Most sink galleries hand you a hundred photographs and no way to tell which ones are relevant to your bathroom. The sink in the picture might be an undermount basin that needs a new countertop, or a vessel sink that needs a taller faucet, or a wall-mounted basin that needs blocking inside the wall. Those are three different projects, and a photograph does not tell you which one you are looking at.
So this gallery is labelled and filterable. Every one of the 34 bathrooms below is tagged with the sink type it actually shows, the size of room it suits, and its palette, and you can narrow it to just the ones that apply to you.
We are Badeloft, and we manufacture stone resin bathroom sinks and freestanding tubs, so we have a stake in you choosing well and a reasonable claim to knowing which types work where. The finder below is the fastest route in if you have not settled on a type yet.
Which sink type fits your bathroom
Four questions, and you get the type, where to see them, and the guide that goes deeper.
The Sink Types, and What Each One Commits You To
Before the pictures, the vocabulary, because the categories are what determine cost and difficulty and the names get used loosely almost everywhere. This is a quick orientation rather than a full buying guide. Each row links to the collection and to the guide that goes properly deep.
| Type | How it sits | Best for | What it commits you to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Undermount | Below the counter, counter runs unbroken to the opening | A seamless look, easy wiping | A counter that can take a cutout, fitted from underneath |
| Countertop or vessel | On top of the counter as an object | Making the basin the focal point, and retrofits | A taller faucet and usually a lower counter |
| Wall-mounted | Fixed to the wall, floor clear beneath | Small rooms, making space read larger | Blocking in the wall, and visible plumbing |
| Freestanding or pedestal | Self-supporting on a column | Period rooms, walls that cannot carry a fixing | No storage and no counter space at all |
| Trough | One long basin | Two people sharing without a full double vanity | Deciding one faucet or two before rough-in |
| Ramp | Sloped basin floor, no standing water | A sculptural centrepiece | Somewhere it can actually be seen |
If you want the long version, our guides to undermount versus drop-in, vessel versus undermount and every sink type explained each take one of these decisions apart properly. Sink materials and sink sizes cover the other two variables.
The Gallery
Thirty-four bathrooms, every one labelled. Filter by sink type, room size or palette.
Filter the gallery
34 bathrooms. Narrow them by sink type, room size and palette.
Every image is labelled with the sink type it actually shows. Badeloft also makes trough, ramp and pedestal sinks, which this gallery does not yet picture.
Countertop and Vessel Sinks: The Largest Group Here, and the Easiest Retrofit
Twenty-one of the 34 bathrooms in the gallery use a countertop basin, and that is not an accident of our photo library. It is the type most people end up with, for one very practical reason: an existing countertop needs only a tap hole and a drain hole to take one. No cutout, no fabricator, no template. If you are changing the sink and keeping the counter, this is usually the only type genuinely open to you.
What the pictures show, once you start looking for it, is that the successful ones share two things.
The counter is lower than standard. A vessel basin adds its own height on top of the counter, typically 4 to 6 inches of it. Put one on a 36 inch counter and the rim lands near 41 inches, which is too high for comfortable hand washing and much too high for a child. The bathrooms in this gallery that work have the basin landing around 32 to 36 inches, which means the counter beneath it started lower.
The faucet was chosen with the basin, not after it. A vessel basin needs a spout that clears its rim and still reaches over the drain. Standard deck-mount faucets do not, which is why wall-mounted faucets appear so often in these photographs. Several of the gallery bathrooms run the faucet off the wall or off a marble splashback precisely to solve this, and it also keeps the counter around the basin clear. Our sink faucet range is sized for this pairing, and the guide to waterfall faucets covers the splash question that comes with a wide spout over an open basin.
The honest drawback is the rim. A vessel basin has a visible outside surface that collects splash and needs wiping, where an undermount has none. It is a small ongoing cost for a considerably better looking object.
Undermount Sinks: Seamless, and a Decision You Make Once
Only three bathrooms in this gallery are undermount, and that ratio tells you something true about the type. Undermount is a decision made at the same time as the countertop, and almost never afterwards. The basin is clamped and sealed to the underside of the counter, so the cutout has to exist and the fixing has to be accessible, which in practice means the counter is off the vanity or not yet installed.
What you get in return is the cleanest surface in bathroom design. There is no rim above the counter, so a wet counter can be wiped straight into the bowl, and there is no seam sitting proud to collect grime. In the three gallery bathrooms using one, the effect is that your eye reads the counter as a single continuous plane and the sink barely registers as a separate object.
Two things worth knowing before you commit. The cutout is permanent, so changing to a different basin shape later means a new countertop. And the seal at the underside is the part that fails if it is done badly, which makes it worth reading our guide to choosing caulk or sealant before anyone reaches for a tube.
Wall-Mounted Sinks: The Best Small-Bathroom Move There Is
There are only three wall-mounted basins in this gallery, and two of them are in small rooms, which is exactly where they belong. Hanging the basin on the wall with nothing beneath it leaves the floor visible from wall to wall, and visible floor is the single most effective trick for making a small bathroom read as larger than it is. A vanity cabinet, however slim, cuts the floor in half visually and the room shrinks.
The costs are real and worth stating plainly. There is no storage, so it has to go somewhere else in the room. The plumbing is exposed unless you box it in or choose a bottle trap you are content to look at, and one of the gallery bathrooms leans into that deliberately with chrome pipework on show. And the wall has to be able to carry the load, which means blocking between the studs and is not something to discover on installation day. Our guide to installing a wall-mounted sink covers the fixing properly.
One of the wall-mounted basins in this gallery is a Badeloft stone resin wall-mounted sink, which until this refresh was a low-resolution photo captioned as generic and linked nowhere. It is in the wall-mounted collection if you want to see the rest of the range.
