Decorating a half bathroom is like trying to make a phone booth feel luxurious. You’re confined to this tiny room with nowhere for stuff to go but everywhere for stuff to stick out. As soon as you add an extra shelf or fancy soap dispenser it feels like it overtook the entire space.
My friend Sarah used to call her powder room “a cemetery for good intentions.” I know how she feels. Mine had a basket for extra toilet paper, a sad little plant that promptly died due to lack of sunlight and a hanging storage unit over the toilet that made the ceiling feel even shorter. Whoever used that bathroom always felt like they needed to stretch when they left.
Half bathrooms are sneaky little devils. You think having less square footage means it will be easier to decorate, but I promise you it’s not.
The trick is every item is enlarged by tenfold.
That adorable soap dispenser you fell in love with at Anthropologie is suddenly the focal point of your bathroom. The art that was “perfect” makes the room feel even smaller. My powder room transformation began a few years ago with what I will lovingly refer to as “that wallpaper nightmare.” Basically I fell in love with this beautiful botanical wallpaper.
Thin vines, light green leaves, gorgeous. In the wallpaper book it looked nice big and bold on the sample roll. Covering all four walls of my teeny tiny half bathroom was a game changer.
Everything about it was trimmed down and petite, so having that pattern surround you while you brushed your teeth was overwhelming, to say the least. When it came to decorating this nook I learned that LESS IS MORE. Yes, scale is important but not in the way you think.
Smaller isn’t always better. It’s about not crowding your eye with lots of tiny things competing for attention. I stripped the wallpaper ( three weekends of steaming and scraping if you’re curious ) and painted the walls a warm, white cream color.
I hung one piece of art above the toilet. One. Simple.
Piece. But I made sure it was a large statement piece. I found a black and white photo of water drops on a glass surface that was roughly 16×20 inches.
Suddenly my tiny bathroom felt twice the size because my eye only had one thing to focus on rather than a million distractions. Mirrors are a no brainer for adding dimension, but did you know that not all mirrors are created equal in tiny spaces? It sounds crazy but tiny circular mirror tiles can actually make a small room feel more cramped.
Because the mirror is so small it doesn’t reflect enough light or scenery to broaden the space. I opted for a rectangular mirror that covers about two-thirds of the wall width above the sink. It not only reflects more light around the room, it also fools your brain into thinking there’s an entire other room on the other side!
The frame on your mirror can also make or break your half bath. I started with a thick wooden floating frame that I realized later on eats up way too much visual space. I swapped it out for a thin brass frame that almost fades into the background while still adding some warmth to the space.
The mirror itself was about £75 more than the wood one, but I love the look so much I didn’t mind spending extra to get the size I wanted. Storage is hard when you have zero floor space for cabinets, and limited wall space for shelves. My DIY towel storage hack eliminated the need for a bulky cabinet under the sink.
All I wanted was a place to stash extra toilet paper, paper hand towels and keep my mild cleanser. I ended up finding a super skinny wall shelf that I mounted above the toilet. I painted it the exact same color as the wall so it blends into the background.
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A small woven basket ( NEVER choose a wire basket – looks cheap!) and maybe one decor piece lives here. That’s it. I chose a woven basket instead of a rectangular box shape because it helps disguise the functional items tucked inside.
Everything I store in that basket is duplicate toilet paper and a small bottle of bathroom cleaner, but when guests visit no one would ever know. It just looks curated. Ahhh lighting.
Half bathrooms are not kind to the harsh lighting most of us have up currently. In my powder room I had one of those builder grade horizontal vanity lights that made everyone look like a horror movie villain when they shaved. I opted for a small pendant light that hangs down about 18 inches from the ceiling.
It gives you better lighting when washing your face in the morning, but it also creates this intimate restaurant vibe. Plus, the rounded fixture softens up the space a bit more. Pro tip: you’ll likely need to hire an electrician to swap out your old light for a pendant light.
Cost me around £120 but worth every penny. Adding life to a small bathroom can be tricky, but if you don’t have a window in your half bath it can feel impossible. I’ve had success with choosing architectural plants instead of ones with lots of little delicate parts.
No flowers, ferns or trailing vines. I found a tiny snake plant near the corner of my bathroom that seems to be happy enough with how little light it gets. It’s also almost impossible to kill.
Win-win. Half bathrooms can feel so cozy and closed off that sometimes you just want to go with a dark, dramatic paint color. Newsflash.
DON’T. Paint your tiny bathroom navy. My mom hated her tiny bathroom so we painted it… wait for it….NAVY.
She saw the color in a magazine and loved how luxurious it looked. LOVE IT. Don’t do it.
Tiny bathrooms with benches instead of toilets feel like you’re inside a jewelry box. We ended up repainting her bathroom a beautiful soft gray with just a hint of blue undertones. It feels just as fancy without the claustrophobic feeling.
Now that you’ve purged the junk, keep the decor streamlined with beautiful accents that don’t take up much visual space.
A soap dispenser isn’t going to overload your eye if it’s beautiful. Neither will a small vase with one stem of flowers on that floating shelf.
You get the idea. If it has to be in your half bathroom, MAKE IT COUNT. One thing I love to do instead of hanging a typical hand towel is hang a small dish towel in a decorative brass towel rack.
It looks clean and takes up less space in your guests’ field of vision. The towel ring itself is mounted on the side of the vanity cabinet vs. the wall. Less lines = happier eye.
The nicest compliment I got about my powder room was from someone who said it felt “surprisingly spacious.” Goal achieved. Half bathrooms don’t have to feel tiny and cramped. There’s something magical about embracing the small square footage and making it work for you.
