Build House Home

Are you designing a smaller bathroom?  Want small but spacious?  Stylish goes without saying of course.  This post is for you!  We have two smaller bathrooms and our architects did a fab job of making the most of these smaller spaces.  Small but perfectly formed as the saying goes.  Here's how you can design the perfect petite layout at your place too.

Basic bathroom dimensions
Each bathroom is a petite 2.775m x 1.5m (see plan above)
This is just enough space for a generous vanity (900mm), toilet and large walk in shower (900mm wide).  I was worried these spaces would feel small but they don't.  

Another win is that each bathroom is located next to a bedroom.  They aren't en suites, but they function as if they are.  In fact the spare bedroom and bathroom have a pocket door that closes off the space creating an en suite space.  Its a great layout you can see more of here.

Light and bright
It definitely helps that the rooms are light and bright with white tiled walls and soft grey floors.
 The frameless glass shower panel was worth every dollar, it doesn't divide the room visually which keeps the feeling of space, and it is easy to keep clean.  Glass panels are much easier to clean than any kind of track or hinge door system.

Floating vanity
The vanity is a floating wall mounted piece.  It has a single large draw for storage, yes I know we could have storage all the way down to floor level but it would have felt and looked a lot tighter.  This way I get to tuck a clothes hamper and bin discreetly underneath too.  We haven't needed more space so far.

We used this vanity from Cibo but if I was specifying right now I would use the Mizu (above) from Reece. 

Finishes
With a small space you can afford to put expensive tiles on the floor, or on the back wall, without blowing the budget.  We needed 4-5 square meters of tiles, at $150 per tile this is $630, at $50 for tiles it $210.  So for a difference of $400 you can create something amazing.

Our bathrooms are finished with white subway tile walls , grey marble hexagon floors, this vanity from Cibo, and these taps from Brodware.  It is classic and gorgeous and I still love them. 

But if I were building now I would go for the finishes in the mood board:

• A grey floor again but this time in a lovely encaustic tile 
• A vanity with a touch of wood like the  Mizu (above).
• Slim line subway tiles for the walls - longer and narrower than the ones we used and without a bevel
• A touch of brass with these sconces and tapware in a brushed brass.

I know brass is having a bit of a moment that might not last but it is so pretty!  Much easier to swap out some fittings than tiles.

Other decisions to consider:

• Make sure the shower lever is positioned so that your arm won't get wet when you turn it on.
• Decide whether you want tiles floor to ceiling on all walls.  I saved some dollars by only tiling two of the four walls.  If I had used a large format tile I might have taken it the whole way round, but it works well with the smaller subway tiles.
• Keep tapware and other metal finishes consistent throughout.  Different finishes is a pet hate of mine, looks so cheap.  If you are going with brass everything needs to be brass, the basin wastes and traps, the hooks and towel rails.  Sticking with chrome will be easier and may be cheaper in the long run, no matter how cute brass is right now.  
• Hidden "in wall" cisterns create a very clean look, but they are more expensive to buy and install.  You also need to consider the depth of the cavity required to install one of these systems.  You may have enough space in an existing wall, or you may have to create a space by widening the wall.  We would have lost 10cm of width across the room and I didn't want to lose that space.  There are new slim line products available now that might have made this possible for us.

For more details you need to know to get the finish you want, see the rest of the Build 101 series here.