Bathroom Remodel Ideas

Becky’s bathroom was not only super dated, it wasn’t really meeting their needs, so she set about changing it, slowly but surely. Aside from some plumbing work, Becky tackled most of the updates herself, keeping the cost low (but, occasionally, the stress high). The new bathroom is a moody, glam goth space, the likes of which we haven’t really seen on the site before. From Becky: The before, to us, was, well …. pretty awful, to be generous with my word choice.

Ladies and gentlemen, here is what my boring bathroom looked like up until the other day. I’ve lived in my rental for just over two years, and this place looked the same as it did the day I moved in (with the addition of some hand soap, my toothbrush and a toilet paper roll) for far too long. Is it completely offensive? Nah, it’s pretty passable, but boy was it dull.

I have lived on my own for the last six years, slowly but surely acquiring furniture, art and decor that I really liked, which of course means that along the way, there were empty corners (and rooms) waiting to be filled. Finally, though, my apartment—which I’ve lived in for two years—has gotten to a place where I didn’t wonder if visitors thought I had just moved in. The guest bedroom has curtains (which I sewed and I’m quite proud of!

Interior designer Laura Breisch of Making Home Interiors took on her toughest client — herself — when she purchased this Detroit home that had stood empty for 30 years and she purchased in a foreclosure auction. Instead of working with contractors, she enlisted her boyfriend and father and the three of them remodeled this bathroom from head to toe.

There were some great things that happened, design-wise, in the 70s, but this bathroom was not one of them. Molly and Jonathan had a few projects in mind when they purchased their Ditmas Park one-bedroom, but they knew that the “sunburn-colored” stripes in their bathroom needed to be the first thing to go. The problems with the bathroom went beyond the cosmetic.

When Holly and Christian bought their two-bedroom, two-bathroom co-op in a 1920s building in New York’s Greenwich Village, they knew it would need a little work. The apartment’s kitchen wasn’t in great shape (you can read all about its transformation here), so, while renovating the kitchen, they decided to refresh one of the apartment’s aging bathrooms as well.

When we moved into our little 1950’s fixer-upper 2 years ago (you might remember previous progress reports on the kitchen and living room), I thought there was no way I could possibly wash in that grimy, cramped and dysfunctional bathroom. It had no shower, the loudest toilet flush on the planet and extremely temperamental hot water. But we ran out of cash and so it turned out I could live with it. For a really long time.

When Alyssa and her husband moved in to their Echo Park home seven years ago, they were happy to see a lot of the original details from the 1940s bungalow intact, like this blue tile in the bathroom. Though the tile was charming, the rest of the bathroom was dark and gloomy. Alyssa was able to give the space a whole new modern look with a just few small changes—and keep the charming vintage tile!

Amanda and Mike’s master bathroom was anything but masterful. When they decided to renovate it, they completely gutted the space from floor to ceiling, moved the toilet so they could fit a luxurious, giant shower and updated the fixtures and surfaces to include elements like marble tiles. The result is a bright modern retreat.

This might be possibly the tiniest full bathroom I have ever seen. You can’t even stand up in the tub! But where you and I might see only a small, cramped, and rather dreary space, blogger Emily Murray, of The Pink House, only saw potential. Isn’t this beautiful? Could you ever have imagined that that sad little bathroom could look this good?

It’s kind of hard to believe that this is the same bathroom and even harder to believe that this was a DIY project without any major renovating. Lauren’s paint game is truly next level. From Lauren: I am so excited to share this DIY labor of love. We moved into our house in upstate New York seven months ago. After spending all our money on the bones, we had pocket change left for changes and renovations. Luckily, I was happy with almost everything, except the first floor bath.

Few things in decor are more polarizing than the retro pink bathroom. Some people hate them with a passion, and some people really, really love them. Unfortunately, when Chase and Lauren bought their more than 50-year-old house in Austin, they didn’t have a choice. Lurking behind all that pink tile was something even more unappealing: extensive water and termite damage. The pink bathroom had to go.

