Walls in a shade of white let the pink tiles and dark green trim shine through in Dawn Ruth Wilson's bathroom.
Light green tiles accented with white and dark green are found in the bathroom of Nancy and Jeffery Helmstetter.
Nancy and Jeffery Helmstetter's vanity is framed with green tiles and accented in black.
A field of greens for the Helmstetters' Bayou St. John bathroom.
Nancy and Jeffery Helmstetter relax on their Bayou St. John front porch.
The Helmstetters' tile and flamingo soap dish are originals; the faucet and sink are not.
Only the guest bathroom breaks the mold of all-white walls in Elaine Forstall's home. She added a lot of bold color to tone down the 'highlighter yellow' tiles.
The tile floor pattern in the Helmstetters' pink bathroom.
Floor tiles lead to the shower curtain in the Helmstetters' bath that keeps with the feel of the era.
A flamingo night light accents Dawn Ruth Wilson's pink bathroom.
The pink tile in Dawn Ruth Wilson's bathroom is paired with very dark green accent.
The corner of the counter in Dawn Ruth Wilson's bathroom shows the dark green accents. More typically, the dark tile would be black.
The counter is pink but the trim is dark green.
The Helmstetters' pink and black tiles with a flamingo soap dish.
The Helmstetters' shower curtain is appropriate for the era, too.
Tiles edged by dark green and a decorative black-and-white tile trim.
Elaine Forstall worked with her 'highlighter yellow' tile to create a room she loves.
Light green tiles accented with white and dark green are found in the bathroom of Nancy and Jeffery Helmstetter.
The Helmstetters' tile and flamingo soap dish are originals; the faucet and sink are not.
Floor tiles lead to the shower curtain in the Helmstetters' bath that keeps with the feel of the era.
A flamingo night light accents Dawn Ruth Wilson's pink bathroom.
The counter is pink but the trim is dark green.
The Helmstetters' pink and black tiles with a flamingo soap dish.
The Helmstetters' shower curtain is appropriate for the era, too.
Tiles edged by dark green and a decorative black-and-white tile trim.
Elaine Forstall worked with her 'highlighter yellow' tile to create a room she loves.
About those neon-screaming bathrooms from the 1950s — as the saying goes, you either love them or you hate them.
And I do so love my own, which is bubblegum pink from walls to tub. Dark green trim sets it off.
When I moved into a rental last year, all that pinkness was a dream come true. As a lover of all things midcentury, I finally had ’50s tile glamour.
The pink tile in Dawn Ruth Wilson's bathroom is paired with very dark green accent.
To say that not everyone reacts with joy to the color-love of mid-20th century bathroom design, however, is an understatement.
“The colors are objectionable.” Those are the words Mike Helmstetter has heard often in his 40 years of specializing in bathroom and kitchen renovations. Clients would say, “I don’t like the green, the yellow, whatever color.”
Pink was the most hated, he said.
Out with the pink, in with white, beige or gray, modern-day favorites. After listening to an owner's tale of loathing, Helmstetter’s crew demolished the tile.
Nancy and Jeffery Helmstetter's vanity is framed with green tiles and accented in black.
The pastel construction that once had been someone’s pride and joy soon lay in heaps, victimized by smashing maul hammers and slicing diamond blade saws. Helmstetter estimates he has gutted at least 50 of them.
A total redo is exactly what Elaine Forstall, a retired luxury drapery maker, thought she wanted in 2020 when she encountered a 1950s bathroom in the condo she purchased.
“Highlighter yellow” was her daughter-in-law’s description of the yellow tile that encased the sink, toilet and tub. And that color certainly didn’t fit into the all-white splendor Forstall envisioned for the full condo renovation to come.
“I was going to gut the whole thing,” Forstall said, “and spend another $5,000 to $7,000.”
Only the guest bathroom breaks the mold of all-white walls in Elaine Forstall's home. She added a lot of bold color to tone down the 'highlighter yellow' tiles.
But, later, she chastised herself for not meeting the creative challenge the bathroom presented.
“You are a designer,” she reminded herself. “Do you really need another white bathroom that looks like everyone else’s?”
So off she went to the fabric store. She planned to tone down the yellow with darker colors, and soon she found just what she wanted, a floral pattern with a black background featuring her favorite animals — monkeys. The monkeys in her shower curtain are so bold, with their pointed hats and impish shoes, they practical screech.
