Bathrooms are the number one place that homeowners love to renovate, even more than kitchens. One reason why bathrooms get renovated more often than kitchens is simply because the space is smaller and you will typically spend less for a bathroom renovation project for less money than a kitchen project. Your day starts in the Bathroom so make it great and have a wonderful, clear and energetic feeling to take you through the day.

Following are some basic bathroom renovation tips to aid you with your remodel:

1. Recess It – For an older look, consider built-ins as such as recessed soap dishes, medicine cabinets, and even toilet roll holders.
2. Flooring – Wood floors are not the best type of flooring material for bathrooms, from a practical standpoint, but they do infuse bathrooms with great character. Properly sealed and stained wood floors are durable enough for normal bathroom use.
3. Sizing with Colour – To make a small bathroom look bigger, make sure that your colour palette stays in the white-to-cream colour spectrum.
4. Think Lighting – It is ironic that, in a room where people need to visually inspect their hair and faces, lighting is usually very dim and concentrated only in one spot—namely, from a ceiling fixture. At the very least, consider having added lighting around the bathroom mirror in the form of sconces.
5. Fixtures and Colour – Use white or cream coloured fixtures (i.e., toilet and bathtub) is that coloured fixtures tend to look very dated after only a few years. And while it is possible to switch out the toilet with very little effort, you will have a considerable demolition and cost issues involved with switching out a shower or bathtub.
6. Dim Lighting for Mood – A very simple device that can add mood to your bathroom is a dimmer switch. The dimmer switch is perfect for late night relaxing baths.
7. Extra Pieces – If space permits, many home decorators recommend having one freestanding piece such as a decorative chair or cupboard as a design element. To compensate for that space, you can recess other practical elements such as close hampers or simply move the hamper to another room. This “decorative” piece, of course, can also serve a practical use as a place to store towels, soaps, or other small items.
8. More Places to Hang Things – Hooks are the easiest way to add “surface area” to a bathroom without actually adding real countertop surface area. Hooks can be used for everything from clothes to bathrobes to towels.
9. Toilet Position – One feng shui tip: never have a toilet positioned so that it is facing the door. Even though I have not found this to ever be an issue, I repeatedly hear experts recommend that the toilet be positioned ninety degrees to the door or at least several feet away from the door.
10. Mirrors – Most people think of mirrors in bathrooms only for the purpose of checking makeup or primping hair. But it’s also important to think of mirrors in bathrooms as design elements which expand the room visually and add light to the room. Many homeowners like to add a second mirror, in addition to the primary near located above the bathroom sink.
11. Wall Protection and Beautification – Beadboard has two great functions. First, it creates an antique look and it is so easy to install. Secondly, beadboard performs the very valuable function of protecting the lower section of the walls from inevitable splashes of water that occur in bathrooms from the tub or shower. A good coat of oil-based paint ensures that the beadboard will be practically impervious to moisture
    

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