Do You Coordinate Your Bed and Bath?

Retailers often lump bed and bath together when categorizing their goods, with some collections encompassing enough items to allow you to have identical patterns or textiles in both your bedroom and bathroom....

We can imagine this being an option to consider if you perhaps have an ensuite master bath but we have to say we really haven't seen it done very often in "real life" - have you?

The photo above (from Meghan & Shawn's Spacious & Vibrant Flat) shows something we HAVE seen more often - a color story that covers both rooms (in this case, blue, green and white), but with very varied patterns and different intensities of color.

Which way do you go at your home? A very coordinated, matched set of bed and bath goods? Similar colors but that's it? Or totally different from top to toe in the two rooms?

Image: Phillip Maisel from Meghan & Shawn's Spacious & Vibrant Flat

Comments (16)

Yes, the master bathroom is painted the same color as the master bathroom - and the hall bath is painted the same color as the hall.

Since both bathrooms are quite small, it makes them blend into the outer spaces and feel somehow a part of the larger rooms.

I like to keep my bathrooms as clinical as possible. It's not for everyone, I know, but to me the point of the space is to be both clean-looking and easily cleaned.

That doesn't mean that there can't be a fluffy washable bath mat and lovely towels, but it does mean that I really don't want it to be in any way as sybaritic as my bedroom. Every "decorated" bathroom I've ever seen has been overdone for such a small space, and got dirty because the homeowner wasn't up to hauling a vacuum cleaner into the room once a week to dust off the "details" they insisted on. Gross!

It's a room primarily used for keeping your body clean and looking good; keep that function in mind first. If I want to bring out a few candles when I'm bathing, that's cool, but they don't need to live in there, and if they do, they don't need to be on constant display. All the scent I need in that room comes from the products I use when I bathe. I realize this post was more about "matched sets" -- but I think it all follows. Keep the bathroom simple and clean-looking, but use the best stuff you can afford when you're actually in it.

We live in an average sized used to be a house but now is a unit type abode.. and the bathroom is off the bedroom so everyone must pass through our bedroom to get to the bathroom.. and I decide that I didn't want people to feel like they were using an ensuite (because I personally find that a little TOO intimate as a guest as other people's houses... so ..) I decided to them them very differently.. the bedroom has loads of rich colour.. charcoal grey and purple and turquire and is very cosy... and the bathroom is white and pale blue... Its quite a stark difference given the proximty BUT it defines the space as something in its own right... and not a personal space.

Where is that bath curtain from?!

maybe I would if the rooms were connected

After a year of trying to justify the splurge, I finally went for it last fall and bought the shower curtain pictured in this post. It's by Marimekko, and you can buy it from finnstyle.com or at anthropologie.com. I love love love it -- large-scale art in my tiny bathroom.

As for bathroom/bedroom colors, ours are different, mostly because they're across the hall from one another. Our bathroom is the same bright green found in the shower curtain (painted long before the shower curtain arrived), and our bathroom is a light blue.

Nope. I live in an apartment and the bathroom is very much separate from my bedroom, so I see no need to coordinate. The beige tiles and yellow-toned hardware also limits my color options too.

Nope. My bedroom has dark turquoise walls with white furniture, black and white patterned bedding, and a few red accents. My bathroom is mint green with chocolate brown accessories, and a bright orange throw rug.

Good lord, I want that shower curtain! I covet it. Is it still available, and if so, where?

I have tried to keep the palettes of each room on each floor similar, but haven't tried to match anything to each other. I find the co-ordination of rooms exactly to each other a little stiff, but I like these rooms.

I don't and wouldn't unless it was an en suite in which it would probably flow better.

no.... to each their own.... the space usually tells you what to do with it....

My master bathroom is an en suite. The bathroom has French doors that are always open unless one of us needs some privacy. The bedroom and bathroom don't match, but I do pay attention to the view from the bedroom into the bathroom and vice versa. The bedroom is decorated in neutral shades of mostly light green and gray, while the bathroom is primarily white with a few deep red and black accents. I positioned the touches of red in the bathroom so that you can't see them from the bedroom.

My mother had a "jungle" theme for her bathroom. To use the toilet you had to slightly push aside a large palm-type bush, otherwise get poked on the underside with it.

She refused to move it because it was the only spot a large palm-type bush would "fit".

I guess my point is that you can really over-do a room.

The bathroom is the room my roommate and I have decided to make quirky. We have a periodic table shower curtain, some geeky artwork, and some lab glass for storage. It's fun, it suits us, but it's not the sort of thing that would work in any other room of the apartment, especially not a bedroom.