When Alexia purchased her first house, she got all of the freedom and joy that come with homeownership as well as some very ’80s bathroom tile. With a trip to IKEA, some lucky finds and some smartly shopped tile, Alexia was able to create a soothing space on a budget. From Alexia: My house is from the early 1980s, the bathroom was carpeted when I moved in (I stripped and sanded) and the ‘before’ tiles were the original builders décor.

This Before & After is all about the pursuit of a beautiful dream. When they bought their co-op in Manhattan, Laura and Peter had a dream, the same dream that animates the hopes of millions of New Yorkers: an in-unit washer and dryer. In pursuit of their dream, they intentionally bought in a building that allowed retrofits of washer and dryer connections.

Patience truly is a virtue, as demonstrated by Megan’s two phase bathroom remodel. By keeping one eye on savings and one eye on design, she was able to create a tastefully modern space that didn’t break the bank. From Megan: When we moved into our 1960s home seven years ago, the bathroom was an eyesore. The blue tile and wallpaper were original to the home and they needed to go! The problem was that we didn’t have a budget to completely remodel the space.

After buying a home that had been in her family for years, Katie knew there were changes to be made. Her open space updates took her space out of the ’80s. From Katie: My husband and I bought a 1980s ranch home from my grandparents. The home has been in our family for 20+ years. We knew that every room needed to be touched but that idea excited us because it has given us the ability to make our house exactly how we want it! The biggest project to date has been a brand new kitchen.

When Celeste first moved into her Park Slope condo in 2008, she wasn’t super excited about the bathroom’s generic, builder-basic look. But she didn’t consider remodeling until several years later, when dark spots on the floor’s limestone tiles alerted her to the fact that the floor had never been properly sealed. Limestone is extremely porous, and despite her best efforts at cleaning the tiles just got more and more discolored.

In their Clinton Hill co-op, Mario and Joe were struggling with a problem common to many apartment dwellers — a cramped, tiny bathroom with hardly any storage space. So they decided it was time for a renovation and, working completely within the room’s existing footprint, made a few changes that completely transformed this cramped space. The biggest change: converting the old tub into a walk-in shower with a frameless glass door, which opens up the room considerably.

While not lacking in a certain crumbly charm, the bathroom in Colin and Orli’s Crown Heights co-op was definitely not a place where you would want to take a bath. Five different layers of floor tiles, installed on top of each other over the years, made for an unsettling drop when stepping into the tub. The subway tile walls were starting to look far too much like an actual subway for comfort, and thanks to many decades of water damage, the whole thing was falling apart.

We love a good Before & After, and this is a good Before & After for a good cause. Starting in October of 2014, Emma and Elsie, the creators of the design blog A Beautiful Mess, took on a very ambitious project: they decided to buy an entire house, completely remodel it, and then donate it to the local Habitat for Humanity. Some pretty fantastic makeovers followed, including the transformation of this bathroom, which in addition to being aesthetically unappealing, was slowly falling apart.

This ‘before’ bathroom might be the ugliest befores I’ve ever seen — and it’s certainly one of the strangest. Years ago, the person responsible for retrofitting a bathroom into this one-bedroom apartment in a former tenement building made a very unusual choice: in order to fit a bathtub into a very narrow space, they shoehorned it in lengthwise, so that you had to climb in from the short end. It was awkward, to say the least.

Park Slope homeowners Elinor and Joel were charmed with the details of their 1920s bathroom, like the original tub and tile. Less than charming were the 90-year-old fixtures: the towel bars that fell out of the wall, the showerhead that sprayed water all over the place, the toilet that threatened a flood with every flush. After six years in their co-op they decided it was time for a renovation, not to change the look of their bathroom but to restore it to its former glory.

This family bathroom was original to the 1925 house – in which I grew up – and was basically unchanged except for an extremely rudimentary shower addition my grandfather had put in about 25 years ago.

While I’ll never say no to drama, sometimes a subtle, relaxing makeover is in order. Jordan and Anton took their awkwardly laid out bathroom and turned it into a timeless retreat (plus storage!). Check it out… Thank you, Jordan and Anton!

