Bathroom
Ideas

Although some homeowners enjoy large, expansive bathrooms with virtually unlimited space, many of us seem stuck with bathrooms that feel cramped and inefficient. If you live in a townhouse, a condo or a smaller home, you may have only one small bathroom in your residence. If you live in a larger house, you may be searching for ideas about how to maximize the use of a half-bath or powder room. Making the most of a small bathroom can be fun and rewarding if you approach the project creatively.

Creating a Sense of Space

Your small bathroom floors may have more space than you realize. Evaluate your bathroom to determine whether any of your fixtures or accessories are overwhelming the room by taking up too much square footage. By replacing a bulky sink or toilet, or by removing large overhead cabinets that block natural light, you can immediately free space in a small bathroom.

Admitting more light into a bathroom makes the room feel larger. If there's room in your remodeling budget, consider installing or enlarging a window to invite more sunlight into this space. Replace shutters with fresh, semi-sheer blinds or shades to create a sense of privacy without blocking light altogether. Add track lights or vintage accent lamps to illuminate dim corners and expand your sense of space at night.

Experiment with glass and mirrors to create an optical illusion of space. Wherever you have frosted glass, hanging plastic shower curtains or other opaque barriers, replace them with mirrors or clear glass to extend the visual area in a small bathroom. See-through and reflective surfaces remove visual blocks that limit the space in your bathroom. Light colors like off-white, pearly gray, pale yellow and robin's egg blue make tight quarters seem more spacious.

Improving Storage Capacity

Clutter is the greatest enemy of a well designed, small bathroom. With creative ideas for expanding your storage capacity, you can maximize the usable area in your bathroom and open up more room for personal care. Recessed shelves and medicine cabinets provide space to store your medications, cosmetics and shaving tools without infringing on your space. Attractive shower niches can hold shampoos and soaps.

If the shelves of your small bathroom are overflowing with towels, consider installing a small closet or floor-to-ceiling cabinet, either inside the bathroom or in the hallway next to the bath. In a small bathroom, any items that you don't need to have close by should be stored in other areas of your home, if possible. Extra rolls of toilet paper and boxes of tissues, cleaning supplies and bottles of unused shampoo should be stored in cabinets or drawers out of the bathroom if space is at a premium.

Use countertop organizers for the essential cosmetics, makeup applicators and soaps that you need to keep on top of your vanity. Keeping your personal care items tidy will make the space appear larger, even if you don't actually reduce the bulk of the items. To expand your storage space on a budget, try repurposing items from other areas of your home, such as small bookshelves or woven standing baskets.

Make the most of a small bathroom by looking for opportunities to remove or replace fixtures, accessories or supplies that aren't space-efficient or useful. Focus on pale colors and transparent surfaces or mirrors that will bring depth to a room with small dimensions. If you live in a home with multiple bathrooms, turn a downstairs half bath into a chic powder room by adding an ornate wrought iron chair, an antique mirror and delicate accent lamps.