Bathroom Peeks: Dan's Wake-Up Shake-Up

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Welcome to Dan in Berkeley, who just said no to a standard issue dingy white bathroom.

He says: A bit more than a year ago my girlfriend and I decided to do something with our bathroom. The complicating factors for us were twofold: First: the bathroom is small, especially for two people trying to get their morning together at the same time, complicated by the door opening inward in a rather awkward way. The bathroom had two shelves as storage, one of which was falling down. The other complicating factor was that we discovered we were more interested in modern designs and stuck with a house built in 1920. [more pics, including a before shot, after the jump]

So what did we do? Color. The bathroom went from being white tile on white fixtures with white hardware and white walls (the walls were more of a dinge color than white) with a particularly institutional feel (not in a good way) to being a very saturated and bright orange. We really wanted to offset all of the white porcelain and tile with something bright and contrasting.

Since orange doesn't match the rest of the house in any way, we painted the back wall of the bathroom a high-gloss pure white, so that when seen from the rest of the house (kitchen) it doesn't stand out. After entering the bathroom though, one discovers what a bright spot the room really is.

We added a few more shelves and the all-important holder for spare toilet paper and are pretty happy with the result.

The best part was that the whole project was done for less than $350. The shelves and other hardware are all Ikea and the paint came from Home Depot.

Thanks Dan!

Comments (7)

That color looks great, but, there's no mirror in there!

Love the color and light fixture. What's the secret to painting behind a toilet?

What paint color is the orange? Love it!

etslee, it's pretty easy to take a toilet off the stack and put it back on again, in order to pain back behind the tank. Do a little googling and you'll be able to find directions online.

I want to know to! What color orange is that? Donate to the color vault! ? :-)

Nice bathroom. I also use the same toner from TJ's, couldn't help but notice that.

Baddream: There is a mirror in there now. It took us a month or two to find the right thing. It matches the brushed metal look of the rest of the hardware.

Tai: The color is "dragon fire". It's one of the super saturated paints, so it doesn't cover very well. We had to do four coats for it to be done right (over primed walls).

This toilet is pretty far from the wall to begin with (about 3 inches) which makes it easier. The other thing to remember, is that it's easy to scrape paint off of porcelain (relatively speaking).