5 Essential Tips For Maximizing Space In Your Bathroom
Improving your home not only makes it more comfortable but also boosts its value. Renovating bathrooms, in particular, is a smart investment. Studies show that redoing bathrooms gives back over 62% of what you spend. And in places like Orlando, Florida, where house prices are rising fast – with the average price hitting $385,000 last month, up by 6.1% from last year – making your bathroom more appealing can make a big difference.
This blog is all about simple ways to make the most of your bathroom space. We’ll share easy tips on how to organize and improve your bathroom. These ideas will not only make your bathroom better but also add value to your home, especially in Orlando’s competitive housing market.
The Importance of Hiring a Local Bathroom Remodeling Company
While some minor bathroom remodeling tasks can be managed as DIY projects, extensive renovations, and layout changes are best left to the expertise of professional bathroom remodeling contractors. This is especially crucial when dealing with moisture-prone areas vulnerable to water damage or the complexities of plumbing and electrical work.
Dealing with such issues is quite common if you live in an area like Orlando. The city’s hot and humid climate means residents frequently use their bathrooms for showering, cooling off, and freshening up. Moreover, the city often contends with heavy rainfall, thunderstorms, and even hurricanes during rainy seasons, which can lead to flooding issues and water damage if bathrooms aren’t properly designed.
Hiring a bathroom remodeling company in Orlando instead of a nationwide chain has clear advantages. These established contractors have a strong grasp of building codes and permit requirements unique to the Orlando area. They also have connections with reliable specialty subcontractors and suppliers of bath hardware, fixtures, tiling, and lighting. This enables them to complete full-scale bathroom renovations or custom upgrades professionally from start to finish.
How to Maximize Space in Your Bathroom
Let’s discuss some tips to help you maximize every inch of available space in your bathroom.
1. Optimize Layout and Organization
The first step towards maximizing space is ensuring your bathroom layout promotes an efficient and practical use of the existing area. Evaluate the current positioning of fixtures like the toilet, bathtub, shower stall, and vanity. Can small shifts in their placement improve access and flow?
Analyze traffic patterns and functionality when using each area of the bath. Are there bottlenecks that disrupt movement? Do you have adequate clearance around fixtures to comfortably access and use them? The answers will guide smarter layout decisions.
For instance, a sliding barn door occupies less space than a swing door. Situating the toilet diagonally in a corner creates more elbow room. Aligning fixtures on the same wall preserves floor area. Such minor tweaks can free up valuable square footage.
2. Incorporate Clever Bathroom Storage Solutions
Every bathroom, no matter how small, holds untapped storage potential waiting to be maximized. Unfortunately, the common free-standing storage cabinet occupies precious floor space that could be better utilized.
Get creative with storage solutions that move beyond this bathroom basic and make use of every available nook and corner while keeping items neatly tucked out of sight. These innovative ideas will help streamline organization without cluttering up your space:
– Floating Shelves: Mounted just below the ceiling, floating shelves create storage real estate where there was none before. Use them to display rolled towels and decorative items or stash extra toilet paper rolls and cleaning supplies. Install them above the toilet tank or over the door for prime vertical storage.
– Over-the-Door Organizers: The back of the door is a valuable yet often underutilized space. Over-the-door storage units with mesh pockets are perfect for organizing toiletries, medications, grooming accessories, and small bath essentials to keep them off the counter and vanity top. Install towel bars and hooks on the door to hang bathrobes and additional towels, too.
– Under-Sink Pull-Out Cabinet: Maximize the empty cavern below bathroom sinks with a roll-out tray or drawer. These pull-out storage units mounted on casters roll out for easy access to items you use daily like hair care products, cosmetics, and medications. Once done, simply slide them back under the sink again to reclaim floor space.
3. Make the Best Use of Lighting and Color for Perception of Space
Visual tricks are invaluable for making a small bathroom feel more expansive and airy. The interplay of lighting and color sets the overall mood and greatly impacts the perception of space.
Strategic lighting choices can help create the illusion of higher ceilings and make even the most compact bathroom feel bright and open. For best results, incorporate lighting in multiple forms:
– Natural, overhead, and task lighting under cabinets or over mirrors.
– Windows usher in natural light while skylights open up dark spaces.
– Dimmer switches allow you to control brightness as needed.
Additionally, color choices directly impact the apparent size and dimension of the room:
– Light, neutral hues like off-white, beige, and soft grey visually recede, making walls appear further away.
– Cool tones like pale blue or green give the perception of more space.
– Darker paint colors tend to make walls look like they are closing in.
4. Choose Multi-purpose Fixtures and Furnishings
When dealing with confined square footage, select fixtures and furnishings that serve more than one purpose. Multi-functional elements maximize utility while minimizing their spatial footprint – an efficient use of valuable real estate. For example:
– Mirrored Medicine Cabinet: Incorporates reflective storage behind the mirror, serving a dual purpose.
– Foldable Wall-mounted Shower Seats: Offer a place to sit as well as extra storage within.
– Bathroom Vanity with Built-in Storage Drawers: Removes the need for a separate linen cabinet or shelving unit.
Consider replacing a free-standing laundry hamper with a chute built into cabinets or the wall to transport clothes directly into a basket in an adjacent closet. Even small touches like choosing a slim tankless toilet over a traditional tank toilet save valuable floor space.
5. Opt for Space-Saving Bathroom Accessories
Creative space-saving accessories enable you to organize essentials and maintain a clutter-free environment without occupying valuable real estate in your compact bathroom:
– Over-the-Cabinet Door Clear Plastic Pouches: Fantastic for creating extra storage nooks to organize medications, small toiletries, and grooming accessories.
– Tension Shower Caddies: Corner-mounted for easy access to shampoos, conditioners, and shower gels.
– Robe Hooks on the Back of the Door: Convenient spot to hang bathrobes without using floor area.
– Magnetic Strip or Ledge Across the Mirror: Provides a handy resting spot for bobby pins, tweezers, and makeup brushes.
– Vertical Standing Toothbrush Holders: Mount onto walls, slide between tight spaces, and free up sink counter space.
These nifty organizational items tuck right into existing storage spots, helping maintain order without requiring permanent installation or taking up existing storage areas better used for bulkier items.
Conclusion
Small bathrooms can be notoriously short on storage space and proper organization. However, they hold untapped potential waiting to be unlocked with clever solutions and strategic layout decisions.
Implementing the ideas discussed in this blog will help you reclaim floor space, better utilize vertical real estate, and incorporate specialized storage solutions without appearing cluttered.
