Many of us dream of a vast, spacious bathroom with lots of natural light and a huge bathtub and separate shower, an expansive oasis of calm and wellbeing.
Unfortunately, the reality is often very different. A bathroom is usually the smallest room in most homes, with little scope for serious remodelling. But there is hope. You may not be able to knock down the walls, but you can increase the floor space and remove visual impairments with a little ingenuity.
Related – how much does a bathroom renovation cost?
A few creative small bathroom renovation and design strategies and visual tricks can help your small bathroom renovation open up the space and make it feel much larger than it is
Small Bathroom Interior Design Tricks
Every bathroom should satisfy some important basics no matter how small it is. This includes a shower/bathing area, a sink and a toilet. Even if you’re left with limited space, you can still make the room feel less like a pokey water closet and more like a spacious spa.
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As a Sydney bathroom designer, we look at a myriad of ideas and concepts to make rooms look bigger and broader. They include light colours and soft, faded hues, monochromatic colour schemes, reflective surfaces and transparent materials like glass. The idea here is to remove as many visual obstructions as possible.
Your bathroom may be tiny, but it doesn’t have to look that way. Here are five small bathroom renovation ideas to create the appearance of more space.
1. Use Light Colours to Create the Impression of Space
One easy way to trick the eye into visualising a bigger space is to use plenty of white, including paints, tiles, mirrors and vanities. White is a colour that is always in vogue. It reflects light seamlessly to make the room feel more spacious. If you’re concerned about white being too clinical, add different textural elements such as accent tiles and mouldings to inject some character.
If pure white doesn’t suit you, you can still get a light and airy effect with slightly darker hues such as pastel colours. They add a bit of warmth while also giving the light-reflecting benefit. Examples include pale pink, greenish-grey and buttery yellow. You might also want to consider bright colours in your paint palette as these, too, will help reflect light to make the bathroom feel larger.
2. Use Natural Light to Your Advantage
No artificial light can replace the visual appeal of a luxurious bathroom space with natural lighting.
Natural light makes the room look brighter and opens up spaces almost effortlessly. But many people tend to keep their windows closed or shutters down for privacy reasons. Obviously, you don’t want the neighbours to be able to peer in, so replace with a translucent or stained glass window or hang up a see-through shade. You’ll have both privacy and daylight flooding in.
However, if you have a windowless space, how can you compensate for no natural light? You could consider a skylight to bring some light into the area or make use of clever artificial lighting. The key is to go bright with several light sources at different locations. For example, overhead lights can flood the area and lighting up the mirror area reflects light in the room, making it appear bigger than before. Replace the wall switch with a dimmer control to turn the lights down low if you want.
3. Open Up The Floor Space
A common problem with compact bathrooms is that the bath eats up a lot of precious room. So skip the tub altogether and install a shower stall instead. Add a glass shower enclosure to give the room an airy, luxurious, spa-like look and vibe. Enclosures create the illusion of more space since they are transparent. If you feel a little exposed and prefer some privacy, use frosted or tinted glass panels.
Avoid shower curtains as they cut off sight lines and make small bathrooms look smaller. You can also create the impression of space by reducing floor clutter with wall-hanging vanities and toilets.
Other ways to create the impression of more space include installing wall-hanging vanities and toilets to remove floor clutter, taking sanitary ware off the floor. Installing a wall-hung toilet, bidet and floating vanity unit removes clutter in an instant.
4. Use Frameless Glass
Even with the bathtub gone, the shower takes up a lot of bathroom real estate. So make sure your glass enclosure is frameless. With no frames on the glass, the enclosure is almost invisible – offering uninterrupted aesthetic appeal. Light is able to flow naturally from one area of the bathroom to another. The full length of your bathroom is visible and not interrupted by defining lines.
Replace older mirrors with sleek, frameless mirrors because large bulky frames can make a tight space feel congested. Not only will a frameless mirror reflect more light in the room, but it will also elongate the space. The bigger the mirror, the more spacious your bathroom will appear.
5. Choose Big Bathroom Tiles
To create a sense of more space, choose big tiles. In tiny rooms, small tiles make spaces appear even smaller. One of the reasons for this is they create more dividing lines between the tiles. For example, the grid-like appearance of mosaics promotes a feeling of sometimes creates a confided feeling in small spaces. On the other hand, big tiles have fewer grout lines, providing a clean, clutter-less look that opens up space. Light, plain-coloured tiles visually expand a room, as does lying them diagonally. This tricks the brain into believing an area is bigger than its actual appearance.
Small bathrooms can still look great
Small bathrooms are part of our lives, but some savvy tricks can make a big impact – making any bathroom feel bigger. As a specialist in small bathroom renovations in Sydney, DCON Group can help you get the most value from your limited space.
Contact us today for a no-obligation chat and let’s discuss how we can transform your small bathroom.
