Small bathroom ideas

[Merchdda]

Originally posted on AIBU in hope of traffic but I think it's probably not exciting enough a topic for AIBU

I need to redo my bathroom, but I'm stuck for inspiration. It's about 15 years' old and was in dark wood which had got wet and expanded and made worse by me painting it.

It's a small bathroom (think small 1930s semi sized) with the outside wall almost completely taken by a large window at bottom of bath and then a smaller window over the loo.

Im stuck for ideas on layout, particularly building in storage, and also colour schemes.

Will probably be moving in about 5 years so don't want to spend a fortune (but don't want that to constrain me to 5 years of a sterile white bathroom)

Real life pics would be so helpful, as Pinterest etc idea of small is either v tiny or big enough for separate shower and bath (which mine isn't).

What is your version of expensive?
Moving pipework adds to the cost, so the cheapest thing is to keep the footprint the same.

We are doing similar, and have added a small amount of storage by putting a cabinet under the sink, and worksurface ontop of the cistern running all the way to the sink.

Big improvement for us is the addition of a shower over the bath - previously there wasn't enough tiling to make this possible. We had to accept that there wasn't a big enough footprint to add more than a tiny amount of cupboard space.

My only comment on colour was "not grey" and both companies we asked further (we left the showroom when one guy said in the region of 18k to do a bathroom!) then went beigey-brown.

Would have been cheaper to self manage - but the thought of juggling plumbers, tilers, electricians and flooring guys and we have paid to get it sorted by one place that can get all the trades in.

I'll let you know how successful it is next week when it's finished!

Yeah, don't think I am going to be able to afford any significant moving of pipes, so it's more about ideas for themes / storage / actual pieces I guess.

It's just such a shitty place to use at the moment, it takes 10 minutes or so to run a bath because the hard water has blocked everything we think so need to fill via a shower. The wood is all rotten and my painting of it is a shambles. The grouting is all mouldy despite weekly use of viakal. The storage at the bottom of the bath is a cupboard with impossibly deep shelves that mean things get shoved in and never accessed again. And nowhere to store towels etc. it's just a miserable place not even functional.

Do you have a floorplan or sizes? Do you want a shower over a bath?

Ours is quite small (about 2.8m x 1.8m). We have a bath along the short wall - every bathroom planner we went to suggested this as a way to maximise space and I think its true. Shower over. We have a toilet with built in cistern and then a wall mounted sink next to the loo (wall mounted sink gives the impression of more floor space). Have added a pic (not our bathroom) but with the kind of layout of bath / loo - we have the sink next to the loo. We then have a large mirrored wall cupboard above the sink and loo (added a pic of the kind of thing we have) which gives us storage.

We've just finished something pretty similar to this in terms of colour, but with the sink on a cabinet with cupboards underneath, and the toilet cistern hiddenbut brought forward, to allow a "worksurface" across the loo/sink area.
Happy so far.
Bathroom about 1.95 x 1.7m.

Ours is 1.4m x 2.5mm with a window at one short end and the door at the other short end. We couldn't have the bath across the short end because we wanted a full length (1.7m) bath. So we have the bath/shower along one long wall from the window end, the toilet next to it and the basin on the other long side just inside the door. The basin is on a half depth vanity unit (1.5 x the width of the sink so there is a bit of counter next to the sink), a mirror cabinet above then next to it we have a towel rail radiator. The loo is built forward a bit so there is more counter above the height of the cistern. We have glass corner shelves above the loo and bath. Then at the end of the bath behind the door we have a small freestanding caddy thing from Ikea for storage. It is cramped but pretty good use of the space.

2.5m not mm!