Our bathroom has been long overdue for a makeover. We’ve lived in our house for twelve years, y’all, and while we got rid of the ugly wallpaper and carpet in our hall bathroom, it still had yellowing porcelain tile and an outdated vanity. In the interest of full disclosure, that bathroom has been a “designers block” area, if you will. I literally had no inspiration to make it pretty, mostly because it gets zero natural light. I love natural light. You probably know that by now since my goal in life it seems is to make most of our home white or at least very bright!

I’ve finally decided it’s time to update that bathroom, though, and make it someplace we love just like the rest of the house instead of something dark that’s hard to keep clean. Of course, that will be a process, so today I thought I’d show you my inspiration board which you can find more of on Pinterest as well as some of the materials I’m planning to use.

I don’t know if you do inspiration or mood boards when you’re decorating or renovating, but I find them to be incredibly helpful for two reasons. 1) It allows me to physically see the big picture. 2) It keeps me motivated during those moments of “why am I doing this again?” I find that if I love my inspiration board, I know I’m going to love the finished result, so it’s easier to push through when I’m tired of doing it myself. {Yep. That happens.}

This bathroom is located right off of our hallway, so I knew I needed open lighting in there to brighten it up, wanted the tile to be really white and needed light paint colors. I also knew the first step was going to be regrouting our tile and reglazing it. Not so fun, but oh, so necessary. Here are some before pictures of the bathroom. {Prepare yourselves… they’re not pretty.}

That vanity, though… ugh. I’ve been dying to have shaker cabinets in this house, and thanks to flat front cabinets in the kitchen, I got the idea from Pinterest to add face frames. Our kitchen has a lot more doors and drawers than the bathroom does, though, so I thought this would be the perfect area to try out shaker doors. That molding on the current doors will have to go, and I’ll be sure to do a full tutorial on making over the doors including removing the molding.

So now that you’ve seen where I’m coming from, here’s where I’m headed with this bathroom makeover.

Inspiration Board

After way too many samples I decided to go with Rocky Bluffs by Valspar for the vanity and Seashell Gray by Valspar for the walls. They’re essentially two shades of the same gray with a slightly purple base. Because our bathroom gets no natural light, the yellow cast from any interior light needed to be offset by a cooler paint color.

We currently have one of those glass covered flush mount lights in the bathroom, so open lighting will help brighten everything. I found the glass pendant at Home Goods of all places! $40 for a light fixture. Yes, please! Now I just have to find the right bulb.

The door knobs are one of my favorite things about this new bathroom. They’re a Marshall’s find for $5.99, and they are the perfect mix of classic and modern complete with nickel and white coloring! The flooring is a groutable adhesive tile from Lowes which you can find here. While I love how bright this tile is, it’s kind of boring, so I may end up cutting the pieces down and doing a herringbone pattern with them. We’ll see if I get that brave!

Inspiration Photos

I love the paint color in this photo from Laine & Layne. It’s bright but still contrasts with the white beadboard trim. Our bathroom is small, so I’d love to put some hooks on the wall to add some storage and hanging space like they’ve done here.

The overall feel of this bathroom is what I’m going for in ours. Bright room, white tile, gray walls, white trim. The flooring I’ve chosen is less dramatic, but I’ve picked out some fun knobs to bring in a little glitz and character.

I definitely want to frame out our mirror, although I’ll be using white instead of stained wood. Ours will need to be a bit more chunky to cover up the screws, but this is the same basic idea. That pendant light also caught my eye and is where I drew inspiration for our final choice, pictured above.

I’m not sold on the idea of iron in our bathroom because I hesitate to use any dark accents. While we did discuss switching out all the hardware to oil-rubbed bronze, we opted for nickel because that’s what we currently have, and it just wasn’t worth the money to switch everything out. I do want white shelves to go over the toilet and maybe on either side of the mirror to provide extra storage, but haven’t found exactly what I’m looking for yet. I’m leaning toward building shelves with corbels to use as brackets because I want a sleek white look mixed with some character, and I think that might do the trick.

You can see all of my bathroom inspiration on our HOME | BATH board on Pinterest. I’m excited to get started on this project, and will be walking you through the following DIYs as we go, so be sure to follow along!

Upcoming Reno Posts:

• DIY Shaker Doors from Flat Cabinets
• How to Frame a Bathroom Mirror
• DIY Corbel Shelves
• Bathroom Reveal

Happy Monday, friends!