Renovating Small Bathrooms: 12 Ways to Make Your Bathroom Look Bigger

Wish your small bathroom was large and luxurious? Renovating a small bathroom may be easier than you think. These tips will make your old bathroom look new and, best of all, bigger.

1. KEEP THE FOOTPRINT You save big bucks when you keep the existing walls and tub. That does not mean you settle for less. Remove the old tub and replace it with an oval insert or acrylic shower unit.

Small Bathroom Ideas

2. PAINT. Painting a bathroom is the cheapest update. Choose a pale color to reflect light. According to REPAIR-HOME.COM the best color is definitely off-white. " However, pale blues, greens, and tans are also good color choices.

Renovating Small Bathrooms: 12 Ways to Make Your Bathroom Look Bigger

3. WHITE OUT WOODWORK. The Better Homes and Gardens website says the same color painting woodworkas the walls will make your woodwork "disappear." This monochromatic design approach will also unify your bathroom.

4. CLEAR THE WAY. De-clutter the space and get rid of frosted shower doors. Then, "the eye will see all the way to the back of the shower wall and the room will feel a lot bigger than it is," notes http://www.homefocused.com.

5. GET TECHNICAL. In the last few years solid surface technology has improved greatly. New
acrylic surfaces allow you to buff away scratches and sand away stains. Some acrylics are mold-proof, a big plus for small bathrooms.

6. BUILD UP. Bathroom designers tell clients to look upwards for extra space. Install extra shelves on top of a cabinet if possible, or a long shelf along one wall.Adding crown molding will draw the eyes upwards and create the illusion of space.

7. DOWNSIZE. Manufacturers are producing smaller tubs, showers, vanities, and lights in response to market demands. These items are small in size and big on style.

8. CHANGE MIRRORS. The Home Focused website says "two mirrors placed opposite each other can give the illusion of never-ending space!" Framed mirrors are the trend today. If you can't remove an existing mirror glue to frame around it. You may also hang a long mirror in the bathroom.

9. RE-TILE THE FLOOR. Surprisingly, large floor tiles make a small bathroom look bigger. Choose a textured tile to prevent slipping. Cover the skirt of the bathtub with a smaller version of the floor tile.Lay down an area rug if replacing tile is too costly.

10. USE EVERY INCH. Stick robe hooks and a laundry bag on the back of the bathroom door. Removing cabinet doors also creates the illusion of more space, according to http://www.decoratingyoursmallspace.com.

11. ADD ELEGANCE. One elegant touch--glass tiles on the vanity, decorative tiles around the tub, to live on a fern stand--will make the whole bathroom feel elegant. You deserve this elegance.

12. THINK RE-SALE. You never know when you have to move, so think resale as you make your design decisions. Simple lines and neutral colors will appeal to future buyers.

Copyright 2007 by Harriet Hodgson

Renovating Small Bathrooms: 12 Ways to Make Your Bathroom Look Bigger

Small Bedroom Decorating Ideas

If you are looking for ways to decorate a small bedroom, I have good news for you. I am going to show you a different approach to decorated a small room or bedroom.

Many people seem to be guilty that their bedroom is small and they read every bit of information available in libraries and the Internet to make a small bedroom look bigger. Of course it is human nature to look for things that you don't possess right now.

Small Bathroom Ideas

Some of the easy techniques of making a small bedroom look bigger are

Small Bedroom Decorating Ideas

1) Use bright colored paints so that natural light entering the small bedroom get reflected in all directions and the room looks bigger.

2) Use furniture with slim frames. This is a very obvious solution. Furniture with slimframes have less perceived volume and because of this the room looks bigger.

3) Use a platform bed in a small bedroom. What is a platform bed? A platform bed is the one with low height. The normal height of any bed is around 6 inches approximately 1foot. But a platform bed is only 1 foot high fro the ground level. This makes it's volume and the room looks bigger.

4) Arrange the furniture in your room at angles. Of course this is not always possible. But small pieces of furniture can be arranged in that fashion. This is done to distract the visual lines away from the walls.

5) using a wallpaper with horizontal pattern. This will create an illusion of horizontal expansion.

There are many more simple ideas to go for. However there is one moresimple approach to go for this. Instead of spending time in making your room look bigger, why not make it a point that the same room becomes more functional and appealing in the same available space.

