Here’s a variety of bathroom renovation ideas to help you come up with a pleasing design for your new bathroom.

Have a theme

This may be a topic theme (e.g. beach or spa) which is mostly carried out in decorative items and surface finishes, but you can also have a theme that’s carried out more subtly in the shapes and directions of your fixtures and permanent decorations. A rounded theme may be carried out by a curved-edge tub, rounded sink, curved shower rail, curved or rounded ends to towel rails, and curved backsplash edges, for example. A diagonal theme might show up as diagonally laid floor and/or wall tile, wallcovering with a diagonal motif or stripes, and diagonal patterned fabric.

Don’t be afraid to use COLOR

It makes sense for your fixtures and tile to be white or neutral, so they don’t date (pink tub, anyone?), but that means you have plenty of scope to use color elsewhere. In a small bathroom, painting the walls takes little time and less paint, so you can experiment and it’s no big deal to paint over it if you hate it. The door is also a good opportunity for a burst of color. Accessories are even easier to use for color themes.

Consider a monochromatic color scheme

If everything in the background is white, the colored towels and shower curtain make even more of a statement – and you can change colors every so often quite easily.

Try Out Expensive or Labor-Intensive Finishes

In a small area you can use labor-intensive paint finishes that might take too long in a larger room, or expensive wall-covering, or beaded board, or paneling, or anything else which you’d like to try out on a small scale. Just make sure what you choose is, or can be made, water resistant.

Focus on Storage

Most small bathroom designs have a hard time squeezing in enough storage. Consider high storage: a shelf 1ft below ceiling hight along one entire wall will hold a lot of towels and they’ll look decorative too.

Don’t do what a previous owner of my house did though, and install cabinets so low over the tub that they make it impossible for anyone taller than 5 feet to stand up and take a shower!

In-the wall storage is also a possibility: if you have some wall space in an internal wall that doesn’t have plumbing or wirirng in it, but you can’t have anything there that sticks out into the room very far, recessing a cabinet into the wall between the studs may be an option. Not just medicine cabinets, either: a tall cabinet works just as well and can hold a lot.

Improve Ventilation

Improving ventilation is often one of more the neglected bathroom renovation ideas but it can make a surprising amount of diference to your enjoyment of the space. The critical factor here is where the duct to the outside will run: between joists in the ceiling? Through the attic? It absolutely must exit to the outside, not just into the attic.

Size your fan so it’s big enough for the room, but not too big; quiet; and consider installing a timer so the fan doesn’t accidentally get left on for hours. I f you have major moisture problems in the bath (or family that doesn’t turn the fan on) you can hook the fan to a humidistat which measures moisture in the air and automatically turns on the fan whenever needed.

Choosing a new bathroom floor has two main aspects: practicality and looks.

The floor will get splashed, at least, and perhaps soaked, so it needs to be able to resist water and not get slippery when it’s wet. It needs to be easy to clean, especially if it’s to be installed in a heavily-used family bathroom. It must be able to be installed on the floor substrate that you have available – for example, a ceramic tile surface needs a substrate that does not flex, otherwise it will crack.

Bathroom flooring materials fall into two main categories: hard or resilient/soft.

Hard Bathroom Flooring Materials

These include:

• marble tiles or slabs
• stone tiles or slabs (eg limestone, slate or granite)
• terra-cotta tiles
• ceramic or porcelain tiles
• wood (solid wood or engineered)
• laminates (wood, stone or ceramic-look)

It’s very important that whatever hard material you choose has a non-slip surface, for safety in the bathroom, as well as being water-resistant.

Wood and laminate materials have to be carefully sealed and engineered in order to be water resistant, and may not be suitable for bathrooms where the floor is likely to get soaked, rather than just dripped on.

Most stones must be sealed, and re-sealed at regular intervals in order to resist water and stains.

Tiles of any kind require grouting, and grout requires sealing to prevent grout stains which are especially likely on a floor. Consider using a grout color which won’t show dirt, as well as sealing and resealing whenever necessary.

Resilient/Soft Flooring Materials

These materials are either soft, like carpet, or have a little “give” to them and can feel warmer and easier on the feet than the hard materials. Some examples are:

• rubber in sheets or tiles
• vinyl in sheets or tiles, cushioned or not
• linoleum
• cork
• carpet

Carpets in bathrooms go in and out of fashion, and are currently “out” – for good reason. A bathroom carpet will always get wet eventually, and moisture+carpet=mold. Carpet around a toilet will get nasty, sooner or later, unless the bathroom sees very little use. It’s much healthier to have a hard or resilient floor with removable rugs on top that can be easily removed, washed and dried, than to permanently install carpet.

Heated Floors

What could be better for bare feet than a warm floor in the bathroom! Floor heating systems are a great addition to your bathroom and because the space is usually fairly small, are not prohibitively expensive. Homes with hydronic (hot water) heating systems can run hot water tubes under the flooring, and others can install electric resistance heating wires. There are systems which will work with wood floors as well as hard stone or tile floors.

