we look at how the whole apartment works. In a studio the kitchen, bed and sofa share one space, and whatever you decide for one area can be seen from anywhere in it. In a 1+1, which in Batumi means one bedroom plus a kitchen-living room, the bedroom is behind a door, and a kitchen that opens onto the living room becomes part of the main room. A 2+1 adds a second bedroom, and depending on your plans it becomes a child's room, a study or another room for guests.

In a small space every item does two jobs. The dining table doubles as a desk, the sofa folds out for guests, and a bed with a lift-up base stores the duvets. All of this is settled at the layout stage: a sofa bed needs space in front of it, and a table by the window needs a socket and a light.

Even when the design is for one room, we measure the neighbouring rooms too. The cable to a new socket and the pipe to a relocated sink will run through them. Without this, a good idea on paper runs into a wall that nobody planned to open up.

Kitchen and kitchen-living room

In a studio, and in a 1+1 with a kitchen-living room, the kitchen can be seen from the sofa, and in a studio from the bed as well. So we usually keep the cabinet fronts plain and close to the wall colour, build in the appliances and take the wall cabinets up to the ceiling. No dust collects on top of them, and inside there is room for things you only take out once a season.

In an open-plan space, steam and cooking smells settle on the curtains and the sofa. If the kitchen has its own ventilation shaft, we place the hob and cooker hood close to it and draw the duct boxing into the ceiling from the start. If there is no shaft, the remaining option is a recirculating hood. It traps grease and some of the smell but does not take moisture out of the air, and in Batumi there is plenty of that already.

We split the lighting in a kitchen-living room into circuits: over the worktop, over the dining table and general lighting. In the evening you can switch off the kitchen lights and leave the ones by the sofa on, and the room stops looking like a canteen. In a rental, the kitchen almost always ends up in the living room photos, so we give the kettle and coffee machine a recess with sockets inside, and the worktop stays clear in the pictures.

Bathroom and wet areas

In a bathroom without a window, only ventilation dries the room. We fit an extractor fan with a timer or humidity sensor so that it keeps running for a few minutes after a shower, and we leave a gap under the door or fit a vent grille. Without air coming in, the fan can hardly extract anything, and steam settles on the ceiling.

In Batumi a heated towel rail is not there for looks: towels and swimwear dry slowly after the beach. We give an electric towel rail its own circuit with a switch and put hooks next to it. In the shower we fit a glass screen instead of a curtain, because fabric soon darkens in a damp bathroom, while glass only needs wiping.

The washing machine goes in the bathroom or the kitchen, and a tumble dryer can be stacked on top of it. If there won't be a dryer, we find a place for drying laundry at the layout stage, otherwise the clothes airer will settle in the living room for good.

Bedroom, child's room and study

In the bedroom we mount the air conditioner so that the airflow runs along the bed, not onto the pillow. The light can be switched on both from the door and from the bed, so you don't have to cross a dark room at night. If there is storage under the mattress, we choose a slatted base: on a solid one, in a damp climate, the mattress starts to smell musty underneath.

We design a child's room for the child to grow into. At first a child needs open floor space to play and low shelves they can reach on their own, and later a desk by the window. We fit sockets with safety shutters and paint the walls with washable paint, so felt-tip marks come off.

If there is no separate room for a study, a corner of the bedroom or living room becomes one. We place the desk with the window to one side: with the window behind you, the screen catches glare and your face falls into shadow on video calls. We plan the sockets, a place for the router and the wall that will be behind you on calls together with the furniture.

Hallway, walk-in wardrobe and storage

Batumi gets more than 2,400 mm of rain a year, so wet umbrellas, raincoats and shoes are part of everyday life. By the door we lay porcelain tiles, put in an umbrella stand with a drip tray and space the hooks so that a wet coat doesn't touch the one next to it. We design the shoe cabinet with ventilation, because wet trainers in a closed box won't be dry by morning.

In a damp climate, a walk-in wardrobe without air movement starts to smell. We design it with an extractor fan or a vent grille in the door, a motion-sensor light and a socket for a dehumidifier in winter, when the damp is worse. Leather shoes and bags get open shelves, because in closed boxes they go mouldy faster.

We also plan a utility cupboard for the vacuum cleaner, ironing board and cleaning products. In your own apartment it means no mop behind the door, and in a rental, cleaning between guests goes faster when everything is kept in one place.

A balcony by the sea

An open balcony by the sea has to live with rain and salty wind. We choose outdoor furniture in aluminium, plastic or teak, and the cushions are taken indoors for the winter. The floor is laid with a slope towards the drain, using tiles that are not slippery when wet.

A glazed balcony collects condensation on the glass and in the corners in winter. If you want to join it to a room, we first check whether the wall between them is load-bearing and whether it is part of the building's external wall. Then we work out how heat will get there and where the moisture will go. Load-bearing structures can only be altered with a structural design and a permit, and sometimes it makes more sense to keep the balcony as a summer room and not spend money on insulation.

If the balcony has a sea view, that shot will almost certainly end up in the rental listing. So we leave room by the railing for a couple of chairs and a small table, and find a place for drying laundry in the bathroom or a storeroom.