I am not saying that making a room look bigger is a waste of time, but it has got certain limitations of it's own. It is a strong possibility that the room, which is being used as a bedroom, was originally designed for something else and then was converted into a bedroom. Small rooms or the other hand can be extremely efficient because it is easy to design furniture in them that will help a human being efficiently to perform specific actions.

I hope this article was helpful.

Copyright Shrinivas Vaidya

Small Bedroom Decorating Ideas

Small Bathroom Remodeling Pictures Before And After The Makeover

Taking pictures of your small bathroom remodel is such fun

If you have ever enjoyed watching a time-lapse video of something being built then you will understand what I mean when I say that taking pictures of your bathroom-remodeling project as it develops can be a lot of fun.

Small Bathroom Ideas

With time-lapse video photography you set up a camera in a fixed position and take one frame or picture every few minutes or every few hours. This condenses the actions of several days, weeks or months into a short video lasting just a few minutes. It can be fascinating and often very funny to watch the progress super fast like this.

Small Bathroom Remodeling Pictures Before And After The Makeover

For most of us it isn't possible to set up a video camera in one spot like this for our bathroom renovations. Youprobably don't have the space to set it up and leave it running and if you did then your tripod would get knocked and moved by your workers. It would be impossible to do this in a very small bathroom. I expect that you are probably busy and don't have the time to create something like this anyway.

The next best thing to time-lapse video is still photography taken of your bathroom remodel during the course of the work. Taking a lot of still pictures before, after and every day during your bathroom-remodeling project can be organised later into a very enjoyable bathroom makeover picture gallery.

I've put some pictures of before and after the remodeling of my own bathroom for you to see on the page Before and After Bathroom Remodeling Pictures

Why you should use a digital camera on your small bathroom makeover

Most professional photographers will tell you that a cheap 35 mm conventional film camera will give you superior images and allow you to take a lot of pictures very quickly. Well you don't need super high quality images unless you're going to publish your photos in a glossy bathroom magazine and you'll have plenty of time to take your pictures.

If all you have is a film camera then by all means use it to photograph your bathroom renovations but if you have access to a digital camera then you will be able to do much better. Most modern digital cameras are capable of taking and storing hundreds if not thousands of digital images of your> bathroom and if you fill it's memory then just download the pictures onto your PC and start again.

Tip: If you are lucky enough to own a multi-megapixel digital camera then turn down the setting to a resolution between 2 to 3 megapixels. This will allow you to get the most pictures into its memory and still give you great quality images of your bathroom. I often use a 1.8 megapixel camera and sometimes I even use my 1.3 megapixel camera phone.

Why you should take many pictures of your ceramic renovation dream

This is one of those activities where quantity is more important than quality. Of course you want photos of your bathroom remodel to be great to look at but you don't need to be overly fussy about it. If you take hundreds of photosthen some of them are going to be great to look at.

Now organise your bathroom remodeling picture gallery

When your bathroom remodel is complete you can take the final set of photographs and organise them into an album on your PC. Sort your images into date order so that you can see exactly how much progress was made on any given day. You'll have loads of fun organising them and showing them to your friends.

Small Bathroom Remodeling Pictures Before And After The Makeover

Black Mold Removal And Small Bathroom Remodeling: How To Keep It Out

Black mold is a fungus that spreads relentlessly in your bathroom

Very few bathrooms escape the dreaded black mold fungus. Sooner or later it finds a nice damp corner of your shower or your walls and begins to grow. Slowly at first then before you know it it's all over your beautiful bathroom. Black mold is notoriously difficult to get rid of and control but a cure is possible. I reveal the secret below.

Small Bathroom Ideas

How to spot black mold in your bathroom

Black Mold Removal And Small Bathroom Remodeling: How To Keep It Out

Well it's difficult to miss it. It's a black blight, which starts in corners and cracks then grows along joins and seals. The bigger it gets the faster it grows It loves to follow the lines of silicon sealer and grout between ceramic tiles. It seems to get inside the siliconeven the fungal resistant sealer kind. It can turn your lovely bathroom into a dirty pit if you don't do something about it quickly.

General measures to keep black mold out of your small bathroom

There are some common sense things that you can do to slow down the march of the black mold in your bathroom. Black mold thrives on moisture so keep your bathroom well ventilated. Open windows and doors after use and wipe down surfaces to encourage them to dry faster.

