If you’ve seen the jaw-droppingly preserved mosaics at the Villa Romana del Casale in Sicily, then you’ve likely done a double-take at how modern the 4th century depiction of bikini-clad women carrying dumbbells appears, left. This mosaic dates to a time when people lived far less sedentary lives than we do today and yet fitness was a part of recreation. It’s a delightful thought that such meticulous works were laid in rooms like this small antechamber as well as in the bathhouse and an area deemed to be a gymnasium. Mosaics, while prolific in that era, were not a quick install job after all. Today, homeowners and designers are also heeding the importance of decorating gyms, for public and private use, in ways that go beyond the basics of utility.
Perhaps you scoped out designer Fabrizio Casiraghi’s period-appropriate treatment of the fitness studio at The Grand Hotel Bellevue, centre, during a visit last month. En hommage to the listed building’s Victorian roots, the bijou space is lined with a checkerboard mix of ceramic tiles that create a nostalgic atmosphere. It’s a continuation of the hotel’s cosy aesthetic, with Persian-style carpets finding their way to the gym floor and rich ‘brown’ furniture translating into handcrafted wood-based equipment by Nohrd. Casiraghi’s overall goal was for a vintage-inspired retreat that feels like “the London residence of an eclectic couple—an aristocratic Englishman and his globetrotting wife.” We’d say spot on and it’s an effect easily achieved with tiles from our Hanley collection, which can be custom coloured.
Further afield in San Francisco, CA, designer Lauren Geremia of Geremia Design also looked to residential interiors for her styling of Purple Patch Fitness, a triathlon and performance training centre, right. Faced with warehouse-size proportions, she leveraged the warmth of rustic Japanese Wa-Kei tiles to soften the utilitarian space between the women’s locker room and reception. “Tiles feel like a more residential material, but they are a big part of commercial experiences in San Francisco,” she notes. “Translating it to this space became about use-case and in that nook, everything needed to be wipeable. The chocolate brown with the steel blue is warm and artisanal and functional. I like the tension.” On the ceiling, she installed EXYD-M, a mirror-like stainless steel product with a wavy finish to further delineate the zone. “It creates a watery, dreamy effect and reflects a lot of the colours. It’s a little bit trippy and makes the light fixtures continue in this infinity experience,” she says.
Notably, this project was a continuation of Geremia’s early commercial work—she graduated from The Rhode Island School of Design during a post-recession tech boom and began designing offices for companies like Instagram and Dropbox before pivoting to residential work. “I don't normally take on many commercial projects [now] but once a year, I just decide to flex that muscle and get out of residential thinking,” she explains. “I think the fluidity between the two is something that keeps me sharp and keeps introducing me to new materials I can use.” It’s a resolution we could all take a cue from in 2025 as goals skew towards working out more—let’s make sure we exercise those creative muscles too!
Photos: Wikimedia Commons; Courtesy The Grand Hotel Bellevue; Alison Christiana, Courtesy Lauren Geremia