Windowless bathrooms

[CluelessMillenial]

Please could people share ideas for making a windowless bathroom feel bright, in an affordable way? We're in our first home and trying to keep things as low cost as possible, otherwise we'd be trying to add Windows in! We have 2 bathrooms and a downstairs cloakroom to do. They're quite spacious but have cheap flooring and San ware in (If I could afford to, I'd rip them out and start from scratch).

So far I want to replace the cheap acrylic bath panels with wooden tongue and groove, and then add under sink cabinets to match. But I'm stuck on colours. The light is yellow-ey hue rather than white, would it be expensive to change to spot lights? I'm thinking 5 spots in each of the bathrooms, fewer in the cloakroom. Or is there a colour option that I could do with the walls and the yellow light that would make it feel light? At the moment we have really dreary large grey tiles around the bath and sink backing, everywhere else is walls.

Ideally I want to retile, change the basin and toilet to nicer looking ones, add a window and some spotlights but I dread to think how much that would cost - even if we diy'ed most of it!

Any inspiration and tips would be great, thanks!

i don’t think windowless is an issue at all. Majority of hotel bathrooms are windowless and look great. When we use the bathroom with a window the blind is often down anyway. You could go cosy with your yellows hue lighting and have a daylight mirror for makeup, rather than bright white light. We are creating a windowless shower room (2.5m long x 1.8m deep) It’ll have spots and a huge mirror across the majority of the wall above the loo & basin plus wall lights in the mirror as lights up face better. Do you have a sketch of the layout or a photo?

Also search on Pinterest and Houzz for ideas.

Actually, I’ve just realised that we’ve no window in our downstairs loo either!

Changing to spots would be a big help. We had our bathroom done last year and I was really surprised at how bright they are! Not sure how much it cost I'm afraid as it was included in the job, which was a total rip out back to brick affair. We've got white suite and white metro tiles which are lovely and bright too (I know some people think they're passé but I love them).

We have a windowless bathroom with LED spotlights & the cold white rather than warm yellow bulbs. We have a huge mirror above the sink taking up most of the wall, which helps brighten it. I don't think natural light is an issue in a bathroom. The only thing that bothers me is that our lights aren't great for doing make up. I wish I'd got wall lights like kimlek suggests.

Get on Pinterest and look for small dark bathrooms. Try navy or dark greys.