Picture this: You walk into someone’s bathroom, and your immediate reaction is: Wow. They really spent a lot of money on their bathroom renovations, didn’t they? Then you take a closer look at their fixtures…and realize three of the four are from IKEA.
That was me recently at my friend Sarah’s apartment. I spent her entire dinner party last month asking her questions about her DIY (yet “expensive- looking”) bathroom renovation, which cost her less than £400. Grey bathrooms have a certain…calm richness to them that doesn’t scream “I got this at Home Depot.” However, after YEARS of trial and error renovating my own bathrooms (some successful, some spectacularly not – hey, at least I once painted a bathroom so dark it looked like a Hobbit house interior?) I’ve learned that mastering the chic, expensive bathroom is more about subtleties than slathering HGTV-worthy grey paint on your walls.
My journey to a truly expensive-looking bathroom started when I moved into my current rental apartment, which happened to come with an absolute nightmare of beige-and-brown fixtures/bulk tiles/lighting. When my landlord said I could paint the place however I wanted, my mind immediately went to grey.
Sleek.
Luxurious. High-end grey. What I didn’t realize was that grey can be just as bad as beige if you do it wrong.
Lesson learned the hard way. I chose what I thought was a sophisticated charcoal grey paint color. It was beautiful swatched on the paint chip under the fancy lighting of my local hardware store.
But when I painted my bathroom that shade under my bathroom’s one overhead bulb, it looked…well, let’s be generous and say “industrial chic.” The wrong shade of grey can make your bathroom look smaller, darker, cheaper. I tried living with that bathroom color for three weeks before I tore it all down and started over. The key is realizing that “grey” isn’t one color.
It’s hundreds of colors that are lumped together under the colour grey. There are cool greys with blue undertones; warm greys with beige or brown undertones; greiges that you really can’t decide if are grey or beige. Finding a perfect shade of grey to paint your walls is great, but layering cooler and warmer greys with different textures is what really makes your bathroom shine.
I painted my bathroom walls Benjamin Moore’s “Classic Gray” – but really, any major paint brand will have a similar shade of warm, soft grey that costs about half as much as BM’s prices. I learned that lesson the hard way when I bought an expensive can of BM’s best-selling grey paint, only to realize that the similar shade at £18 Dulux looked almost identical when it dried. My mistake?
Not comparing the colors in my bathroom’s lighting. Grey paint on the walls alone isn’t going to cut it. As soon as I started mixing textures with my grey paint color, things really started to take shape.
One of my favourite tricks is these peel-and-stick tiles that are indistinguishable from real subway tile at £2.50 per square foot, versus the £15 per square foot you’ll spend at Home Depot. The one trick to getting them to look truly handmade is installing them with even spacing between each tile – I used wooden coffee stirrers as tile spacers. I’m not kidding.
Another trick? Don’t go cheap on your shower curtain. That thin, white plastic bathroom curtain from the pound shop might be convenient, but holy lord does it ever say “budget apartment.” Having a glass shower door would have been ideal, but it was obviously way out of my price range.
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So instead, I bought a thick, textured grey shower curtain in a slightly darker grey than the walls. It’s heavyweight fabric hangs dramatically and looks super intentional, versus washing over your decor like cheaper curtains. I hung mine on brushed nickel rings that I spray painted matte black using about £3 worth of spray paint.
BAM: Customized. Grey paint and fancy new shower curtain don’t do you any good if your lighting is harsh and boring. That naked bulb shining down on you from the ceiling has got to go.
Instead, install a small pendant light with a frosted glass shade (I found this one on Amazon for £35 that looks like I spent £175!) and add battery-powered LED lights underneath a floating shelf above your sink. That shelf is another budget winner. Gone are the days of buying an over-priced floating shelf made specifically for bathrooms.
Buy a simple wooden shelf from the hardware store, stain it grey to match your walls, and mount it to the wall using hidden mounting brackets. Mine cost me £12 and not only does it hold all my toiletries, but it lets me style a few accessories on it too! Try styling a small plant (plants CAN thrive in your bathroom, don’t @ me) a decorative soap dispenser, or a candle.
Variety is key! Mirrors are another area where you can really trick people into thinking you spent way more than you actually did. I replaced the builder-basic mirror that was installed when my apartment was built with this beautiful round mirror I found at a car boot sale for £8.
I spray painted the thin black frame matte black to match my curtain hoops, and suddenly my mirror looked like it cost £80 versus £8. The round mirror also helps break up all the sharp lines of subway tiles and floating shelves. This is one area where I really advise investing in textiles.
I went from using whatever mismatched towels I already had to coordinating grey towels in various shades (charcoal, light grey) but from the same company so that the texture matches.
Spend £40 and pretend you spent £400 on towels that match your walls, ok? When they’re stacked and rolled up on that floating shelf, they look like they belong in a hotel.
Lastly, tie the whole room together with matching hardware. I spray painted every fixture, handle, towel hook matte black. I bought a cheap pack of drawer pulls from the hardware store and used them as towel hooks; I mounted a matching toilet roll holder; I even used leftover spray paint on my existing tap.
It sounds silly, but having all your hardware in the same finish is what really makes a budget bathroom look expensive. And that’s it! My total was £180 over the course of two weekends – spread out because bathroom renovations are a pain and require a lot of waiting for paint to dry.
Sarah, whose bathroom inspired me on my journey, spent less than £150… but she had natural lighting on her side. My bathroom isn’t perfect. I’ll never forget the first time I saw the creamy white bathrooms at Macy’s, or dream of the day I can afford to fully rip out my tub and install a nice soaking shower.
But until then, I’ll be spending way less than the £10,000 McKinsey estimated the average person spends redesigning their bathroom, and loving my own personally curated collection of totally “Justin’s Apartment” everything.
