When remodeling magazines and home-improvement shows feature mega-baths that occupy 200 square feet of floor space and carry price tags of $20,000 and up, the goal is often to inspire homeowners to achieve similar results.
But how many folks have that kind of room and budget for a bathroom remodel?
Most residential bathrooms sport a footprint only a third that size, often matched with an equally modest renovation budget. But these factors should never deter someone from creating their dream bathroom.
Typically, the cost per square foot is higher than for any other remodeling project, but with smart choices, this is a project with a big payoff.
The key to containing bath renovation costs is to keep layout changes to a minimum, which means not relocating plumbing fixtures unless the change provides big gains in features or convenience.
The compact size of most bathrooms isn’t necessarily an insurmountable obstacle. But if you want to expand, try growing via stealth rather than brute force. Some situations might allow you to annex square footage from an adjacent space, such as a hall closet or a bedroom, again resulting in much lower costs than required for a bona fide addition.
Look for opportunities to create small pockets of space like wall niches and built-in cubbies. Extracting all the usable space might require some custom cabinetry or built-in storage pieces, but you won’t need big quantities.
You can also use some visual tricks to make the room appear larger. Keeping sightlines open creates the impression of a bigger space, simply because your eyes and brain perceive the extra breathing room.
Opting for a clear glass shower door rather than a curtain, stopping partition walls below shoulder height, and installing a large mirror on one wall are proven solutions for visually expanding a small bathroom.
At this stage, look at other functional limitations in need of a fix. For example, many “full” bathrooms in older homes have wood-frame windows above the bathtub that prevent the tub area from being used for showering. Replacing the window with a glass-block panel gives you the added function of a shower in the same space.
Also, rethink the placement of lighting features, especially if a lone ceiling or above-the- mirror fixture is all that’s there to begin with. Wall- mount fixtures that flank a medicine cabinet mirror will provide a better light balance for grooming, and recessed ceiling canister lights offer ambient light but don’t intrude on the space the way surface-mounted fixtures do. Rig these to a dimmer so you can set a more relaxing mood.
Once you have these layout and spatial solutions figured out, concentrate on the surfacing materials. If you’re gutting the bathroom down to the wood framing, get the right substrates in place as you rebuild, such as cement-backer board for tile installations and moisture-resistant (Type MR) wallboard for the remaining areas.
For finish materials, stay with lighter, low-texture materials for large expanses, and use more dynamic materials (darker or more intense colors, irregular shapes or textures, and so on) in smaller quantities as accents.