Lest you think that Megha’s ‘before’ bathroom was merely ugly, you should know what the pictures don’t show, which is that up close, finishes were peeling and the whole thing was starting to fall apart. After living with this space for nine years, Megha knew that it was time for a change. The overhauled space feels much bigger and brighter, thanks to a few smart design decisions.

You may remember Lee, whose Midtown East kitchen got a serious upgrade, transforming from a dark, cramped, dated space into a bright and minimal galley kitchen. At the same time Lee undertook his kitchen remodel, he also chose to renovate his utterly unremarkable late-70s bathroom, which had definitely seen better days. Thanks to smart choices in fixtures and finishes, the new bathroom feels much cleaner, bigger, and brighter than the old one — hardly like the same space at all.

Our home was built in 1919. The bathroom had undergone multiple “updates” which included a huge clawfoot tub. When we moved in, the bathroom renovation was not our first priority but after about a week of living in a house with one bathroom with only 10 inches between the toilet and bathtub, it became our priority.

When Megan and Sam bought their New Orleans Victorian two years ago, they decided to tackle a complete bathroom renovation on their own. Thankfully, Sam has a lot of construction and renovation work under his belt, so the job was familiar terrain. Here’s what Megan had to say about the project: After ripping out all the ugly brown and beige tile on the floor and walls (and one trip to the hospital for stitches–always wear work gloves!

Remember Robyn and Alejandro, whose sad sad kitchen was transformed into a bright, super-modern space? Well, their condo also had a bathroom which, although not in quite as dire a state as the kitchen, was still in need of a little TLC. It’s kind of hard to believe it’s the same space, isn’t it? The defining feature of the new bathroom is the three kinds of tile that Robyn chose.

My husband and I bought our house 7 years ago, in the city of Laval, a suburb north of Montreal. The layout of the bathroom was typical of the houses in the neighborhood. Since the first day I set foot in it, I did not like anything about that room. The shower was so narrow that we had difficulty washing our feet. The bathroom was as demoralizing as a rainy day. I demolished everything, including the ugly shell-shaped soap dish and the strange podium around the bath.

My husband, Jake, and I recently purchased our first home. It’s a 1950s ranch and we have lots of fun projects we need to tackle to bring it up to this decade. The first thing we took on was our smaller bathroom. We were able to salvage the tile in the tub and the toilet but almost everything else had to go. We (mostly Jake) did all the work ourselves including demo, putting in new drywall, electrical work and plumbing. Our final budget was around $1200 for all materials.

You may remember Ellen and Ben, the first-time Brooklyn homeowners who, instead of remodeling their kitchen, decided to tackle their master bath as their very first renovating project. Feeling more than satisfied with the results of that remodel, they decided to go with the same contractor for their second bathroom, although they elected to take the design in a slightly different direction.

The second bathroom in Michelle and Brad’s condo was in a strange state of flux. The home’s previous owners had removed the bathtub with the hope of installing a washer and dryer, but since the addition of the washer and dryer was rejected by the co-op board, the bathtub was instead replaced with a couple of awkwardly placed IKEA cabinets.

When one couple bought their Clinton Hill co-op in 2014, the space’s one bathroom was old, a little bit dated, and really, really small. Their renovation didn’t change the space’s footprint any, but smart, modern choices mean that their new bathroom has a spacious feel that belies its small size. The transformation of the couple’s entire apartment is documented in a separate Apartment Therapy post, which you can find here.

Deirdre’s powder room needed a punch of color and a little style upgrade. This Charleston resident decided to go with a horse racing theme and a jewel-toned wallpaper that, when paired with the glossy beadboard, makes the space. From Maggie: Leland galCandy Shop Vintage Thank you Maggie & Deirdre!

