Lets talk small bathrooms. I’m going to vent first about my own, un-renovated bathroom so you understand where I’m coming from. My bathroom is incredibly small and quite beige. There’s no storage at all in it, no counter space and the tile that a previous owner put in everywhere is imitation, polished beige marble. That’s right. Imitation, polished beige marble with a decorative border of butterscotch colored glass tile. Give me some inexpensive, plain ceramic tile any day over imitation stone! If you have a small bathroom with no linen storage in it, in fact, no linen storage available anywhere in the home, have the decency of putting in a vanity with doors so you could at least store cleaning supplies and toilet paper. I beg of you.
That aside, small bathrooms are easy to clean, not echoey, warm up easily, are less expensive to renovate compared to a large bathroom and they don’t lend themselves to family members lingering in them.
I recently finished 2 remodeled bathrooms in a ranch house in Golden, Colorado and 1 new bathroom for the home’s basement. Both of these bathrooms are incredibly small but with stylish finishes and beautiful plumbing fixtures they are fun to be in! Here’s the basement bathroom before:
The vanity is Pottery Barn’s Classic Single Sink Mini Console in White – we had it painted a custom color (Benjamin Moore’s Rose Parade) to give the room a little bit of an edge. The floor tile is a painted ceramic tile by Original Styles, the wall tile is a beveled, 5×7 gray tile from Emser Tile.
The other bathroom in this home that the client decided to update along with the other two is in the Master Bedroom. It’s also delightfully small and for this room we went monochromatic. Here’s the refinished room:
Last week I promised you a cat photo from this client’s home in lieu of awesome before photos that I should have been taking. Here is just one of many:
If you have a small bathroom and enlarging it is not an option – embrace the smallness and splurge on the details like higher end plumbing fixtures and nicer tile. Upgrade your lighting and if there’s a shower in the room, go for the frameless glass enclosure to open things up.
“Small rooms or dwellings discipline the mind, large ones weaken it.” -Leonardo Da Vinci
The Colorado Nest 
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