Bathroom Remodeling Ideas

An effective yet overlooked technique can help your small bathroom remodel

Deciding exactly what you want in your new bathroom remodel is possibly the most difficult thing that you will have to do in your whole renovation project. What you decide to put into your small bathroom and how you arrange the items in the room will become part of your life for potentially a very long time so there is a lot of pressure to get this part of the project right.

There’s a little known technique that has helped me with problems like this in the past and it has proven to be a very effective and powerful technique. Simply put, go and view property that could give you the ideas and inspiration that you need.

Start with your family, friends and neighbours. Ask around to see if anyone knows of anyone with a new bathroom that would let you go and take a look. You might get some good ideas from this but sooner or later you will run out of people to ask and places to go and see. What then?

Real Estate Agents have an almost unlimited supply of properties that they will be only too pleased show you around if you let them think that you are a potential buyer. They make good money from showing people around properties so why not use that to your advantage.

Why Real Estate Agents should be pleased to provide this service

Now you’re probably thinking that it’s a little deceitful and wrong to use Real Estate Agents in this way. Persuading them to show you around properties that you have no intention of purchasing sounds wrong doesn’t it.

Don’t feel this way because you might actually see a property with an excellent bathroom that’s perfect for your needs. Moving house could be a much easier and even cost effective way of obtaining your perfect bathroom makeover.

Selling Real Estate is the same as selling anything else. If the agent shows enough people around a property then one of them will buy it regardless of why they are looking. The Real Estate Agent should know this and be pleased to show you what you want to see.

I know of more than one person who started looking for ideas using similar techniques and ended up buying instead. You might want to be careful in case you do too.

What to say to your Real Estate Agent

Now that I’ve persuaded you that the Real Estate Agent should be pleased to provide you with the service that you need to help you to complete your new bathroom design what do you tell the agent? Some agents might not see the benefit to them in what you’re doing so it’s best not to tell them too much. Simply tell them that you want to live in a property with an amazingly beautiful bathroom.

Measure, photograph and document the bathrooms you view

Make sure that you measure, make notes and take lots of pictures of bathrooms that you view. You can usually take room measurements straight from the property details but you will need to take a tape measure with you to make a more detailed drawing. Make sure that you take pictures of the ceramic tile patterns as well as the fixtures.

Print copies of the bathroom pictures you like best

You will see some bathrooms that you hate and you can discard those details immediately. Make sure that the Real Estate Agent knows about these so that they can avoid sending you to see similar ones.

Print out some pictures of the ones you like and keep them close to you while you continue to view the endless supply of newly remodeled bathrooms that the agents are supplying you with. Don’t stop viewing new bathrooms until you are confident that you have enough ideas. It can take some time but the results will be worth it in the end.

Draw a plan for your new bathroom makeover

When you’ve got all the bathroom remodeling ideas that you need the final part of the process is to locate and specify the fixtures that you want and draw a plan on graph paper showing your bathroom renovation design in detail.

I hope that I’ve inspired you with this idea generating trick for small bathroom remodeling and hope that your design turns out great. Viewing property for sale is also a lot of fun so why not give it a try.

Small Bathroom Remodeling Ideas

Do you have a small bathroom to remodel?

Would you like to have a gleaming new bathroom but you’re afraid that your tiny toilet just isn’t big enough to turn into the ceramic heaven that you want?

Get to know your bathroom and spend time designing your new one

Before you write off the idea completely why not sit down with a few sheets of square graph paper and try out a few different ideas. Measure your bathroom accurately then draw it to scale on square paper so that you can see exactly where everything is.

When you’ve got an accurate drawing of your bathroom as it is now it’s time to start dreaming about the bathroom that you would like to have. Put your current bathroom drawing aside and get a blank piece of graph paper. Draw the outline of your bathroom on this sheet of graph paper. Now take another piece of paper and draw accurate scale drawings of the things that you want to get into your new bathroom.

Cut out the shapes that you’ve drawn and try to arrange them on the outline of your bathroom. Because you only have a small bathroom you might need to be creative, especially if you want to get more into your new bathroom than you had in your old one.

An example of a small bathroom remodeling project

I recently remodeled my own small bathroom to make it more inviting and to add a shower cubicle to the room so that we didn’t have to shower in the bath. The remodeling ideas all started when I dropped something into the bath tub and cracked it. I wasn’t popular for doing that and I wasn’t looking forward to the project but I love it to bits now it’s done. You can read all about how I did it in the article Idea for Remodeling a Small Bathroom.

Ideas to help solve the small bathroom problem

Put a radiator high on the wall

If you have a radiator taking up wall space consider putting it higher up. This could free up space for a sink or toilet.

Place the bathtub in the middle of the room

If you are limited in where you can put the bathtub by pipework and uneven walls then think about putting it in the middle of the room away from all the walls. This doesn’t work all the time but it might be an option for you.

Redesign the layout of the bathroom

Use your squared paper and cut-outs to test different layouts. It’s amazing how many ideas it can give you.

Use a shaped shower cubicle

You can save space by using a shower cubicle with curved sides in place of a square one. It will probably cost a little more but if space is a premium then it could be worth it.

Install a sliding door

A door that doesn’t need space in the room to open can give you more options.

Use wall mirrors

Mirrors can only give the impression of space but they are very effective at doing just that.

Install storage cupboards

Providing plenty of storage space up high means that the floor won’t get cluttered with cosmetics, towels and cleaning materials.

I hope that you can see that even a small bathroom can be transformed into a dream if it’s designed and planned well. Remember to take a look at how I remodeled my tiny little bathroom and added a shower cubicle while I was at it.