There used to be a dance you’d have to do to use Erica’s tiny powder room: Squeeze in past the oversized vanity, do a little spin, and shut the door. With just $300, she transformed the space into something more stylish and more functional: From Erica: To start, bright white board and batten was added to the lower four feet of wall, above the faux chunky baseboard, and a light gray paint above. The old linoleum was replaced with lovely white hexagon tile and a light gray grout.

Cedrick and Sunny are both from an apparel design background, and they have always been fascinated by modern architecture and industrial design. They really wanted to give the bathroom in their 1938 bungalow their 1938 bungalow “a vintage, industrial feel while still keeping it looking modern.” From Cedrick and Sunny : We pulled out and replaced the old harvest gold toilet, and the cracked floor tiles were replaced with a graphic, black and white hexagon mosaic tiles.

Kate’s 1950s home had great bones, but the bathroom needed some help. The shower had a full-sized window that leaked, which meant this wasn’t going to just be a little redecorating. But with some help from her dad and YouTube, she did it herself: From Kate: I ripped off the moldy trim and knocked the window (frame and all) out of the wall into the backyard flowerbed.

The guest bathroom in Melissa’s mid-century modern home was out of place with its rustic touches. She and her husband renovated it to have a more classic style, which fit with the rest of their home. From Melissa: All the work was done by us in a timely manner — we worked on it around our work and family schedules.

Jenny is the owner and designer behind Penny Jark Interiors. The home that she shares with her husband has a small bathroom that as the “before” photo shows, wasn’t exactly bursting with boldness. Then Jenny brought her style to the space. From Jenny: When working with clients I often come to an understanding of what aesthetic they prefer. However when it comes to my own dwelling I go back on forth on style, colors and the overall feeling I’d like in the space.

Carrie’s small bathroom was lacking style, with a basic vanity and overpoweringly avocado walls. For little more than $100, she brightened the space with a farmhouse twist: The fresh white paint and rustic wood touches really make the small space feel welcoming. Carrie added a plank wall on the left using plywood, and gave the vanity a distressed look with chalk paint.

When Megan and Ryan moved into their new place on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, they decided that renovating the bathroom had to be their first priority. Although, at a glance, their bathroom might not seem so bad, up close it was a bit of a disaster: a crumbling vanity cabinet, discolored and mismatched tile that had been painted (yes, painted) over, and a bathroom window that had been painted and tiled shut.

Lauren and her husband spent their home budget on upgrading the things they couldn’t DIY. So after they moved in, they went to work on personalizing the builder basic areas, like this bathroom—for under $400. Lauren painted the vanity an airy gray, added labels to the drawers to combat clutter, and framed out that moulding-less window. The frameless mirror got replaced with a matching pair found on clearance. She didn’t stop there.

Cori’s apartment had a peach tub and separate tiny shower stall. Since the bathroom already had a small footprint, her contractor combined the shower and created much needed storage space: From Cori: He re-tiled the floor and around the tub. He converted the tub to a tub/shower and installed high glass doors on two sides. He converted the original shower stall into a closet. He made a custom medicine cabinet so we could have a larger mirror.

Sabrina had a typical powder room: beige walls, basic tile, pedestal sink—functional but nothing to write home about. With a moody hue and some DIY magic, this forgettable space is now fantastic: That ceiling is a stunner! Sabrina used a paintable textured wallpaper and coated it with a beautiful blue that’s echoed in her towels. On its own it might be too much, so she continued the faux molding with MDF painted the same color as the walls.

Gaëtan is a talented architect now living in Montreal with his girlfriend Violaine and their son Hubert. After renovating their kitchen, he took on redesigning the bathroom! From dated to modern, the space is now sophisticated and fresh. The palette is monochromatic; Everything is white, except for the floor which is in a soft beige tone. To cut costs, Gaetan chose to go with white wall tiles from Home Depot, and decided to splurge on the sink and fixtures instead.

The bathroom in Amy’s Brooklyn Heights condo wasn’t terrible or falling apart. But after living there for a while, she started to notice how the finishes picked by the previous owner weren’t in line with the style of the rest of her home, and the vanity cabinet and countertop extension were making the narrow bathroom feel unnecessarily cramped. So she decided to swap out a few fixtures, and replace the tile, to make her bathroom feel bigger and give it a classic, timeless feel.

