by Blake Herzog
Bathrooms may be the most difficult room in your home to truly make your own. So much of the space is taken up by just the sink, mirror, vanity, shower/bathtub and toilet, particularly in smaller bathrooms.
But from towels to light fixtures, there are plenty of platforms where you can inject your own sensibilities into the necessities crowding your bathroom.
Old tricks in new spaces
Sometimes you can deploy the same tricks used in other parts of the house to elevate your bathroom. For example, putting your shower curtain up near the ceiling will have the same effect that hanging curtains high above a window will do for your living room, making the ceiling appear taller and open up the whole room. You may have to hunt for the right XL shower curtain and liner for your space, but it’ll be worth it!
Use mirrors to flood the room with natural light. If your main mirror doesn’t already do this, look for a different wall to hang one in a contrasting shape that will reflect light while adding another design dimension.
Fixture fixes
Swapping out the faucet is a surprisingly easy change and can easily shift and upgrade the look of your bathroom. The options are nearly endless, so it’ll be easy to find something a little more or less formal, casual, farmhouse-y, modern, whatever you’ve got in mind.
You’ll need a pro for switching out a light fixture, but if you can swing it there’s almost no end to what you can do with the space.
Consider integrating LED strips into your mirror, vanity or shower enclosure for a sleek, contemporary look or a backlit mirror for diffused lights that still illuminate everything you need to see. (While you’re at it you can get an anti-fog mirror to get rid of a common annoyance and make the room more functional and luxurious.)
Get the paint right
The color and finish you use for walls has a huge impact on the look and feel of a room. That goes double for your small, humid, brightly lit bathroom. You can try anything you want, but there are some colors difficult to pull off. Yellow can be cheery and inviting in most any other part of the house, but its reflection often makes people appear jaundiced or sickly in the mirror. Anything with a muddy or rusty undertone will look dirty compared to crisp, refreshing hues.
You will need to be careful with paint finishes too, since you don’t want the room to look too drab or harsh, leaching the energy out of the space or radiating so much as to be uncomfortable. Try a medium-gloss finish (either eggshell, satin or semi-gloss) for an easy to maintain, attractive appearance.
Toilet talk
Nobody really wants to talk about it, but it’s what makes a bathroom a bathroom, so you might as well come up with the best-looking one that fits your space and usage needs.
There are three basic styles:
- Two-piece — The largest and most commonly seen with the tank mounted behind the bowl and in front of the wall. Easy to install; hard to clean.
- One-piece — Tank and bowl are integrated into a single unit, which takes up less space. Harder to install because of its weight but easier to clean with fewer gaps for grime to build up.
- Suspended — Just the toilet bowl is visible, with the tank and plumbing concealed in the wall. Takes up the least amount of space, expensive to install; easiest to clean.
