This $500 Bathroom Transformation Turned a Dated Space into a “Little Spa”
Bringing your dream house to life isn’t a cheap or low-effort endeavor. Still, with the help of a strong color palette, clever DIY hacks, and cost-saving solutions, it’s entirely possible. Just ask design professional Latisea Calton (@latiseacaltondesigns), who runs the interior design business MLEE Home Decor and More alongside her husband, Jeremy.
In 2023, the couple moved into their dream ranch-style home with their two sons. However, that didn’t mean that every room fit their personal tastes — particularly the house’s main hall bathroom, which featured a design that Latisea describes as “beige, dark, closed-off, and outdated.”
Bringing the bathroom into the 21st century meant that Latisea needed to make some tweaks to her liking, from repainting it to adding new hardware and trim to repairing drywall, which she completed during the Spring 2024 One Room Challenge. Here are three design hacks that the Caltons followed to create a relaxing bathroom escape for the whole family.
Tip: Shop the clearance section.
Latisea recommends not shying away from a store’s clearance section — it might just have exactly what you’re looking for.“Most of the items staged in the hall bathroom were found in the clearance section of Lowe’s, Wayfair, and Ross,” she says.
And the non-accessories were bargains, too. The new mirror is from Lowe’s, the vanity light is from Wayfair, and the matte black faucets are from Amazon.
“Cutting costs and saving money to use in another renovation are how I keep myself and my husband happy,” Latisea says.
The blue paints create a calm vibe — and the vanity got a makeover.
Latisea opted for a serene blue color palette for her bathroom makeover. While some of the old parts of the bathroom were demoed out, Latisea decided to paint the vanity using a blue-gray Behr’s Marine Magic. For the walls, Latisea went with a faded denim blue-gray Sherwin-Williams’ Upward, the paint brand’s color of the year.
As she notes in one of her blog posts detailing her bathroom renovation, the color “softly screams calm and serene vibes, making it the perfect base for the hall bathroom refresh.”
A painter’s tape hack made caulking easier.
Renovating the hall bathroom marked a series of DIY firsts for the Calton family, from electric work to spray-painting shower fixtures to adding new trim to removing the dirty caulk and re-caulking around plumbing. (As she notes, “YouTube university helped us through it.”)
When it came time for caulking, one hack in particular helped make the process much more seamless: “I learned the painter tape hack that some plumbers and beginners use to get a straight and clean line while caulking at the base of the tub,” Latisea describes.
After eight weeks of hard work, the family can now enjoy a fully updated bathroom oasis.
“The bathroom went from dark and dingy to bright and airy!” she says. “Its calm and serene vibes are exactly what I was going for. It truly feels like we have our own little spa nestled in the back corner of the house.”
This project was completed for the Spring 2024 One Room Challenge, in partnership with Apartment Therapy. See even more of the One Room Challenge before and afters here.
Inspired? Submit your own project here.