Since they’ll eventually sell this house, Kelley didn’t want to spend too much money in updating the place. So when this bathroom was feeling a little bit country, she set a short budget, and made the existing vintage tile shine: From Kelley: We live in a small cape cod house built in 1951. We love it, but can’t stay here forever because the layout and size doesn’t really allow for a family in the future.

Amanda’s late father collected over 10,000 pennies in his lifetime. She turned those cents into a gorgeous patterned floor inspired by Paris. From Amanda: Ever since visiting Parisian cafes, we’ve always had a thing for hex or penny-tiled floors. It just so happens that my late father left a collection of over 10,000 actual pennies. Four years ago, I started packing my carry-on full of them each time flew across the country to visit my Mom.

After living in their apartment for twelve years, Carrie and Jack felt that the time had come to overhaul their bathroom. They’d tried little, inexpensive fixes over the years, like a new medicine cabinet and new lighting, but nothing made their bathroom feel any less cramped and, with grout stained by years of use and tiles replaced haphazardly over the years, just plain dirty-looking.

When planning their kitchen overhaul, Manhattan homeowners Pallavi and Keyur had originally decided to leave their bathroom — which was original to the house and a little the worse for wear — as it was. But as the project progressed, they realized it was important to them that the style of their bathroom match up to the updated look they were pursuing in the rest of the apartment, and that by leaving all the fixture footprints in place, they could save money on the remodel.

In Ashley’s family farmhouse, only main floor bathroom (and only shower) hadn’t been touched in decades—and was carpeted. She decided to make it more welcoming, without spending a ton of money. From Ashley: We’ve recently moved to my husband’s family farm and into the house that he grew up in. The house is a turn-of-the century farm house, but has had an addition added to it in the late 80s/early 90s.

Homeowners Shannon and Scott loved their home, except for one problem: their two-story house didn’t have a bathroom on the first floor. This was particularly annoying and inconvenient for Shannon — at home during the day with their young daughter, she found herself constantly running up and down the stairs. So Scott and Shannon turned to architect Andrew Mikhael, who identified a spot where they could add a bathroom, without adding to the home’s foundation at all.

While glad for the extra space, the addition made on Amanda and Dustin’s Sears Kit home felt out of place. So, when they started an update on its bathroom, making it fit in with the rest of the home was a priority. From Amanda: My boyfriend and I bought a 1925 Sears kit home in December of 2014. The entire house needed improvement, but the worst part was the way the addition they added on in the 70s felt too much like an addition.

After spending a decade shuttling between Atlanta and Los Angeles for work, designer Brian Patrick Flynn decided that what he needed was a place to get away from it all. He found exactly what he was looking for in a 1,700 square foot cabin in the North Georgia mountains. The views were unrivaled, but the interiors, unfortunately, left a little to be desired. The cabin’s bathroom was a knotty pine nightmare, dark and orangey with a tiny, cramped tub.

With shag carpet, vintage wallpaper, and a mustard counter, this bathroom was firmly planted in the 70s. Rosalind decided to bring it into this century with a dark and dramatic makeover. From Rosalind: Our master bathroom in our new-to-us house was lacking, to say the least. It had not been updated since our house was built in the 70s. A mixture of wallpaper and shag carpet had us dreaming of a renovation. It also sported two long, narrow closets that housed clothes for the master suite.

This is Marissa’s old bathroom. It’s certainly not the worst ‘before’ we’ve seen here on Apartment Therapy — but beneath its bland, dingy-80s exterior lurked a nasty surprise. The previous owner of Marissa’s co-op spent a lot of time away from home, and didn’t realize that leaks were causing extensive water damage. On top of that, the random dropped ceilings were making this tiny space even more claustrophobic. It was time for a change.