Then she found artwork cast off from a hotel renovation that matched the reddish flower patterns of the shower curtain. Later she found a rug that also matched, and it was just the size she needed to hide most of the original yellow mosaic floor tiles.
Walls in a shade of white let the pink tiles and dark green trim shine through in Dawn Ruth Wilson's bathroom.
With mustard-colored paint and a new vanity, the transformation was complete. Highlighter yellow faded into the background, all for less than $2,000.
“It’s great. It’s my favorite room now,” Forstall said. “It’s the only room that has color.”
Mike Helmstetter’s brother and sister-in-law fell in love with the midcentury bathrooms they encountered when they first saw their home-to-be in 2019.
After a two-year search, Nancy and Jeffery Helmstetter found the house of their dreams. Located in their target neighborhood of Bayou St. John, with off-street parking and a large veranda, the Mediterranean-style home checked every box.
Nancy and Jeffery Helmstetter relax on their Bayou St. John front porch.
“We were attracted to the bathrooms,” said Nancy Helmstetter, a retired English as a second language teacher. “We liked the tub tile because it has tile on the ceiling, too, and it was in really good shape.”
Their primary bathroom is mint green with bull nose trim the color of sea glass. The floor is tiled with diamond-patterned mosaics.
It’s so unusual that “you want to use it,” said Jeffery Helmstetter, a retired assistant superintendent of Jefferson Parish schools. “You want to open the door and look at it.”
Even more striking are two pairs of original Art Deco vanity lamps. One pair lights up the mirror over the sink, and the other pair hangs lower on the wall, child-height.
A field of greens for the Helmstetters' Bayou St. John bathroom.
Their second bathroom is pink with black bullnose trim, a classic color combination of the period. This one includes liner tile in a pattern resembling curling ribbon. A Society6 shower curtain of midcentury design completes the vintage vibe.
After the deprivations of the World War II years, renewed optimism about the future fueled an exuberance for color. The flamboyance of the 1950s inspired the orange Oldsmobile and the rocket-shaped tail fins of the Cadillac. Home design followed suit, and the all-white bathroom, inspired by the Art Deco movement of the 1920s and 1930s, began to disappear.
Millions of suburban ranch-style homes built to house returning veterans and their booming families included bathrooms encased in tile of pinks, blues, greens, and yellows. Contrasting trims of color were common: sky blue with yellow, emerald green with black, coral with maroon.
The corner of the counter in Dawn Ruth Wilson's bathroom shows the dark green accents. More typically, the dark tile would be black.
“We’ve seen every color of the rainbow,” Mike Helmstetter said.
Today’s derided pink bathroom was one of the most popular colors, judging by the millions of them installed midcentury. Design historians say that pink became popular after Mamie Eisenhower wore a pink ballgown studded with rhinestones to President Eisenhower’s inauguration in 1953.
Her obsession with pink made its way into the White House, and a year later Elvis purchased a pink Cadillac. Talk about influencers. Nowadays, pink paint and pink bathrooms of that period are often described as Mamie Pink.
The tile floor pattern in the Helmstetters' pink bathroom.
Such a bathroom today, assuming anyone asked for one, would be difficult to recreate. There aren’t many experienced artisans and masons left to do that kind of quality work, Mike Helmstetter said.
Made with masonry wire and two layers of concrete, “those things are bullet proof,” he said. The ones with tiled coves over the tubs are like bunkers. “If a tornado came through,” he added, “I’d be in it in two minutes.”
That old-style construction was the art of “real, true masons,” and demolishing that kind of masonry is dangerous work. “The wire behind the concrete is like razors,” Helmstetter said. “To take out one of those jobs is brutal.”
Why would anyone want to?
In addition to color abhorrence, Helmstetter said homeowners today want spalike luxury. They also want roomier showers and taller vanities.
Hunching over the 30-inch-tall, original vanity in my own bathroom seems a small price to pay, but when I first saw the bathroom, the walls were gray to match the grayish-green, bull-nosed trim, thus toning down the pink. Unlike Forstall, who painted her bathroom walls a darker color to tone down the yellow tile, I wanted to lighten the wall color to turn up the pink.
I asked if I could repaint. The owners did it for me in my choice of white, Benjamin Moore’s Mascarpone, which had enough yellow and red undertones to release the pink from its corset.
A black and white midcentury styled shower curtain, midcentury ceramic vases and a few plants and voilà!
My Mamie Pink tile-palace was complete.
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