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Last edited 31 Mar 2023

Vanity unit

A vanity unit, sometimes called sink unit or cupboard, under-sink or basin cabinet, is simply a cupboard with a flat surface that houses a sink, normally a wash basin and normally located in a bathroom. The units are normally made from timber or composite material and can be a wall-hung, freestanding or corner units with the sanitaryware basin above, whole, inset, recessed or resembling a bowl sitting on the surface. In all cases the sanitary pipework is most likely to be hidden by the unit itself.

Historically, vanity units pre-age running water and would have originally been a simple closed bowl or basin sitting on a small cupboard, often in a bedroom, filled and emptied by hand for an early morning wash. As early as 1762, Thomas Chippendale, a London based cabinet maker, working in mid-Georgian, English Rococo, and Neoclassical styles is recorded as having made what was then called a toylet table. Now this would be spelled toilet table, the same units may have more commonly been called washstands around the same time and potentially earlier.

In the middle-upper classes these units would have slowly come to be referred as vanity tables or dressing tables, the later of which tending to remain with a mirror in bedrooms but without a sink and the former more commonly located in bathrooms, or washrooms in effect as a washbasin with a mirror and a sink. These would have eventually included a waste feed and then taps with the on set of running water.

Today vanity units, are useful because they hide waste and supply pipes, whilst making better use of wasted space under neath sink basins or bowls, providing additional storage space for sanitary bathroom goods.

A pedestal sink or pedestal basin (also vice versa) is a variation and maybe seen to as an opposite style of vanity unit which refers to a sink unit sitting on a single leg or pedestal, normally made of the same ceramic material as the basin, though today is also likely to be fixed to the wall. A vanity unit may also be retrofitted around a pedestal sink to hide the original older feature or simply to create more storage space.