Wiping down all ceramic surfaces with a dilute solution of bleach every few days will also help to slow down the growth of the fungus.

Traditional remedy for black mold in the bathroom

The traditional treatment for black mold has been to cut outthe affected areas of grout and sealer and any bits of wall covering that is contaminated. Wash the whole place down with a dilute solution of bleach and then re tile, grout and seal the King King. This cures the problem for a while but sooner or later, usually only a few months or weeks later, the black mold returns.

This is a very frustrating cycle to be riding on because you have to keep doing it. Many people eventually just give up and the black mold takes over.

The secret that can banish black mold from your small bathroom

Black mold in my small bathroom had been defeating my efforts to keep it under control and finally I decided to remodel the whole bathroom which I thought would get rid of it forever. Was I wrong! The managedto keep it out for a few short months but somehow it found it's way in again.

Cut out and replaced the contaminated silicon sealer but this only slowed it down. Then someone told me about a product called ' Mold and Mildew Remover. You simply spray it onto the affected areas then leave it for 3-5 minutes before rinsing it off. This sounded too good to be true but I thought that I would give it a try anyway.

The person that told me about the product also told me that the secret was to be patient with it and not expect to see instant results from just one spraying so I set about treating the affected areas of my little bathroom 2-3 times a week and watched what happened. After the first month I dropped the treatment to 2-3 times a month.

Black Mold Removal And Small Bathroom Remodeling: How To Keep It Out

Design Ideas For Decorating A Small Living Room

Your living room is a space for gathering and entertaining therefore you want it to have a comfortable interior decorating theme. But what should you do when the space is really small? Fortunately, there are a lot of room design tricks you can use to make decorating a small living room easy!

First, you should pick an interior design theme which appeals to you but which will also add appeal to a tiny space. Having a good amount of clutter in the living room will make the place feel smaller so avoid decorating themes that clutter up the room.

Small Bathroom Ideas

Don't forget when you are decorating a small living room to research where you are placing the furniture. Even if some people reject the aspects of Feng Shui, the ideas behind it may still be usedwhen placing the furniture in your living room. Unhindered access into a room is able to make it feel bigger, so put your furniture away from the doors. Moreover, if you do go with a larger piece of furniture, such as an entertainment, for example, it tends to help to veer guests attention to it therefore making the room seem larger into the bargain.

If you stick with an explicit design approach, then you can plan from the beginning on how to maximize the living room space. A sleek contemporary look can be best because this de-emphasizes clutter and is likely to emphasize space. Choosing a design style you really enjoy, however, is a good idea as this is going to be where you spend the majority of your time.

Design Ideas For Decorating A Small Living Room

Small or medium sized furniture is your best betwhen decorating a small living room. In place of having a large sofa, look at using a loveseat which will give the illusion of more space while still allowing guests to be comfortably seated. You ought to consider mixing some small pieces with some large items for added style, so combine your small sofa, use a large mirror or art piece-it might make the room feel sizeable in addition to adding character.

If you want to paint your living room, then the colors that you adopt will play an important role in making it feel larger. If you have always thought that you had to keep your smaller rooms white, then here is some terrific news for you. You are able to have color while still making the living room seem bigger by pairing colors that have the sameintensity, or sticking to a monochromatic color scheme. So you should plan to pick all pale blue, or bright colors in orange, yellow and red. You will generally add interest and depth to a room if you paint the wall opposite the entrance an intense, deep hue. Gray-blue color is great for overall attractiveness and for also making the walls seem to recedes, hence making the room feel more spacious. If gray isn't your favorite color, you could also try cool colors such as purples and blues to get the same effect.

Even if you have never tried to decorated before decorating a small living room might be easy. Making use of a little bit of elbow grease as well as unique creativity can help make even the smallest room appear like a decorator showplace.

Design Ideas For Decorating A Small Living Room

Small Bathroom Design Problem Solved With A Small Toilet

A small toilet could be the key to your bathroom-remodeling problem

Remodeling small bathrooms can be difficult especially when you try to fit more into your bathroom makeover than you had in your old one. The key to solving your problem could lie in the design of your new toilet.

Small Bathroom Ideas

Fit more stuff in your small bathroom

Small Bathroom Design Problem Solved With A Small Toilet

This was the situation that I found myself in when I remodeled my very small bathroom. I wanted to turn the place into a beautiful ceramic heaven that all my family and guests would be pleased to use. I also wanted to add a separate shower cubicle to replace the shower over the bathtub that I hated and this is where the problem lay.

