When one of our longtime design partners decided to finally renovate her own primary bathroom, the pressure was different than usual. As the founder of Lark Interiors, Janelle spent years talking clients through big decisions on their homes. This time, she was the client, and every choice was hers to make.
How did she feel about it? Excited. Janelle told us: “I understand the process, so there was far less time spent on education and walking through every step: what to expect, why certain decisions need to be made, what happens next. Being my own client gave me a little more creative freedom to take risks, trust my instincts and just go for it.”
Lark Interiors
Specializing in high-end residential design, new construction, and full-scale renovations, Lark Interiors offers a true start-to-finish experience, from drafting architectural plans to selecting furniture and accessories. Janelle Patton and her team at Lark Interiors have mastered the art of blending elegance with everyday living. Their work has been featured in House Beautiful, Architectural Digest, and Southern Living, and they’ve earned multiple D Home Best Designer awards.
We’ve worked alongside Lark Interiors on plenty of projects, but this one gave us a chance to build something we don’t get to build every day: a bathroom designed by and for someone who thinks about materials, light, and flow for a living.
Modifying the layout
The starting point was a layout that no longer worked for the space. Existing architectural plans gave us a foundation, but the real transformation came from reworking the floor plan into something smarter and more intentional. The plan itself belonged entirely to Patton. “The floor plan itself was all me,” she said, “but Nixon was incredibly helpful when it came to figuring out how to make some of the design details actually work.”
That kind of change, moving walls and fixtures rather than just swapping finishes, is where our team does its best work. It’s also where a strong architect-builder-designer relationship matters most.
The ceiling
The bathroom’s centerpiece is a barrel vault ceiling, fully tiled in a mosaic pattern that took real precision to install cleanly across the curve. Getting a barrel vault right on the framing side is one thing. Tiling it seamlessly is another.
The math behind a barrel ceiling is simple enough, but this one had to work inside an existing space with very little room for error. “We were dealing with an exterior wall where the roof rafters came down to the top plate, so there wasn’t much room to cheat anything,” said Austin. “The barrel also needed to land cleanly at the shower ceiling and glass on one side and at the steel window on the other. We worked backward from those fixed finish points, laid everything out carefully and accounted for the thickness of the tile assembly before framing the curve. Being a little off at the framing stage becomes very obvious once thousands of small mosaic tiles start going up.”
Patton remembers the two of them working through the same problem from the design side, trying to fit the mechanicals into the vault without breaking the illusion. “We had can lights, an AC vent and the shower ventilation to contend with,” she said, “and figuring that part out was all Austin. He made sure we could get everything where it needed to go while keeping the ceiling as beautiful as I envisioned it.”
Our crew worked closely with the design team to make sure the ceiling read as one continuous surface, not a patchwork of cuts.
The floor
The floor brought in a honed marble mosaic, and the tub became the room’s signature move: a cast iron, double ended, skirted soaking tub custom painted in a deep navy gloss, with a white interior. It’s the kind of detail that a client might hesitate to commit to. As the designer put it herself, being your own client makes that decision a lot easier.
Fixtures
Every fixture, from the brass hardware to the nickel Waterworks faucets, was chosen with the same intentionality you’d expect from a design-forward client. For our team, that meant a higher level of coordination throughout, but the result is a bathroom that feels layered, warm, and entirely custom.
Ask Austin what he’s proudest of, and he doesn’t point to the tub or the layout. He points to the stonework. “My friend Rafa at il granito crushed the stone fabrication,” he said. “He handled the countertops, window jamb, shower jamb, wainscoting cap and even the baseboards. There were a lot of tricky corners and tight fits, and he nailed every one of them.” The paneling and custom white oak doors, with their thick jamb details, made the short list too. But it’s the tile work he keeps coming back to. “Our tile installers had to take their time and be extremely precise with all of the micro-mosaic tile on the walls, across the barrel ceiling and inside the shower. When you look at the finished bathroom, it all feels clean and effortless, but there was a tremendous amount of craftsmanship behind it.”
Assembling an all-star team
Projects like this remind us why we love partnering with designers who understand construction as well as they understand design. It’s a collaboration in the truest sense, and the finished space speaks for itself.
With decades of experience crafting luxury homes in Dallas’s most desirable neighborhoods, Nixon Custom Homes helps clients find their flow in Dallas & build the home of their dreams.As an award-winning builder, we deliver exceptional home construction that lasts. Schedule a consultation today to get started.