Small Bathroom Makeover Tips

Thinking about the design of our new place and the room sizes this week. Particularly the bathrooms. Our family bathroom will be a decent size, but our downstairs shower room will be pretty cosy! So it’s going to be vital to make it look and feel bigger, so people actually use it and it’s not just a wasted room.

Decorating small rooms is never easy. You have to be particularly careful about the colours you choose, and the layout. If you get either of these elements wrong, you can easily end up making the space seem even smaller.

I’ll be posting my specific bathroom design ideas along this journey, but for now, I thought I’d share some small bathroom makeover tips, in case you, like us, are blessed with a “cosy” bathroom…

Small Bathroom Makeover Tips

Change the layout if you can

With bathrooms, changing the layout to make the room look bigger can often be difficult. This is because of the plumbing. Sometimes moving it is impossible. Even when it is an option, getting the work done can be expensive, and it takes a while to do.

However, if you have the budget, changing the layout to make better use of the space makes a lot of sense. You will only have to do it once, but will benefit from the change for decades to come.

Swap the bath for a shower

Taking the bath out and replacing it with a shower enclosure will free up a lot of space, and make the room seem bigger as well. If that is not possible, consider replacing your full size bath with a half sized model. These are deeper, but shorter, so take up a lot less space. The good thing about both these options is that you can often use the existing drain, which means that very few changes, if any, have to be made to the plumbing. It’s also a great option for a second bathroom or ensuite (we’re just having a shower in our downstairs bathroom).

Let some light in

If you cannot change the layout, or afford to replace the bath with a shower, do not worry because there is still a lot that you can do to make your bathroom seem more spacious. All small spaces benefit from good lighting.

The more natural light you let in, the better. A simple way to do this is to have a frosted transom window installed above the door.

Another option is to replace your existing solid door with a half-light style one. Again, you will need to use heavily frosted safety glass, which will limit the amount of natural light that comes into the room. However, you will be surprised at how big a difference this makes.

If you do not have the option to let natural light in to make the room seem bigger, use lighting fixtures to do the job for you instead. You can find all you need to know about bathroom lighting on this cool lighting company’s blog.

Install mirrors

Most bathrooms already have a mirror installed in them. This is good, because mirrors make rooms seem bigger. However, because the room is small many people make the mistake of installing a tiny mirror, which makes very little difference to the way the room looks. If you want to make a room feel larger, you need to install big mirrors to do it. It’ll help reflect light (natural or otherwise) around the room too.

Keep the clutter to a minimum

The last of my small bathroom makeover tips, is to install cupboards in your small bathroom. The more cluttered a room is the smaller it looks. If you do not have space for cupboards, encourage everyone to use a wash bag and keep their toiletries in their bedrooms instead of leaving them scattered around the bathroom. You can even have really tiny, thin cupboards – just a few inches deep to hold your essential toiletries. Keeping them hidden will make the world of difference.

So what do you think? Have you got a small bathroom you’d like to makeover to feel bigger? Do you think any of the above tips will help?

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