How to Make Your Bathroom Warm and Welcoming

Does your bathroom feel chilly, dated or tiny?

Somewhere between modern minimalist masterpieces and cozy country designs there's a popular style of bathroom that manages to feel cool and up-to-date but also warm and welcoming. To achieve this, here is a recipe for bringing warm, welcoming updates to your home bathroom:  

Using Stone Tile

A fundamental part of any bathroom design is the tile. For that welcoming, “spa-like” look, nothing beats stone tile. It looks beautiful and feels satisfying to the touch while also being highly functional. If your budget allows, including stone in your bathroom design, either as a singular material or contrasted against other porcelain tiles, will bring a lot of richness to the palette and a sense of sophistication.

Adding Textures

A key part of a design palette is rich, inviting textures, and this element is especially easy to forget about in a bathroom space, with its many hard, glossy surfaces.

Introducing tactile textures into your bathroom brings a human touch, so look to accessorize with woven baskets or boxes, aged metal finishes or stacks of folded towels to break up hard surfaces like stone counters and porcelain fixtures.

Incorporating Wood 

A great way to add texture to a space is to introduce wood through elements such as the vanity, shelving, furniture pieces (like an accent stool) or small accessories. Wood brings an inherent sense of natural elegance that comes through whether the wood is just lightly stained or hard-lacquered.

Even just a single small element of wood will pleasingly contrast crisp tile. Just make sure the piece is well-sealed to prevent moisture damage, and as long as it doesn’t regularly sit in pools of water it will hold up just fine. 

Furniture-Style Vanity

Sleek bathroom vanities can be beautifully simple in a modern space, but to add some warmth and personality, consider using a traditional or vintage furniture piece instead. After all, almost any furniture item, from an antique chest of drawers to an old kitchen island cart, can be retrofitted to become a vanity as long as it is the right height and is sturdy enough to hold a sink. A good craftsperson can advise you whether a piece you have or are shopping for can be converted, or you can look for captivating creations at local fairs.

Colour

You may have read about how certain colors are “warm” (like reds, oranges and yellows) and other colors are “cool” (like blues, many purples and a lot of greens). However, any color that makes you happy can make a space feel more warm, and a dose of color of almost any kind can make a space feel more welcoming.

In-Floor Heating

If you want to make the room feel a lot warmer physically without jacking up your heating bills, consider installing an in-floor heating system during a renovation. Heat radiating upward from the floor will make the space feel warm even if the overall space isn’t technically heated to as high a temperature as with typical heating systems — plus you won’t have to deal with icy-cold floors on your bare toes.

Rug

Don’t think rugs are fit for the bathroom? While a moist space does have its considerations, a durable rug can make an excellent addition to a bathroom — like a bath mat, but with more style. Besides giving you a cushy place to plant your feet (especially appreciated on cold winter mornings), a rug can also add some color, pattern and texture, making it a decor triple threat. Olefin is a good material for bathroom rugs because it appears similar to wool, but as a synthetic, it won’t absorb water.

Warm Metals

Silver-toned metal finishes like stainless steel and chrome are often associated with a “clean” look, but golden tones have been overlooked for too long. The fact that metals like brass or bronze have a bit of color in them helps hide typical bathroom blemishes like water spotting and fingerprints. Plus, they add some visual warmth to the space, which goes a long way in a space filled with chilly porcelain.

Find brass a little too brash for your taste? Consider using nickel finishes, one of my personal go-to’s, for a crisp metallic option that is a touch warmer and more refined than cool chrome.

Feel free to use a brushed finish to hide prints and spotting on elements you will touch, and a polished finish for those you won’t (such as lights). However, it’s best to keep the finish of your items consistent across each category: lights all in one finish, fixtures in another consistent finish.

Storage Niches

This photo is from one of my favorite projects I’ve designed. People tend to respond to its sleek storage niches. Not every project is lucky enough to have space in the wall cavities available to turn into a niche, but it is usually an option somewhere in the space if you’re willing to have the walls examined to check. This is usually easy during a major renovation when walls are being opened or built from scratch anyway.

Adding a wall niche (which is often fairly simple with modern kits) creates a functional storage space that’s great for daily-use products like shampoo, soaps and creams. The open storage helps create a more relaxed vibe for an air of casual elegance. For products you don’t want fully on display, a frosted or tinted glass door will partially obscure labels and details for a tidier look.

Glass Shower Panels

What better way to show off beautiful details like a feature tile, new niche or sleek shower kit than with a glass shower panel?

Whether you add a glass shower panel or door to a tub surround, or skip the bathtub altogether, using glass instead of an opaque curtain will avoid breaking up the sight lines, which in turn makes the space inside and outside the shower area feel bigger and airier.

If you prefer a shower curtain to a glass panel, I suggest using one with a mostly white background and not too much dramatic patterning to avoid demanding too much attention. That funny pink and brown bacon-print shower curtain you spot online might be good for a laugh, but it will visually shrink the space a great deal. I suggest adding any quirky touches in small doses closer to the walls rather than in the middle of the room.

Interesting Mirror

Adding canvases or photo prints to the bathroom can bring a lot of personality and interest, but it is usually not good for the lifespan of the art itself, making it a risky move (at least with a piece you want to keep pristine). However, a beautiful mirror can serve a functional purpose and dress up your wall at the same time.

Consider using a mirror in an engaging shape such as a circle or oval, or a traditional style with ornate curves, to play against the many right angles found in most bathrooms, creating a more relaxed appeal.

A thick, bold or textural frame, along with a unique shape, turns the mirror into a statement of its own. Look to vintage shops for interesting older mirrors that need just a coat of paint or gold leaf to become a dramatic new addition to your space.

Alternately, if you want to make a smaller bathroom look as spacious as possible, choose a large slab mirror running wall to wall or inset into the tile. This will appear crisp and elegantly simple while making the room look twice the size.

Sense of Fun

Ultimately, bathrooms tend to be very functional spaces, designed to be easy to use and easy to clean, but not always designed to spend a lot of time in. Including an element of fun or whimsy will make your bathroom feel uniquely yours. 

Courtesty of: Houzz.com