My bathroom sink has needed replacement since I bought this house over 23 years ago. The plastic one-piece sink and vanity top is scratched right around the drain, therefore always in the process of growing black stuff which needs to be endlessly cleaned off. And the sink cannot be replaced without replacing the vanity top. This has been the hardest thing for me to envision. Unlike my bathtub shower "design," the bathroom sink requires a lot of thought. There are a lot of ideas as to how to do this. And I think they're all wrong.
The correct approach would combine such features as:
1) Pretty much self-cleaning. The sink and vanity top should be designed so they pretty much keep themselves clean, or as clean as possible, simply using a smart geometrical arrangement. I've now seen an actual self-cleaning sink system. In fact it's a flat countertop make of a flexible material with hidden motors that pulls itself down into a bowl when you need it, then afterwards raises itself up to be flat and a wiper cleans off the surface. It's a miracle. But I would expect such a miracle to last very long. Geometry, on the other hand, is forever.
One issue here is "drip." While and after washing your hands there will be soapy drip, and then after you have rinsed your hands there will still be water drip, until your hands are towel dried.
Another issue is "splash." Especially while filling a small cup of water for rinsing, water may splash back onto the countertop and spread...soiling much of the countertop. Splash may also occur from putting your hands in running water. Splash is reduced by making it easy to turn on the faucet to low levels. Currently splash is a big problem because my old faucet sticks and is hard to turn to precise small levels. Possibly a faucet could have fixed levels for each function, or even separate faucets. Faucets could be found with the required flow rates easily achieved.
There's also "spit." To minimize this falling on the faucet the faucet should be high. A wall mounted faucet has always been an appealing idea too...so the faucet doesn't bathe in a pool of hand drip, splash, and spit, thereafter being permanently scaled.
2) Height . I've been noticing that my own vanity top is quite low, and the level in the recessed sink is even lower. I'm short and I can hardly get my hands down to the bottom of the sink standing straight up. Strangely, I think this vanity level was intended for a taller person with longer arms. Anyway, both the vanity top AND the sink need to be in easy reach. I now believe an elevated sink is maybe not a bad idea. Except...
3) Cleaning. Things should be as easy as possible to clean. This also means a minimum of joints and concave edges. Or none if possible. This is where my plastic vanity top sink must have seemed like not a bad idea. The problem was the material, and the lack of care tailored to that material. A similar sink made of something like Quartz maybe not a bad idea (my brother in law has that, in integrated sink vanity top made of Quarts). Except it may not solve the above problems.
4) Storage. Every modernist designer seems to want to throw this away. But it's essential. There are cleaning supplies, personal supplies, more soap and toilet paper. One shouldn't assume that a home even has (or requires) a large central storage are for everything. It is suitable to store bathroom stuff in the bathroom. And there will be bathroom stuff. (Though, indeed, I probably have more than needed in some cases. I have stored bathroom junk.)
5) Handy provision of tools, including blow dryer, shaver, water pick, electric toothbrush, manual tooth brush, and safety scissors. And toothpaste, mouthwash, alcohol, etc. In the best design, there is a "place" for everything, right at hand. An extra shaver mirror would be handy too (I don't have that now).
The geometry of the sink/vanity should be such that it extends sufficiently beyond cabinetry below that any drip from the sink edge does not fall on cabinetry, or even the "pulls" of cabinet drawers.
All the raised sinks I've seen have the misfeature that they create a joint and a concave area around the sink to accumulate drip and crud and need cleaning.
I saw this kitchen sink, and I like how the design reaches beyond the countertop edge so that drip falls on the floor and not into a hard to clean area on the counter, and mostly just back onto the sink itself.
This would not be applicable to my bathroom vanity at current (and typical?) heights. The kitchen countertop is higher. Which now begs the question in my mind...why is the bathroom vanity so low???
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0848HYPRG
The Kardashian sink seems to be an answer to near flatness and therefore cleaning. But I worry that it creates a large above-trap area to accumulate mold and crud, and which you may not be able to clean easily. In a conventional drain, there's a narrow metal tube virtually self-cleaned by high throughput water going down. Though there is also the overflow...which in many cases does seem to accumulate mold and crud and be a problem. But if the sink never fills up, there should never even be anything in the overflow, ever.(except when there is a plumbing problem, and then it fills up with crud from the plumbing problem, you see, probably why so many overflows stink). And I haven't "filled a bathroom sink" in as long as I can remember. I wet cloths and things directly in the clean flowing water. I've never trusted "bathroom sink" water. Perhaps a stop isn't even needed (and, in fact, I haven't had one in my bathroom sink for 20 years because it never worked right). The only danger then is that something sizeable might fall down. I live with that danger, though it might be best not to. A removable screen would be sufficient. But sadly code would not allow us to remove the overflow because someone might still use a stopper, or a washcloth were in the bottom of the sink. Perhaps the only solution to the stinky overflow problem is to remember to thoroughly clean out the overflow after a pluming problem has caused the sink to fill.
