Designer pet peeve: the toilet paper holder (and how to give yours a stylish makeover)

Lately I've been noticing a curious new trend within the interior design community: backlash against the toilet paper holder, something I hadn't really given any thought to until recently. Top decorators like Rita Konig in New York (who also pens a column in The New York Times, where she wrote about her "loathe" of the bathroom accessory) and Grant K. Gibson in San Francisco have been leading the anti-TP holder charge, and curious to hear more about why, I phoned the latter.

"They're ugly and stick out far too much," Gibson declares. "They just get in the way, and I'm not into their usual space-age industrial look. Why not put toilet paper in something more interesting?" Gibson solves this issue in his own bathroom by replacing his with a vintage trophy. "I happened to have a trophy cup in the right size, and it makes it look special and unique rather than boring," he says.

He gives back-up rolls the special treatment too: "If you're like me and have relatively small storage and closet space you always think twice about where to keep extra products like toilet paper and paper towels," he writes on his blog. To rectify the problem, he puts them in a monogrammed canvas L.L. Bean tote on a hook on the back of the bathroom door.

If you're similarly bugged by your toilet paper holder, or just don't have one in your bathroom (which, I suppose somewhat randomly, my last apartment did not) a printed canvas tote (Konig's solution) or bin, pretty basket, apothecary jar, or tall clear cylindrical glass vase (find one that's roughly the same circumference as your roll of choice, and stack them up to the lip of the vase) would all make fine alternatives too.