Small Bathrooms

Flooring choices for small bathroom designs have some unique limitations.

In a small bathroom, the floor space may not lend itself to custom borders or medallion designs, simply because you won’t see enough of the floor to make the design properly visible! On the other hand, because you don’t have to buy many square feet of the material, you may be able to splurge on something more expensive than if you had a larger area to cover.

Diagonal-set tiles make the small room look larger

To expand the floor space visually, there are some tricks you can use:

• Get as much as possible up off the floor, so as much floor can be seen as possible. That suggests a wall-hung toilet, pedestal sink, wall hung cabinets or cabinets on legs, and perhaps even a clawfoot tub.
• Make design lines extend as far as possible. In most bathrooms that would be diagonal lines, so consider planks set on the diagonal of you’re doing a wood-look floor, or diagonal tiles in a tile or tile-look floor.

So, what kind of bathroom decorations can you use to perk up the room?

Fabric items

There are the obvious fabric pieces like towels, shower curtains, window curtains and bathmat or rug, but you might also consider a curtain below a pedestal sink, lampshade covers, toilet seat and tank covers, a valance above a bath or shower alcove, waste basket cover or liner, or curtains in glass-door cabinets. Using all of these at once, especially in a small bathroom, would be overkill, so pick and choose what works best for you.

Sink, Shower and Tub Accessories

These include things like soap dispensers and soap dishes, tissue box holders, toothbrush holders, and waste baskets. You could change out all of these items at once for another matched set, or you could keep some of them in a plain solid color and just change out the others. Shower curtain rings come under this heading, too, and are an easy and cheap update.

Fixture Parts

Faucet handles can often be changed out, or can have decorative panels or parts which can be changed. Light fixtures might have standard size holders which will take different shades, or different colors of the same shape shade. Even changing bulbs can make a surprising amount of difference. Covers for shower curtain rods are an easy change which makes an older rod look much classier.

Semi-Permanent Bathroom Decorations

Some decorations are a little more work to install or remove, but are not as permanent as repainting. For example, wallpaper borders come in removable types, and can be used at the ceiling, picture rail or chair rail height, or to frame a tub alcove. Self-stick tile stickers or transfers can be added to your plain tiles for a whole new look, and removed when you tire of them. Painting tiles with ceramic paints, but not firing them in the oven, also results in a semi-permanent finish which can be scrubbed off with some effort.

Ornaments, Pictures and Knick-Knacks

Finally there is a huge range of decorative items which culd be used anywhere in the house, but which can be used in the bathroom as long as they won’t be damaged by moisture. Posters and postcards, framed or not; china or glass ornaments; wicker and rattan (which do better anyway in an atmosphere which is not too dry); even a collection of rubber duckies, all look great and make a complete change in the atmosphere and feel of a room.

Have fun with your bathroom decorations!

Use a shower instead of a tub. If you have a tub somewhere else in the house, maybe you don’t need one in this particular bathroom. Nowadays, most people take showers instead anyway. The space used by a standard tub, 60″ x 30″, will give you a luxurious two-person shower, or you can install a smaller shower and use the extra space for storage or a second vanity basin.

The toilet-lid sink is a sink which installs in place of the lid of your toilet tank, and drains into the tank, thus reusing your washing water as flush water and saving water. I can’t see many people installing this instead of a regular vanity or sink, but if you’re in a really small bathroom it might be just the ticket.

Good lighting can make your small bathroom seem larger, and even if it doesn’t, it will make it brighter, more cheerful to be in, and safer and easier to use. Think about windows (including interior transom windows over doors), skylights, solar tubes, fan/light combo units, heat/light combo units, vanity lights, over-shower/tub lights. Also consider bulb types: compact fluorescent (CFL) and even LED light bulbs are now as good and as available as the old incandescent bulbs, and save a lot of energy in comparison. They also run much cooler, saving on AC if you have hot summers.

Do you need only minimal storage in the bathroom? If this is a guest bath, or if you have storage right outside the bathroom door, you may be able to get away with only enough storage for a few toilet rolls and spare toiletries. That frees up space for actual spaciousness: consider the difference in look between a pedestal sink and a vanity cabinet. Alternatively, use a half-depth vanity cabinet, with the sink extending forward over the front: these take up less floor space while providing some storage space.

Frequently used or not? If not, you can use wild or fragile decor which might get damaged or tiresome in a heavily used room.

Instead of trying to make a small room look less small, why not play on the smallness and make it into a cocoon or cave.

Use opposite-wall mirrors or reflective wallpaper to make the room extend into infinity.

Borrow space. Can you set a shower or tub back into unused closet space in another room? Set storage cabinets between the studs? Expand a ceiling up into attic space? use a greenhouse window in place of a standard one? Even bump out one wall a couple of feet?

