Recently we finished renovating a bathroom in the city. It is a small bathroom, with no windows and old dark tile which made it look like a dungeon. Here is a picture of it.
The challenge here was to make it feel bright and modern while maintaining the sort of moody loft style. We were also working with a tight budget, so had to be creative as to where best to spend money.
I started with the vanity as the old one had to go and they can be quite expensive. Luckily, The Home Depot lately has updated their Glacier Bay line and has a great selection of modern looking items. We decided to go with this Glacier Bay vanity. It’s a bargain at $299! It comes with 3 fully extending drawers, which are great for storage, and thick white vanity top with integrated square sink. We also went with this 30” x 36” Glacier Bay mirror for $29.98 - it is a large mirror, almost the same width as the vanity, and makes this tiny bathroom look much bigger.
Next up was selecting tile. Given limited budget, we decided to go with porcelain as it can be more cost effective than stone, but often still looks amazing (and is much easier to maintain and care for!). We decided to go with polished marble look tile for the walls from Floor & Decor. I like using polished look tile for small spaces, because they make rooms look larger. We were tiling 3 walls, so $2.19/sq.ft. was a bargain. For the flooring, we wanted to get something more interesting, thus this modern black and white tile for the floor and black marble look porcelain for the baseboard.
To continue with the modern theme, we wanted to go with grey color for the walls. After testing several paint colors on the walls, we settled for Benjamin Moore Cinder. It is quite a true grey and looks pretty dark, but not too dark, in this small windowless bathroom. It can look really light in sunny rooms, but worked perfect here.
Plumbing fixtures were probably the most expensive as we wanted to go with the trendy brass look. For the sink we picked The Home Depot’s vintage inspired wide spread faucet for $119. We also ordered their brass shower fixtures, but, unfortunately, the color they come in is more granny looking gold rather than brass and doesn’t match the faucet at all. Delta’s Lahara brass line matched the faucet more closely and looks amazing in this bathroom, well worth twice the price of The Home Depot’s shower fixtures.
As it comes to selecting light fixtures - choices are limitless, you can spend anywhere from about $50 to several hundred for a vanity light. We found this 4 light vanity light in warm brass on Wayfair. It goes nicely with brass plumbing fixtures and large 4 globes provide enough light for the bathroom not to feel dark and tiny.
Vanity light $137.60
So, as it comes to bathroom renovations, with a little thought and some planning they can be done on a budget and still look great!
After renovation