Small bathrooms are a great place to have some fun. They are spaces that you don't generally spend a lot of time in, so I often encourage clients to be more daring in these spaces.
The original scope for this project didn't even include this bathroom. The project was for a special client who wanted to modify her living space so that she could age in place. She and her husband had built the house in the 1990's when raising their kids and the majority of the house is all on one level- except the master. After her husband passed, she had to make the decision of staying in their forever home forever or make a move. In order to stay, a downstairs master suite was required. The house was perfectly situated to where we were able to take a 'wing' that contained 2 bedrooms and a shared bath and blow it out to create a master suite with a large walk-in closet (in fact, her bedroom & closet have been some of my most commented on and liked posts.
The biggest issue on this remodel was that the bath we were enlarging and turning into the new master bath was the bathroom that all her guests used as the powder. Clearly she wasn't going to direct guests to her new master bath when they visited, so we had to creatively come up with a way to add a small powder bath. We ended up being able to carve out 32 square ft of space to gain the additional half bath without taking out too much space from the larger project which was her new sanctuary.
The main driving design element in the bath was the bold encaustic tile from Tile Bar. We used the tile as our guide for the grey-blue, gold & black color palette. We selected a grass cloth wallpaper by Thibaut in the gold/blue then painted the remaining walls in Ocean Floor by Benjamin Moore giving it the perfect amount of drama. We kept everything as simple as possible to allow the uniqueness of the different selections stand out- from the sweet clipped corners of the mirror to the narrow cylindrical gold accented pendants.
The powder bath photographed above was created by borrowing space from a closet.
Interior Designer Tips on How to Enhance a Small Bathroom:
hang pendants on either side of the mirror. This frees up wall space and gives more dimension than having everything hung along the same wall
a simple pedestal or wall sink that has just enough of a lip to house some soap (and sometimes a small vase with flowers!)
hang a couple of shelves- they don’t need to be large- for storing extra hand towels and some special items like perfume or lotion for guests to use.
a small bath is a place to break some rules. Painting most- or all, of it a dramatic dark color gives almost a cocoon-like, comforting feel.
bonus tip- using a seagrass basket that tucks discreetly behind the door or toilet to to house extra toilet paper. It only needs to hold a few, but when the tp is stacked neatly, is the perfect little accent.
