Here’s something that’s really depressing: Bright and early every morning (and by bright and early, I mean half asleep and wishing I could go back to sleep), you trek into the bathroom to get ready for your day. Okay, that’s sort of depressing. But trekking into a beige bathroom to start your day while you’re already half asleep?
Now that’s truly depressing. When we first moved into this house, our bathroom looked like this. Every.Single.Thing was magnolia or cream.
Whoever had decorated this bathroom clearly couldn’t be bothered to have an opinion. I felt zero joy staring at those plain walls as I brushed my teeth while Amara banged on the door demanding to “help mummy”.
It was fine I guess.
It did everything we needed it to do. Good water pressure. No cracks in the mirror.
Toilet flushes. But other than that, it was boring. Plain.
Lifeless. And beige. Here’s the thing.
We’d spent our entire house renovation budget on the living room and Amara’s bedroom when we moved in so the bathroom wasn’t getting an overhaul any time soon. But I kept seeing beautiful bathroom transformations on Instagram where people would paint one wall dark blue, or add some tile behind the basin and suddenly their bland bathroom looked upgraded and expensive. Hey!
I thought. Maybe I could do one wall? It seemed doable even with zero budget and a toddler who thinks childcare equals “destroying everything you own”.
My mum popped over one day and caught me mid-stare at our sad beige wall. “Paint it then” was her succinct advice. Mum solution to everything. Inherently logical but completely unhelpful when you’re 7 months pregnant and lacking motivation to even think about paint colours never mind pick them.
But you know what? She was right. I was overthinking this.
I started with the wall behind the toilet. Partially because that’s the first thing you see when you walk into our bathroom, but mostly because if I hated it, at least it wasn’t the first thing people would notice when they came into our bathroom. Entered Pinterest bathroom phase.
Every time Amara napped that week I was on my phone bookmarking photos. Truth be told I should’ve been cleaning/working during her nap times but explaining to contractors that I’ve wasted my daughter’s nap times scrolling through pretty pictures on Pinterest would NOT go well. I settled on these subway tiles in this amazing forest green colour.
And like I said above, only did it about two-thirds of the way up the wall. Learned that tip from my friend Claire who painted her downstairs toilet all one colour (navy blue, oops) and it ended up feeling smaller and more cave-like than the nice, bright family bathroom it was meant to be. Doing just a third or half of the wall with tile/wallpaper/paint creates visual interest and makes your bathroom look larger and more expensive than it really is.
Let’s just say that had I beenstreaming(literally) the tile installation process, there would be some bad language in the synopsis. Long story short: being heavily pregnant does not lend itself to reaching up to the ceiling to put tile adhesive on wall tiles. Also, tile adhesive is EVERYWHERE when you’ve never done it before.
Tile slightly off kilter? Oh well. At least according to Amara it’s now “Mummy’s special tile”.
What I didn’t expect was how much of a difference that one feature wall made to the whole bathroom. Suddenly our plain white bathroom suite looked like we’d intentionally chosen it to go with the feature wall, rather than it just being what we could afford. The chrome taps suddenly seemed more high-end.
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Hell, even my dried out spider plant (thanks to forgetting to water it during pregnancy brain weeks) looked like I’d placed it there for maximum effect instead of parking it on the windowsill so it wouldn’t die. Don’t stop there though! There are loads of options for creating a bathroom accent wall without spending loads of money or renovating the whole room.
Painting the wall is obviously the cheapest and easiest option. Just pick a gorgeous rich colour and go for it. My sister- in-law painted the wall behind her wash basin this beautiful dusty pink colour and it instantly took her outdated bathroom from 1997 to the pages of Elle Decor.
Wallpaper is also coming back big time. Especially removable, stick-on wallpaper that we amateur decorators can enjoy without the commitment (or headaches?!) of traditional wallpapering. I tested out a sample square of this botanical wallpaper in our downstairs toilet and it instantly brightened it up, making it feel like a real room rather than just a bathroom you run through on your way to somewhere nicer.
Be realistic with yourself about what will work in your family bathroom though. That lovely grasscloth wallpaper you saw in a magazine? Not so great at hiding water marks when you’ve got kids jumping in and out of the bath sending droplets of water flying everywhere.
That reclaimed wood trending everywhere now? Best avoid it unless you can seal it properly because bath time = toddler showers with ours until they’re old enough to sit properly in the tub. Same thing goes for my tile choice actually.
Measured out, ordered and fell in love with these textured stone tiles before remembering that baths with toddlers = toothpaste spatter, water fights and, ahem, Play- Doh exploding out of who knows where onto your pretty new tiles. NOTHING sticks off those tiles AND imagine trying to clean that grime out of those uneven surfaces. Chose the subway tiles I did for a reason – they’re seriously easy to wipe down and that matters when you’ve got kids.
Scale is something else to consider. Our bathroom is tiny. Like, we’re fighting over bathroom space at the moment it’s so small.
So keeping the accent wall treatment about two-thirds of the way up the wall works for us. If you’ve got a large bathroom though, go for it! My cousin did floor to ceiling marble behind her luxurious freestanding bathtub.
It’s ginormous but obviously her bathroom can handle that kind of treatment! Trust me, I didn’t think about lighting at all until I got the tiles home and they looked NOTHING like they did in the bloody shop. Ended up taking all the tile samples home and standing them under every light bulb in B&Q just to make sure.
But worth it, because you need those tiles to look equally as good when the bathroom is bathed in the bright morning light when everyone’s getting ready for school/work and that weaker, warmer evening light when you’re doing bath time. Tile colour temperature is everything too. I didn’t realise until after mine were installed but the tiles look completely different depending on the time of day and what bathroom lights are on.
Depending on the lighting, they can go from this deep woodland green to an almost grey colour. I kind of love that they change throughout the day/with different lighting. Makes your bathroom feel like it’s always changing instead of just boring old white.
And honestly, guys.
The BEST part about this project? It cost me less than £200 and only took me a weekend to do.
Yep. ONE weekend to tile an entire wall. Granted, it was a very long weekend and I had to go back to the tile shop twice to get more because I’m shit at measuring how many tiles I actually need.
But for less than the cost of a new handbag I transformed our plain jane bathroom into a bathroom I actually LOVE spending time in. People ALWAYS comment on it when they come round for the first time whereas before they wouldn’t have given our boring bathroom a second glance unless something was broken. Amara loves it too.
She loves pointing at “mummy’s pretty wall” and it makes my heart melt every time she does. She’s going to love cheering me up while I’m busting out feeds and changing nappies at 3am with this beautiful green wall too. And when we do decide to move on from beige – and trust me, we will – it’ll be super easy to remove these tiles and start from scratch.
Because life with kids is CONSTANT change, so why not your accent wall too?