Two Sinks: The Question Is About the Wall, Not the Sink
Seven of the gallery bathrooms have two basins, and in every one of them the decision was made by the available wall length rather than by any preference about sinks.
The numbers that govern it:
- Roughly 60 inches is the practical minimum width for a conventional two-sink vanity, with 72 inches the comfortable standard.
- The NKBA's bath planning guidelines recommend at least 36 inches between the centrelines of two basins, and cite 30 inches as the code minimum.
- Around 20 inches from a basin centreline to the nearest sidewall is the recommended clearance, with 15 inches the code minimum.
Put those together and a 60 inch vanity with two basins is genuinely tight: you are at or near the code minimum on centreline spacing, and elbows will meet. This is why a trough sink is worth considering before a double vanity. One long basin lets two people use the run at once without needing the width that two separate bowls demand, and visually it is calmer because there is one shape instead of two. Badeloft's trough sinks exist for this case, and the gallery does not picture one yet.
If you are working out whether your wall can take two basins at all, our standard vanity measurements guide has the full fit math, including what to do when the wall is between 48 and 60 inches.
Three Types This Gallery Does Not Show Yet
Worth saying rather than leaving you to notice. The 34 bathrooms here cover countertop, undermount, wall-mounted and double installations. They include no trough sink, no ramp sink and no pedestal basin, and all three are types Badeloft makes.
| Type | Why you might want it | See them |
|---|---|---|
| Trough | Two users, not enough wall for a true double vanity | Trough sinks |
| Ramp | Sloped basin floor, no standing water, no visible plughole in the middle of the bowl | What is a ramp sink |
| Pedestal or freestanding | No wall fixing needed, suits a period room | Freestanding sinks |
We would rather point you at the collection than pretend the gallery is complete.
Stone Resin, and Why the Material Shows in Photographs
A thing worth knowing when you look at any sink gallery: the material is doing more of the work than the shape is.
Stone resin, which is what we manufacture, is crushed natural stone bound in resin and cast in a mould. What that buys, in a photograph and in use, is a matte non-reflective surface that reads as solid stone rather than as a glazed coating, and a wall thickness that lets a basin hold a thin edge without looking fragile. Several of the bowl basins in this gallery have a rim only a few millimetres thick, and that profile is very hard to achieve in ceramic without the piece becoming vulnerable.
It is also warm to the touch rather than cold, and it can be repaired: a scratch or a dull patch can be sanded and polished back, where a chip in a glaze is permanent and shows the different coloured body underneath. Our guide to sink materials compares it properly against ceramic, glass, concrete and stainless steel.
The Details That Make These Rooms Work
Looking across the 34 bathrooms, the ones that read as designed rather than assembled get three things right beyond the sink.
The mirror is sized to the basin, not to the wall. A round mirror above a round bowl basin repeats the shape and the pair reads as intentional. A wide rectangular mirror above two round basins does the opposite and makes the basins look like an afterthought. Our guide to large bathroom mirrors covers proportion.
The palette is doing the heavy lifting. Filter the gallery to the warm and wood group and then to the white and light group, and the same sink shapes read completely differently. Wood beneath a white basin makes the basin look crisper. A dark room makes it look sculptural. Bathroom paint and bathroom styles are where that decision actually lives.
There is somewhere to put things down. The bathrooms in this gallery that look calm have surface beside the basin, on the counter, on a floating shelf, or in an open niche below. The ones that would frustrate you daily are the beautiful pedestal and wall-mount setups with nowhere for a bar of soap.
Common Questions
What is the most popular type of bathroom sink
Undermount is the most commonly installed in new construction, because it is specified at the same time as the countertop. Countertop and vessel basins are the most commonly chosen when someone is replacing a sink in an existing bathroom, because they are the only type that does not require a new counter.
What is the difference between a vessel sink and a countertop sink
They are the same thing described two ways. Both sit on top of the counter rather than in it. Vessel tends to be used for the taller, bowl-shaped versions and countertop for the whole category, including flatter rectangular basins.
How wide does a vanity need to be for two sinks
Around 60 inches is the practical minimum and 72 inches is comfortable. The NKBA recommends at least 36 inches between the centrelines of the two basins, with 30 inches as the code minimum, so a 60 inch vanity puts you close to that floor. Below 60 inches, a trough sink does the job a double vanity cannot.
Do wall-mounted sinks need special support
Yes. The load goes into the wall, so there has to be blocking between the studs to bolt into. Fixing one to plasterboard alone will eventually pull out. Plan it before the wall is closed up.
Are vessel sinks harder to keep clean
Slightly. A vessel basin has an outside surface that an undermount does not, and it collects splash and needs wiping. The counter around it also gets wetter. Neither is difficult, but it is a daily wipe rather than no wipe.
What sink works best in a very small bathroom
A wall-mounted basin, almost always. Keeping the floor visible beneath it is what makes the room feel bigger, and it takes up less depth than any vanity. The trade is storage, which has to go on a wall or in a tall unit instead.
Can I put a vessel sink on a standard height vanity
You can, and it will be uncomfortably high. A vessel basin adds 4 to 6 inches on top of the counter, so a standard 36 inch vanity puts the rim above 40 inches. Either lower the cabinet or choose a flatter basin.
Where to Start
If you have not chosen a type, use the finder at the top. If you have, filter the gallery to that type and look at what the successful rooms have in common, because it is rarely the sink on its own: it is the counter height, the faucet that clears the rim, and somewhere to put the soap.
And if you want to see the actual basins rather than photographs of other people's bathrooms, our full sink collection is the place to start.