I popped round to my friend Sarah’s place a few weeks back, and she sent me to the bathroom downstairs. As soon as I opened the door, I half expected to trip over a pair of knitting needles. She had painted it this dark eggplant colour – absolutely everywhere you look these days people are posting pictures of these fantastically dark bathrooms on Pinterest.
But seriously, it was nearly pitch black in there, and I could hardly see myself in the mirror without turning on the light. “Oh I didn’t think it would look small,” she said accusingly when I emerged, clearly giving my dumbfounded face full scrutiny. “I keep leaving the light on during the day now.” Yep. There’s the thing about dark bathrooms. They don’t just LOOK smaller, they ABSORB light from already quite dark rooms.
My bathroom is literally the size of an oversized closet. In fact, all three of our bathrooms are pretty dismal on the space front, but over the years I’ve learned that when it comes to colours for small bathrooms, picking the wrong shade can make a small space feel downright tiny.
Choosing the right shade can actually fool your brain into thinking there’s more space than there really is.
When we moved into this house, Phil and I were greeted with a dull, featureless bathroom painted in standard builders magnolia. Now this shade is fantastic for making everything look dusty. When the paint is fresh.
Eager to cover up this eyesore, but constrained by budget and the fact that we couldn’t afford to rip out walls or add skylights to the bathroom, I needed to figure out the secrets of small bathroom colours. The first attempt was disastrous. It was called “Soft Mint” which sounds quite lovely but looked terrible.
It was like somebody had rubbed toothpaste over the walls. Despite being a ‘soft’ colour, that green threw shade like you wouldn’t believe and sucked up every bit of natural light that tried to enter our bathroom through the teeny frosted window. I had to repaint it two weeks later.
Bad mistake. It cost me a small fortune and was a right pain, but boy did it teach me never to trust what’s on the colour chip. Now I stick to real whites.
Actual white. As in, when you look at the paint chip there shouldn’t be any hint of colour underneath. Obviously.
Buuuut. You would be amazed at how many ‘whites’ have secret undertones hiding beneath that stark white coating. I’ve used Benjamin Moore’s Simply White in three separate teeny bathrooms now and LOVED it.
It’s like having another light source in there! People compliment me on how “bright and spacious” our bathroom looks all the time –bonus when you consider it’s still teeny and has ONE small window facing north. Here’s a fun tip I learned entirely by accident recently- warm whites are FAR better than cool whites for bathrooms with limited natural light.
Learned this one painting my sister’s en-suite. Got her all excited about this warm, super-white colour I picked out in the shop. Only when we brought it home did we realise it had blue undertones.
When we painted it and turned the bathroom lights on…it looked LIKE A HOSPITAL. It was cold. Sterile.
Uninviting. Like somewhere you might go to get treated for smegging minor ailments, but not a place where you’d want to relax in a bubble bath. And the same trick works for ceilings!
Paint ceilings WITH just the smallest hint of colour instead of white and it fools your brain into thinking they’re much higher than they really are. I painted mine using the lightest grey-blue shade imaginable – you’d never know unless I told you – but it works! Your eye doesn’t automatically notice where the wall ends and the ceiling begins.
Pale grey can work really well too for small bathrooms if you watch out for that cool-vs-warm thing I was talking about. Got cocky once and chose what I thought was a lovely neutral grey… that ended up turning PURPLE under artificial lighting. No judgement here if you love purple bathrooms.
But mate, when you’re brushing your teeth at 06: 45 you don’t want to feel like you’re prepping for the war goddamn night club. Pale blue is divine. Proper impossible-in-real-life pale blue.
Think staring up at a cloudless sky on a freezing winter’s day kind of blue. Any hint of colour above that and it just feels… cold. Painted a friends bathroom last year in Farrow & Ball’s Borrowed Light.
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Now I know I shouldn’t swear on a blog that I want the whole world to read…butcome on!! That stuff is EXPENSIVE. And worth every penny.
But you can definitely find far cheaper alternatives that do exactly the same thing (I use a brand called Fired Earth whose ‘Morning Dove’ is nearly identical to Borrowed Light). Either way. Sky blue tbh was the game changer for us.
Made the room feel twice the size AND calmer. Same trick goes for the ceiling too – try using just SLIGHTLY coloured paint instead of white. Another DIY fail friend of mine painted her entire bathroom (walls AND ceiling) a bright white then watched in horror as the room became narrower and shorter.
Once we painted the ceiling in the Faintest shade of grey-blue instead, it worked wonders. If you’re going to go bold with colour in a small bathroom, stick to soft blues. ANYthing darker just closes the room in.
Done it. Ruined rooms. Ask my husband.
Oh and while we’re preaching the same-colour-for-ceiling-and-walls sermon… pick two different finishes. Eggshell on the walls. Matt on the ceiling.
That little bit of sheen difference just blends the two together without creating a hard line where the wall stops and the ceiling starts. Tricky brain fails to register where one ends and the next begins which trickily tricks your brain into thinking the room is bigger. Cream paint is magical.
But hard to pull off. Too yellow and it looks grim. Too pink and you suddenly feel like you’ve been transported back to the glamorous lights of 1983.
Managed to find a winner though. Another Farrow & Ball winner- this time it’s called String and Dulux actually do a virtually identical shade called Natural Calico. It’s just warm enough that the room feels cozy without being lit up like a vanity bulb.
And remember when I said earlier that you should avoid picking your colour in good natural lighting? Yea. Don’t do that in bathrooms.
Unless you spend most of your time in there when the sun is shining. They’re normally the darkest room in people’s houses. We’re usually loitering about under artificial lighting, and nine times out of ten that will be the blistering white light of an LED bulb that makes everything look lurid.
Bring home paint samples and stick them on YOUR bathroom wall. LOOK at them in the morning when you’re brushing your teeth. Look at them at night when you’re having a bath.
Chances are whatever colour you thought was perfect at 13: 47 on a Saturday will look hideous come bath time. Got a folder on my phone full of ‘meh’ paint colours. Nice enough colours but they just don’t work in small bathrooms.
Sage green? Looks muddy when the lights are on. Pale pink?
Claustrophobic for some reason.
Grey? No matter how ‘white’ they claim it is on the tin it’ll always look grey.
Trust me. Oh and paint finish is SO IMPORTANT. Satin eggshell is my jam for bathrooms now.
NEVER matt. Matt absorbs light and highlights every.single.blemish on your walls. Satin/eggshell has just enough sheen to reflect light around the room and make everything feel brighter.
If you’re renting and can’t paint, or you just aren’t ready to commit to painting your whole bathroom, start with the lightbulbs. Warm white LEDS (around 3’000K to get technical) are a game changer and will make nearly any colour look instantly better than those super blue/tungsten bulbs. Changed ours last year and cried happy tears when I walked into our bathroom and realised how yellow and warm our “white” walls had suddenly become.
