May 14, 2024
Transforming Small Spaces: 3 Essential Tips for Renovating Your Bathroom
As an interior designer, I've had the privilege of working on countless projects, each presenting its own set of unique challenges and opportunities. One common challenge that many homeowners face is renovating a small bathroom. Limited space can often feel restricting, but with the right approach, it's amazing what can be achieved. If you're considering renovating your small bathroom, here are three top tips to keep in mind:
Optimising your layout: Getting the most out of your room
In a small bathroom, every little bit of space counts. When planning the layout, prioritise functionality and flow to make the most of the available space. The best way you can do this, is draw up your room measurements and play around with the placement of each item in the room until you find you’re getting an improved amount of space in each area (i.e in the vanity and shower). Don’t forget about nifty tricks like nib walls which help save you space and become an affective storage solution (which we’ll cover later in the blog).
If you’re finding it difficult to fit all your fixtures and fittings in the room, take a moment to research compact fixtures and fittings which may save you some centimetres here and there (and when you’re working in a small space, gaining a few centimetres could be a game changer). Examples of compact fixtures and fittings could be:
- In wall cistern toilet
- Back to wall freestanding bath
- Semi recessed vanity
- Recessed shaving cabinet
- Robe hooks or vertical towel rails as an alternative to traditional towel rails.
Storage: Think Beyond Traditional Solutions
In a small bathroom, storage is often at a premium. Get creative with your storage solutions to make the most of the available space.
Built-In Niches: Incorporate built-in niches or recessed shelves into the shower or bathtub surrounds to provide storage for toiletries without encroaching on floor space. Remember when we talked about Nib walls earlier? This is another way to create shower storage and increase the width of your vanity. By creating a nib wall, you have given yourself a shower shelf along with the opportunity to install a wall-to-wall vanity providing you with more storage.
If in your layout, you have the toilet next to the vanity, consider extending the mirror cabinet into storage that runs all the way along that wall above the toilet. You don’t have to mirror the storage above the toilet, it could be manufactured in the same colour as your vanity as a nice way to create cohesion. Now you’ve gained yourself on minimum an extra 750mm of storage!
Always, always, always prioritise drawer storage if possible. Fun fact: If you replace a 900mm vanity that currently has 2 doors with a 900mm vanity that has 2 drawers, you gain 50%more useable storage. If you have a small bathroom, you don’t need me telling you that 50% more functional storage is an absolute game changer!
Fixtures and Fittings: Prioritise items that will increase the look and feel of the room.
When it comes to fixtures and fittings in a small bathroom, every detail matters. Focus on installing items that are going to assist with the illusion of a bigger space. Great examples of this are:
An oversized mirror: This doesn’t mean installing a large mirror horizontally, but vertically. Increase your mirror height by roughly 250-300mm to give the illusion of taller ceilings. You are actually better off reducing the width of your mirror and increasing the height.
Larger format tiles: By using larger format tiles you decrease the amount of grout lines you see and therefore assist in making the room feel larger. You can also go one step further and use the same floor and wall tile which gives a sense of space. Lastly, tiling to the ceiling in a small bathroom reduces a line cut off which makes the room feel bigger.
Larger format drawers: Don’t break the vanity up into lots of different drawers, it creates unintentional clutter in the look and feel of the bathroom and therefore makes it feel smaller. You’re better off creating two larger drawers externally and breaking the internals up into smaller spaces.
Renovating a small bathroom requires careful planning and thoughtful consideration of layout, storage, and fixtures and fittings. By optimising every inch of space and thinking creatively about storage solutions and fixtures, you can transform your small bathroom into a functional and stylish oasis that feels larger than life.
