It’s well known that interior designers have ways of making homes look heavenly which are not known to the rest of us. Their clever tricks and savvy ideas can turn any room into something fit for the pages of a glossy interiors magazine. The bathroom, although it’s the smallest room in many houses, is no exception – a little inspiration borrowed from interior designers can go a long way. If you want to be let in on some of their secrets, read on! BathEmpire has compiled some of the best tips
1. Plan your bathroom
One of the biggest mistakes people make with bathrooms is not planning the space out properly. Before you buy anything, measure the room, then draw it to scale on some graph paper and carefully plan where you’ll position your bath, showers, toilet and sink. Take into account things like the opening of the door (you don’t want it bumping into the bath, for example), and consider where you’ll put your bin, your towels and your laundry basket, if it’s going to be kept in the bathroom. And if possible, position the toilet away from the door – it’s not the most attractive thing to be confronted with as soon as you walk in. Although these things can seem minor, they can make the difference between an average bathroom and one that really ‘works’.
2. Highlight the best bits
Something that interior designers are expert at is drawing out the best features of a room, whether that’s pieces of furniture or period features. If you’ve bought a gorgeous roll-top bath, for example, then showcase it by having an accent wall of coloured tiles or even wallpaper, behind it. If it’s the architecture that sets your bathroom apart then use lighting to direct the eye towards the interesting features.
3. Hide the bad bits
Have you ever visited a show home? If you have then you may have spotted that there are no unsightly pipes or cables visible. It’s a great principle to adhere to in your bathroom. Choosing pieces that have concealed pipe-work will give your bathroom a streamlined look. At BathEmpire, for example, there are toilets with concealed cisterns and built-in baths. Even sinks can be neatly positioned within your bathroom cabinets so the underneath isn’t visible. Clever!
4. Don’t be boring
If you’re thinking ‘I’ll stick to plain white everything in my bathroom and I can’t go wrong’ then think again. It’s part of the skill of a good interior designer that they can go beyond the bare minimum of creating a safe but boring interior scheme, and add flair and personality to a room in a way that looks great. You can do the same. You could, for example, use wallpaper on an accent wall, ideally one that’s specially-made for bathrooms.
Or you could accessorize the room with quirky wall hangings or even the odd piece of furniture that wouldn’t normally be found in a bathroom – perhaps an armchair or a painted filing cabinet. Think outside the box.
5. Colour it pretty
Getting a colour co-ordinated look should be easy in your bathroom. Base your scheme around an all-white bathroom suite, and then pick a colour-scheme for your towels, bathmats, accessories and blinds – they are available in all the colours you can imagine. For an interior designer twist, don’t choose an obvious colour combination – you could go for red and orange, for example to give a hot, Moroccan look, or you could keep it cool and contemporary with lime green and grey. If you want to make absolutely certain that the colours you have chosen will work in the space then create a mood board with all the colours on, and hang it in your bathroom for a while to see if you still like it.
6. Mirror mirror on the wall
A classic trick of the interior designer is to use mirrors to make spaces appear bigger than they actually are. It’s now easier than ever to do this in a bathroom. Not only can you fix a huge mirror to the wall, you can buy mirrored furniture to reflect the room, and hence make it appear bigger.
