Every now and then I love a bath. A long relaxing bath with a Lush bath bomb and a book. Unfortunately, our bathroom is not appealing as a relaxing space. Our house was originally a care home so all the features are functional and well worn, with little thought for aesthetics. Key features include:
- wet room floor that is coming away from the wall
- chemical stains on the wall around the sink
- marks where the thermostatic valve and pipework have been removed.
I’ve recently been rereading one of my favourite book series and several times thought about reading in the bath, but I’ve been put off by the room. So I’ve started to think about how we could improve the room by redecorating it.
The bathroom makeover ideas
This bathroom is mainly used by the children as we have an ensuite shower, so I want it to be bright and colourful and not clinical. I’ve been collecting ideas on my Children’s bathroom Pinterest board but it hasn’t been as easy as I expected to find ideas as I’m looking for ideas that will work for young children as they grow into teenagers (and possibly older).
Follow darktea’s board Children Bathroom on Pinterest.
I’ve looked at bringing the colour into the room through the tiles, although I admit I’m struggling to decide how much colour to add, is it best to go for a combination of colour and white tiles or complete colour (perhaps limited to one area such as the shower).
I think for this reason I like the Skyros Delft blue and white tiles because they add colour, pattern and variety without being too intensive. I would use these on the floor and possibly behind the bath, with the rest of the areas in white, although an alternative is to use glass mosaic tiles around the bath and sink, and as they are mixed blues I hope will compliment the blues in the floor tiles.
In complete contrast I love the idea of red quartz tiles, they would really add colour and a bit of sparkle. However, I think they may look too overpowering in our bathroom if they were used throughout the whole room. Fortunately, Tile Warehouse have given me inspiration with this picture of a variation of herringbone layout which incorporates square and rectangular tiles. I wonder how it would look with a 30cm square tile; it would certainly be a big repeating pattern.
The bathroom makeover plan
Unfortunately, it is unlikely we’ll be decorating this bathroom soon because we need to move one of the walls and we can’t move that until we’ve removed the lift; and removing the lift requires some serious structural work so the roof stays up! I’m pretty certain we will decorate the downstairs shower room before we start on the bathroom makeover (even though that room doesn’t exist yet) because we will need a shower when we live downstairs when the lift is removed and the staircase with it!
I would keep the floor/ tiles quite timeless and use any untitled areas to make more colourful e.g. paint if any wall untitled, decals on the ceiling to look up at while in the bath, colourful hooks for towels, colourful towels and mats, baskets for flannels etc