 The bathroom can seem to be the space design forgot. It hasn't evolving into a multitasking family room with sofas andWiiSports,likethekitchen. It continues to take care of the same old, er, business, so much of what is new in bathroom interiors - freestanding furnishings, natural wood finishes - is rather familiar.  Yet amid the timber veneers and white tubs, the traditional bathroom is quietly teching up: you can now access your iTunes library while you floss your teeth. Freestanding bathroom furniture has been popular for a couple of years.  These ensembles score high on looks - check out Fired Earth's Jura and Bastide ranges (0845 366 0400, firedearth.com) - but aren't as space-efficient as a fitted suite. So the latest designs combine slimline forms and extra height for maximum storage: John Lewis's arctic range, which features a tall, thin lacquered towel cupboard (?130; johnlewis.com) and Villeroy &amp; Boch's new Petrol Blue Subway shelves (from ?630; 020 8871 4028, www.villeroy-boch.com) are good examples.  Lincoln Rivers's innovative rotating storage pulls off a similar trick, with a dressing-length mirror on one side and bamboo shelving on the other (arena Revolve 3100, ?310; 0844 848 4000, conranshop.co.uk). Natural wood, warm in colour and relatively unshiny in finish, is the perfect foil to fresh white ceramics, and is the material that's in vogue right now. It's not a look that can be acquired on the cheap, so if I were in the market for a new bathroom, I'd plan to pick up a plain sink and bath (Bathstore and Ikea have plenty of good-value options) and splash the cash on some hunky timber cabinetry.  My pin-ups at present are Wetstyle's M collection, with renewable hardwood storage units (from ?802; 0845 600 1950, cphart.co.uk), and the solid teak artline range at aston Matthews (from ?1,345; 020 7226 7220, www.aston matthews.co.uk). Though properly new designs emerge infrequently in the bathroom, techie accessories are multiplying.  Withings has WiFi scales (pictured top right) that will measure and record your weight and BMI, allowing you to access the results via iPhone.  The Innova mirror has an integrated radio and touch-pad controls for your MP3 player (from ?1,320; 01530 830080, roca.com) - a welcome advance on the soggy newspaper as bathtime entertainment.  Too much information? ?109  These WiFi scales from Whitings measure and store the fitness profiles of up to eight users, calculating their BMI and showing their fitness - or fatness - in graphs that can be accessed via your iPhone. 020 7692 4001, madeindesign.co.uk  Home and dry from ?4  Orla Kiely adds a splash of colour and retro pattern to bathroom textiles with these face cloths (?4), bath mats (?16) and towels (from ?15). 0870 024 0780, heals.co.uk  Big on bamboo from ?129  The new Nagoya freestanding bathroom furniture range, from M&amp;S, is made of bamboo and includes a tallboy (?199), a cabinet (129) and a sink unit (?179). 0845 302 1234, marksandspencer.com  Here's the tub ?2,995  Fired Earth's Jura freestanding bath is set off by intense blue Hacienda tiles, (?2.95 each), hand-decorated in Tunisia. 0845 366 0400, firedearth.com  On the tiles from ?100  Screen-printed tiles from Iznik Revivals are based on originals in the ashmolean and the V&amp;a (20cm square, minimum order 10). 020 8876 0201, turkishceramics.co.uk  INVEST  Simon Horn specialises in handmade solid-wood beds in classic styles from rococo to Regency - not cheap, but the kind of furnishing you hand down the generations. The metamorphic models, which turn from a sofa into 