My little> bathroom was already crowded with just a bathtub, toilet, washbasin and radiator but I desperately wanted a new shower so I set to work on the design. I armed myself with measuring tape, pencil and graph paper which can be printed for free from here Free Graph Paper for Bathroom remodeling and used it to rearrange the items in bathroom on paper.

By moving the radiator over the bathtub and washbasin to the opposite wall I managed to free up quite a lot of space but I could see that I still didn't have enough room for the toilet. At least not for one the same size as I had already.

The problems with toilets

The main problem with a lot of toilets is that they take up too much wall space. Not only are the cisterns or tanks too wide butthey also often tend to have the water inlet and overflow on the side of the tank, which takes up even more wall space. So I started to look for toilets that would fit into the space that I had available and found that there is quite a lot to choose from.

Choose a small toilet with a bottom inlet feed

I was pleasantly surprised when I started to look for small toilets. I found some that were so tiny that they would fit almost anywhere. Unfortunately they would be very little use for anyone but the most petite of us because they would be completely impractical.

I know it's a compromise that we are looking for. A toilet that is big enough to be used by all, and small enough to fit into the available space. You should be able to find> small toilets that have cisterns of 16 inches width or less with plumbing that enters from the bottom rather than the side.

The plumbing arrangement helps a lot because side entry takes up a lot of room. The toilet that I chose even directs the overflow into the waste outlet rather than requiring a side-exit pipe to carry it away.

I managed to fit my new small toilet next to my nice new shower cubicle and it all worked out great. I hope that yours does too.

Small Bathroom Design Problem Solved With A Small Toilet

Small Bathroom Design With A Small Bathtub

What to do if a conventional bathtub won't fit into your small bathroom

If you are remodeling a very small bathroom that isn't big enough to fit a full sized bath or if you want to add a shower cubicle to your already cramped bathroom then there are a few options that you might want to consider.

Small Bathroom Ideas

Shower above the bathtub

Small Bathroom Design With A Small Bathtub

If you have room for a full sized bathtub then the option that many people take is to put a shower over the bathtub. While this is an easy option, I don't personally like it very much because it's difficult to make it look good and it always feels like a compromise that I didn't want to make.

Showers are for washing efficiently but bathtubs are for soaking andrelaxing

After my small bathroom remodel-I now have a shower cubicle as well as a bathtub, which I think is the ideal situation. Now that I have both I've been surprised to find that I use the shower far more often than I use the bathtub. Why is this? Well it's because a shower is far more efficient than bathing. I can shower in 5 minutes but when I take a bath I like to make it last for an hour or more. So for me the shower is for washing and the bathtub is for relaxing.

Trade the length of your bathtub for depth

Your bathtub is for soaking and relaxing in and for that you need to be immersed in water and you need to be comfortable. It's no good installing a short, shallow bathtub just to make it fit into your little bathroom because it won't be any good for soaking in and it won't be good either.

A better idea is to trade length of your tub for depth. This simple concept makes it possible to fit a bathtub that requires a modest floor area but still allows you to immerse yourself in water and relax.

Soaking bathtubs

The Japanese have a long tradition of using bathtubs for soaking and relaxation. They also often have to manage in very small accommodations so you can get a lot of ideas from looking at the way they live. The most interesting soaking tub that I've come across was nothing more than a wooden barrel with a stool fixed to the bottom. Yes it was crude but it worked. It fitted into a tiny little bathroom, it immersed you into water and itwas very relaxing.

Walk in bathtubs

A sophisticated version of the wooden barrel bathtub is the modern walk-in bathtub. The principles are the same but they have built in seats and a door to allow easy access. A walk-in bathtub takes up much less space than a conventional bathtub but still allows you to take a very relaxing bath.

The walk-in bathtub door can be a two edged sword however. It allows easy access on the one hand, which is great if you have difficulty stepping up into the bath. The problem is that the door has a potential to leak at some point and require maintenance. Also you can't use the door unless the bathtub is empty of water, which means that you have to be inside when filling and emptying with water.

Short and deep bathtubs forvery small bathrooms

So if you are remodeling a small bathroom remember that you can choose a shorter bathtub but make sure that it's deep enough to give you a long relaxing soak.

Small Bathroom Design With A Small Bathtub