Few of us like the backstory or the 2,000 words before the actual recipe blog, so let’s get straight to it.

Small bathrooms can be tough to plan and design and SO many of us have them. Here are the 5 tips - really they can be considered the 5 tools - I use when designing small bathrooms.

Set the Intention

Wow, this sounds buzzwordy. I’ve tipped into new territory. In fact, this first tip is just THAT insanely practical and it’s also the longest. Sorry.

There’s a cold, hard question - maybe two cold hard questions - you have to ask when it comes to small bathrooms:

What actually needs to happen in here?
Who’s going to be using it and when?

These questions are the launchpad into planning, designing and fine tuning your bathroom. They determine what purposes a space should and should not serve. They also serve as a guide for the necessary amenities furniture pieces and storage solutions for that room to serve that purpose well.

You’ll come up with a one/two liner that defines the intention of that room and the more I think about it, maybe this should happen for every room in the home.

Let me give you some examples on two ends of the spectrum:

Example 1: Powder Room (Half Bath)

Who will be using it: your guests, your/your family during the day

What needs to happen: number 1 & number 2 with ease and the sanitation steps following.

Intention: The powder room is room for our family during the day and guests when we host to take care of business. It’s a small retreat for our guests bums and one of the only rooms in the house with a lock on it when you need a minute (or 40 minutes) of privacy.

Boom goes the dynamite you’re done with the likely the smallest room in the home and now you can officially say that the powder room was not intended to house a power drill, karate gear or serve as the in-house pharmacy.

Example 2: Full Bath

Who will be using it: in this instance you don’t have a powder bath so your guests, you/your family are using this during the day and you also need a place to wash the dog and clean the golf clubs and the soccer cleats. Did I mention that you don’t technically have a laundry room either aaaaand this is actually your ONLY bathroom soooo… yeah a lot has to happen in this room. Side note: this situation is way more common than you might think.

What needs to happen: I think we’ve seen enough to answer this question.

Intention: So this room can serve multiple purposes we’re going to make the most of every inch. The stackable washer/dryer with storage for laundry supplies are tucked away in this closet, drawers instead of doors (or roll out drawer) for the vanity so we can reach all the things but keep the bathroom clean for guests and a tub shower combo with hand shower.

To make a long point even longer… the intention of a room (especially small rooms) is important and it’s the first place to start when you’re planning.

Floating vanity

Taking the vanity off the floor helps a room feel deeper than it actually is. Although you’re not effectively USING the space under the vanity that doesn’t mean you have to hide it. The 4” of space underneath a vanity is open and covered with a toe kick anyway. So if you can swing it take the vanity off the floor a few extra inches.

Depth

Playing with all the forms of depth that you can gives the illusion that you’re fitting more into a room than you should be able to. In this bathroom we didn’t have enough width for three sconces but we really wanted them so we leveraged the usable depth in front of the mirrors to our advantage. I asked for ceiling mounted pendant lights with diffused globes. What that allowed us to do is have 3 ambient sources of light that can hang ever-so-slightly in front of the mirror without it feeling like a mistake.

This comes down to a principal I try to apply in all of my projects: leverage the space. Whether it’s vertical or horizontal taking the approaching of leveraging what you have versus using what you have (whether it’s a little or a lot) goes a long way.

Stretch the view with Mirrors

Mirrors are the largest reflector of natural and supplementary light in the room so the more light you can reflect the expansive the room is going to feel.

It’s pretty common for a contractor to approach me and say “you got a 40 inch tall mirror for the bathroom… did you know that”. My response is always “yep… I want to leverage as much height in this room I can”.

If you have sconces going beside the mirror then it’s best to use the space above the mirror.
The inverse if true.
If you have sconces going above the mirror, then it’s best to use the space beside the mirror.

The principal over leverage still applies here. If we have the space (above, below, to the left/right, underneath) I want to leverage it in small spaces to help it feel more expansive.

Darker floors

In many (not all) rooms going with a darker floor can actually give the effect that the floors just go on and on. A general principal that is often but not always true: if you’re bouncing/dispersing light adequately on the space parallel to the orientation of your body, you can usually get away with darker spaces perpendicular to the orientation of your body. In this case with a brighter wall color we were able to go with a darker, charcoal base floor without the space feeling like it was closing in on itself. And we added some much needed contrast to an otherwise stark palette.

5 Tips for Small Bathrooms