Last month my friend Sarah had me stand in her guest bathroom for way too long before I was allowed to use it. I’ll never forget walking in and literally stopping in my tracks. It’s an awkward size room—maybe six feet by four feet at most—yet all I could think was wow, this bathroom is luxurious.
Not expensive-homeowner luxurious, but nice details luxurious. You know? The hand towel was rolled all neat and perfect like you’d see in a department store, and secured with linen ribbon.
There were three white tulips in a clear glass vase on the windowsill. That was it.
Three cheap tulips from Tesco suddenly made this teeny powder room feel classy AF.
I spent way more time in there than necessary gawking at the details (okay fine, judging whether I should swipe her soap dispenser), but it really opened my eyes. The soap dispenser was glass instead of plastic. The mirror had a little vintage brass detail around it (not too fancy, but not obviously from a craft store like those other bathrooms out there).
Hell, even the toilet paper holder was upgraded to brushed nickel instead of builder-grade chrome. It wasn’t that those were expensive additions or hard to find. Quite the opposite.
It was the attention to small details that felt impressive. Your guests will notice those details too, and it’s the subtle things that they’ll remember your bathroom by. Years of upgrading guest bathrooms (and three failed versions of my own flat’s bathroom) has taught me this: anyone who uses your bathroom will notice every little thing about it, but they’ll remember how it made them feel.
For example, that cheap plastic dispenser you got from IKEA for your guest bathroom twelve years ago and definitely haven’t replaced since (*raises hand*) isn’t just ugly. It shouts TOURIST DON’T-LIKE-ME ATONCE™️, even if your entire apartment is gorgeous. But if you swap it out for something heavy for its size—a ceramic dispenser, a glass dispenser with pump, anything that doesn’t scream crappy chemicals —your guests will think you’re effortlessly fancy.
Towels are where people fail guests most often, and I’ll admit I was guilty of it too. For years I used to think as long as it’s clean no one cares what the towel looks or feels like. I was wrong.
SO wrong. I once bought a set of towel I thought were “nice” from Target and within three washes they felt like sandpaper. My sister came to visit and actually asked if I had nicer ones she could use.
I died. Invest in good hand towels for guests. Full bathroom towel sets are overkill for someone staying in your home for a couple nights, but good hand towels are necessary.
Buy two nice hand towels you can rotate through and stick with a high-quality fabric. Turkish cotton at the very least 600 GSM and rotate them every year or two (even if they don’t NEED replacing!). It makes such a difference when your guest uses them and thinks, “oh, this is nice.” I’ve written about my love for cheap flowers before, but there’s a hack to buying them that not enough people talk about: they don’t have to be expensive or special.
I buy glass bud vases wherever I can find them on clearance (trust me, they’re everywhere if you look—garage sales, thrift stores, ikea!) and keep a stash by the guest bathroom so I always have something seasonal to put in them. In the winter I might use one lonely daffodil. Spring I buy tulips or narcissi on the marché.
Summer I literally grab whatever’s blooming in my garden and call it a day. One year I used a sprig of rosemary I was gonna compost after making Sunday lunch and had three guests comment on my “beautiful bouquet.” Proportion is everything when it comes to tiny bathrooms and flowers. Mini space?
Mini blooms. That big-ass bouquet your mom sent you for your birthday will stick out like a sore thumb in your teeny bathroom. One stem of flowers in a vase that fits the scale of your room is better than seven squeezed into something too large.
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Art is hard in bathrooms because nobody wants to deal with mildewy paintings, but it’s also one of those rooms where you can really experiment. I have a tiny black and white photo of Paris rooftops that I picked up from a street vendor in France for €8. It’s not museum quality art, but framed correctly on that small strip of wall space it feels high-end.
Bonus points because guests always comment on it (“you have art in your bathroom? !”)! Avoid hanging or placing anything remotely valuable or sentimental (hellooooo steam from the shower), but also try to avoid those terrible bouquets of silk flowers with cheesy inspirational quotes about bubbles and relaxation everyone puts in bathrooms. If you wouldn’t actually look at it hanging on your wall, don’t pretend your guests are going to care just because it’s the bathroom.
My friend Megan made me realize lighting is the single most important thing in any guest bathroom. That cheap ol’ fluorescent light bulb GOD MADE YOU LOOK LIKE SHIT? Replace it.
And add another source of light! I picked up a warm white LED (look for 2700K, not the bluish ones) to replace my existing bulb, then went to Amazon and bought this small battery operated wall sconce to clip next to the mirror. Battery operated sounds cheap, I know, but the ones now are actually decent and it means you don’t have to worry about wiring or electricity!
It was $22, lasts for MONTHS on three AA batteries, and lets me create a secondary light source that actually flatters people. Seriously. My guests are now taking way better selfies in there, which sounds ridiculous but is actually the highest compliment you can pay your space.
If you have room for it, add a teeny shelf or hanging basket to hide clutter and stash extra supplies. I painted a small floating shelf ($12 at homegoods) white to match my wall, then keep an extra roll of toilet paper behind it as well as a small wicker basket for all the boring stuff. As mentioned before, avoid plastic at all costs.
Baskets should be wicker or made from fabric, something that looks and feels nice. It can hold your extra soap (or travel size shampoo/conditioner if you want to really wow), feminine products, breath mints…anything else your guest may need that doesn’t quite fit in the medicine cabinet but you don’t want littering your counters. Lastly?
Scents. I can’t stress this one enough. And I don’t mean overpowering air fresheners that smell like fake beach.
I keep a small dish of lavender buds on that shelf, or sometimes I’ll unwrap a beautiful smelling soap and let that perfume the air. I love French milled soap for this (*hint hint* Anthropologie), where each bar is handmade and has tons of pigment. Pré de Provence is my current favorite, and they’re only about £4/ bar which will last you FOREVER.
Don’t sleep on upgrading your guest bathroom mirror either. Those builder grade mirrors are garbage and they instantly make your whole space feel cheap. I lucked into finding this gorgeous vintage mirror frame at an estate sale for $15, then had Home Depot cut a new mirror to size.
Spend under $30 and your whole bathroom feels instantly high-end. If vintage isn’t your style, even something as simple as picking up a mirror with an actual frame from Habitat or John Lewis is enough to elevate that silver plastic mirror crap everyone starts with. The small stuff is where you’ll see a difference.
Swap out those basic white hooks for something nicer.
Keep a cute soap dish instead of letting your bars of soap sit on the edge of your sink. Hang a small plant that can actually survive bathroom conditions (philodendrons, pothos, anything lush and green works!) or accept that faking it is 100% an option with fake plants these days.
Most importantly…maintain it. Fresh flowers lose their wow factor when they start getting droopy. Nice towels aren’t fancy if they’re stained.
Put just as much care and attention into upkeep of your guest bathroom as you did when you first created it and your guests will notice. They might not thank you outright, but they’ll spend five minutes longer drying their hands and staring like you hung artwork in there. They’ll text their partner standing in the bathroom asking why your toilet is so beautiful and why Sami never lets them use their toilet.
You get the idea. Little things, friends. Little things.