A light colored floor which is as clear as possible makes a space look larger. Use a pedestal sink or small vanity cabinet, a vanity cabinet on legs, a claw-footed tub, or wall-hung toilet to give you the maximum visible floor area.

Bath/shower combos often feel very cramped in use, but much of that perception is at torso and shoulder level rather than round your feet. A curved shower rod which projects into the room gives a surprising feeling of spaciousness to showering in the tub, and doesn’t impose much on the room visually.

A cathedral ceiling can make a space feel more airy and open but don’t go too wild: a too-high ceiling in a small room sometimes just feels like you’re in the bottom of an elevator shaft!

Glass shower stall walls and doors allow the eye to move freely through the space instead of being stopped by structures – and that means feeling as if there’s more available space.

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on bathroom decor
• Bathroom Decor For Kids | Project Nursery
• Elegant Bathroom Decor « Home Interior Designs
• 8 Hot Trends in Bath Design 2009 | The Decorating Diva
• Bathroom tiles | My blog about houses – Best house plans
• dwellings and décor » Blog Archive » The Murphy’s New Bathroom

Of course, you don’t have to copy all the ideas from one bathroom picture – you can mix and match compatible ideas to come up with your own unique bathroom decor style. The textured metal in the first picture, for example, gives a very sparkly look which could be paired with blue granite counters and deep colored walls instead of the natural wood and pale walls shown. The more of your own imagination you can include in your bathroom designs, the better!

Modern bathroom with lots of sparkly textured stainless steel and natural wood.

Antique-style natural wood vanity with white solid-surfacing top, integral sink and gold-finish faucet

Traditional-style bathroom with wallpaper, beige fixtures, bathtub in alcove, light wood double vanity.

Wall-to-wall double bathroom vanity with white vessel sinks, tiled walls and granite counter

A romantic bathroom scene with candles, roses and wine carefully placed on the rim of the set-in tub.

Updated bathroom using old and new materials: natural stone window seat, elaborate but subtly-colored tile mosaic walls, and white vessel sink.

Glass tiles with wide grout lines in many shades of blue

Old but still attractive bathroom in shades of green with white pedestal sink

Romantic-style bathroom vanity with ornate wood mirror, boudoir lamp, granite counter and waterfall faucet

Modern toilet alcove, completely tiled, with built in hand-held shower plus a telephone

Inset tub with columns, swagged curtains, candle-holders; all ready for your romantic evening

Modern toilet alcove with hidden tank, completely tiled walls and floor, stainless steel accessories

Fancy white and gold bathtub faucet, dark blue marble walls, white tub

Grey and green marble and tile, plus natural wood finishes; unusual toilet shape.

Given the basics of a bathroom which is structurally and plumbing-wise functional and safe, there are many bathroom decor ideas which can help your cheer up even a small space and improve the start and end of your day.

Bathroom decor idea - pale yellow and white

First and foremost, color makes the biggest difference. There are many books and magazines to tell you which colors give a certain mood, or are trendy this year, but the most important point is – which color or colors make YOU feel good?

I like yellow, and my newly-painted (but not quite completely remodeled) bathroom is a pale sandy yellow which feels fresh, warm and cheerful without being overpowering in the small space. Plenty of white in the form of fixtures and cabinets help make it feel more spacious and open, and colorful towels add pizazz and can change the mood instantly if I feel the desire.

Try taking your own favorite color and playing with variations of it, from dark to light, jewel to pastel, cooler or warmer hues, subdued or bright. Combine different shades of the same color in one room to give a monochromatic color scheme which can be lively, using definite contrasts, or soothing, with colors that blend together.

Style can also make a big difference in bathroom decor. While your basic fixtures and their locations stay the same, you can completely change the style using paint and accessories. The big advantage of doing this in the bathroom is that the room itself is usually fairly small and there are no or few furniture pieces to buy, so you can do it easily, quickly and inexpensively.

A few examples…

• Arts and Crafts bathroom decor idea – use period colors like greens and olives on the walls, oak and ceramic accessories, and perhaps an art nouveau style border at the ceiling. Arts and Crafts bathrooms often featured amazing tilework – colorful and extensive – so this would be a rather more expensive style to pull off if you wanted to go the whole hog.
• Country bathroom decor ideas – pastel or muted colors, jolly fabric on the window and anywhere else possible, wood or ceramic accessories, cute decorative items
• Tuscan bathroom – roughened plaster finish on the walls (go easy on this, it can be hard to clean!), natural stone surfaces, wood furnishings, wrought iron accessories. Colors include golden yellow, terrcotta, brick, ochre, and greens.
• Japanese bathroom: natural wood and stone finishes, shoji screens, plants, trickling waterfall, metal and wood accessories.

Your bathroom is an important room, even if it’s small. Suitable bathroom decor ideas can help make you feel better at the start and end of the day, and are worth looking for and applying to your bathroom.