10 Bathroom Remodel Tips and Advice

Bathrooms are the number one place that homeowners love to remodel, even more than kitchens. Bathrooms are smaller than kitchens, making the job easier and faster. Plus, this reduced space means reduced cost: less flooring and paint, fewer cabinets, and countertop.

Follow these tips to make your bathroom remodel more attractive while keeping the process smooth, efficient, and cost-effective.

Build Niches and Recesses For Extra Room

When space is extremely tight, don't build out: build in.

Built-ins such as recessed soap dishes, medicine cabinets, and even toilet roll holders pry out as much available room as possible from tiny bathrooms. You can even flatten the ceiling light by converting your ceiling light into a recessed light. Build into the walls for extra storage space.

Address Bathroom Ventilation

All bathrooms need some type of ventilation, by code, either in the form of a properly sized window or a bathroom exhaust fan.

For bathroom fans, look at both their exhaust capacity (or how many cubic feet of air per minute they can move) in conjunction with their noise levels. Due to bathrooms' small space, even a moderately loud bathroom fan can sound too loud.

Add Plants for Living Color

Plants in the bathroom should not be an afterthought. Plants bring much-needed color into sterile bathrooms.

Consider adding a floating shelf expressly for the purpose of giving your trailing plants a cozy home.

Pick the Right Flooring

Solid wood floors, while they do infuse bathrooms with great character, are not the best type of flooring material for bathrooms, from a practical standpoint.

Instead, pick bathroom flooring that is hardy enough to stand up against the rigors of daily bathroom use. Bathroom flooring favorites include ceramic and porcelain tile, luxury vinyl plank, and vinyl tiles.

Adjust Room Size With Color

To make a small bathroom look bigger, make sure that your color palette stays in the white-or-light color spectrum.

Dark colors make the room feel smaller, claustrophobic. Use white or light-colored fixtures (that is, the toilet and bathtub). Always think twice about painting your bathroom ceiling any color but white or off-white, as this tends to shrink the room down even more.

Bathroom Lighting Matters

In a room where people need to visually inspect their hair and faces, lighting is usually very dim and concentrated only in one spot—namely, from a ceiling fixture.

At the very least, consider adding lighting around the bathroom mirror in the form of sconces. But blinding light is not always wanted.

Add Freestanding Pieces

If space permits, many home decorators recommend having one freestanding piece such as a decorative chair or cupboard as a design element.

To compensate for that space, you can recess other practical elements such as clothes hampers or simply move the hamper to another room. This decorative piece, of course, can also serve a practical use as a place to store towels, soaps, or other small items.

Add More Opportunities to Hang Items

Hooks are the easiest way to add surface area to a bathroom without actually adding a real countertop surface area. Hooks can be used for everything from clothes to bathrobes to towels. Place hooks on the back of the door, on the side of cabinets, or on unused sections of walls.

Include More Mirrors in the Bathroom

Most people think of mirrors in bathrooms only for the purpose of checking makeup or hair.

But it’s also important to think of mirrors in bathrooms as design elements that expand the room visually and add light to the room. Many homeowners like to add a second mirror in addition to the primary mirror located above the bathroom sink.

In small bathrooms, use large-format mirrors that span the entire wall.

Use Wainscotting For Protection and Looks

Wainscot beadboard has two great functions. First, where appropriate, it creates an antique look and it is so easy to install. Secondly, beadboard performs the very valuable function of protecting the lower section of the walls from the inevitable splashes of water that occur in bathrooms from the tub or shower.

A good coat of oil-based paint ensures that the beadboard will be practically impervious to moisture. If beadboard does not stylistically fit your room, consider adding tile wainscot on the bottom 40 to 48 inches of the wall. Tile, too, serves the same purpose of protecting the walls against moisture, and it had an infinite range of style possibilities.