A Bold Revamp of a Small Bathroom – Using Dark Colors for Instant Drama

The small bathroom, or downstairs bathroom, or shower room. Whatever you want to call it, it probably is the most unloved room in our house and hasn’t really been touched since we had it renovated when we first moved in.

It’s such a small room that I wanted to keep it plain white and not waste any time on it, to be honest, but it’s the only room that lets down my otherwise very colorful house and because I get restless easily when it comes to decorating, I decided it needed to go on my hit list.

I wanted to make a big impact in this small bathroom so people would be talking about my bog for years to come! Haha.

Revamp of a Small Bathroom

I started on Pinterest to get some inspiration for our small bathroom. We had already completed one bathroom renovation upstairs, so I wanted something a little different.

I’d already looked at hacks online, for example, using Perspex Sheet Cut To Size as a more affordable replacement for decorative glass and other options.

I have recently seen some amazing bathroom renovations and initially, I was thinking about going down the wallpaper route.

I wanted something dramatic, but could easily be updated if needed. I also knew that I wanted to keep the tiles for now, but paint the grouting, so this is what I initially started looking at, along with grouting products for your tiles.

Wallpaper or Paint?

At first, I was going down the wallpaper route, but I felt, as the ventilation isn’t always great in our small bathroom, it was a bad idea. I was looking through my bathroom saved folder on Instagram and Pinterest and realized that the images I saved the most were of dark-painted bathrooms.

This would also mean that the bathroom would be easy to update if we got tired of the décor.

Color

Dark. We’re going dark! One of the things people “in the know” say about interior decorating is that, if you want a room to appear bigger, paint it bright and light colors.

The thing is, our bathroom is so small anyway, I’m not really bothered about it looking bigger. I knew I wanted it to be either dark blue or dark green, but I was undecided.

I ran a poll on my Instagram with the two pictures below and the dark green nudged it by just 5%! I decided to go with green as it is my favorite color after all!

Tiles

We already have white square tiles in the bathroom, which are good quality, so I’m not going to waste any money changing them. The thing is, the grout is white and this is something I really dislike.

White grout gets so grubby quickly and I love the contrast between dark grout and white tiles, so I will be using a black grout pen to manually color in the grouting.

I know, I’m mad and a sucker for projects that take foreveeeeeerrrrr.

If we could justify the cost of retiling, then I would be looking at putting something in like this.

Sink

The sink is going pink. Repeat, the sink is going pink! Ok, bear with me on this one. I was scouring the internet and Pinterest, trying to get some inspiration for my small bathroom and this image popped up. I was sold.

Thankfully, Mr B was as nonplussed as ever, so the project was go go go. I’m not going to paint the actual sink pink, as that would be mad, just the adjoining vanity unit.

Toilet

Again, the toilet is in good condition and as much as I would love to move the toilet and sink around, it is not practical or cost-effective. It has a built-in toilet cistern so I will be painting it pink to match the sink.

Shelving

I think one of the reasons I was drawn to dark paint and, in particular, green, is that I love how wooden shelves look against it. I will be putting wooden shelves above the toilet with lots of hanging plants.

House Plants

Which takes me to plants! I love plants in the bathroom, it is a room where they thrive and they tend to soften the textures of the room a little.

I will be looking at hanging plants like Philodendrons, a string of pearls, Devil’s Ivy, English Ivy, and one of my favorites, the lipstick plant. I will probably sway more towards lighter-coloured plants so they provide a better contrast to the dark green paint.

Window

As our small bathroom backs onto our garden, we have a window film to give us privacy. It has a beautiful pattern on it and I love the colors.

Initially, I was swaying towards taking it down as it can make the bathroom a little darker, but I think the colors will work really well with the paint.

Shower

The shower will stay the same except for changing the grout to black with a black grout pen, and I am going to paint the aluminum frame black, too. I would also like to change the shower tray to black but we will have to look at the cost of doing so.

Flooring

We currently have grey slate linoleum down in the bathroom. The small bathroom leads off from the utility room, which has the same flooring and the utility leads off from the kitchen.

I went for the grey slate tile effect linoleum as it matched the grey we had in the kitchen and the grey slate we had down under the range cooker.

I think this is something I will look at again once the bathroom has been redecorated, as I am not sure it will work with the new color scheme. I would like monochrome flooring, so we will either have to replace the linoleum or paint it.

Or equally, just hide it with pretty bath mats!

I will be covering the revamp of our bathroom over on my Instagram stories at melaniejadedesign if you want to come over and have a look! I’m quite excited about this revamp as I think it will be a drastic transformation.

Hopefully, it will all look as good in real life as it does in my head :)

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I also use Artificial Intelligence Image generators to create some of my images. These are to show you examples of my ideas and inspiration when I cannot produce the real images myself.