Although they originally thought about combining the two baths into a single much larger one, budget considerations prevailed, and they decided instead to keep the bathrooms separate and make the most of each. Here you see ‘before’ pictures of bathroom #2 — if you missed the first one, you can witness its transformation here.

Washington Heights homeowners Pepper and Marshall were thinking about combining the two bathrooms in their two-bedroom co-op into a single, much larger, bathroom. But they changed their tune when they realized how much the combination would hurt their home’s resale value — and how much additional money and time they would spend moving all that plumbing around.

How do you balance the need for updates when you’re waiting to do a larger remodel? Ashley and her family faced that exact conundrum when they set out to spend not a ton of money on a bathroom update that’ll get them through the next five years. From Ashley: Our goal with this DIY bathroom update was to modernize it and make it fit us without spending a ton of money. This bathroom will eventually be part of a large scale remodel, but eventually is the key word.

Designer Bailey McCarthy recently revamped her downstairs bathroom in the Hamptons. The small space was pretty cramped with fixtures, and needed to be reconfigured. By re-doing it, she not only rendered it more functional, but she made one design choice that totally “makes” the room…. Already a big fan of GP&J Baker’s Nympheus wallpaper, Bailey knew she wanted to use it in her home.

You’ve probably seen a lot of bathrooms like this: not great, not terrible, just so-so. First-time Manhattan homeowners Hafeeza and her husband were planning on a remodel of their kitchen, with updates to their bathroom to be made at a later date. But their contractor helped them realize that they could fit the bathroom upgrades into their budget right now — and that only a few small changes would make a big difference.

As budget makeovers go, this one is a doozy. It comes courtesy of über-stylish Michael, the man behind the British blog 47 Park Avenue. We featured one of his home projects in the past (a closet redo, which got mixed reviews from readers). His latest bathroom DIY is notable in that: a) it’s considered a temporary stop-gap solution until a full renovation happens down the road; and b) it required only 65£ (about $100!) to complete.

While not totally her taste, Meaghan’s bathroom was functional. The tile floor had been cracking though, so she waited until it was time to replace it to brighten up the rest of the space and add her own touches. From Meaghan: There was nothing functionally wrong with our bathroom and it was generally nice to look at, so we did not really need to do a complete remodel.

This old Victorian bathroom is typical of Glasgow tenement buildings —super narrow and definitely hard to maneuver in. Since the original tub wasn’t salvageable, Anne scored a couple more square feet from its removal: From Anne: The bathroom is a very awkward long and narrow shape typical of Glasgow tenements—making it particularly hard to photograph! The end result, £2000 later, is a complete difference.

Renovation by: Wendy Location: Nevada City We wanted the look of a stacked stone accent wall in our bathroom. However, we were unable to find a stone veneer that would fit behind our toilet. We decided to use reclaimed pine which we got from used pallets. We cut approximately 350 pieces of wood into different lengths and depths all with the same height (2.5 inches). We used a very strong floor glue to adhere the pieces of wood to the wall. After the wall was complete, we painted it a light gray.

Karisa’s guest bathroom was not a disaster by any means, but it didn’t fit her dream look. She *almost* felt guilty for wanting to undo all the hard work that someone had previously put into the space. Still, it wasn’t so bad that she needed to do any demo, or spend too much money by starting fresh. So, Karisa decided to try a couple of new products and techniques and give it a new look… This makeover is the bathroom equivalent of a manicure.

When Katrina moved into her 1952 Portland bungalow, the area that needed the most attention was this really teeny bathroom. It was sponge-painted (gasp!), had a bathtub that nothing short of nasty (ugh!), and it was hard to even turn around in the tiny space. She and her husband decided to gut it and start over, taking over an extra closet to create more space.

Renovation by: Sofia Location: Toronto, Ontario When we purchased our house 4.5 years ago, our basement had a lot of potential with large windows and a beautiful backyard view. The operative word here is “potential” as the space was completely unlivable at the time. The primary objective of the entire basement renovation — and especially this bathroom — was to do it stylishly on a budget.

Makeover by: David (check out David’s kitchen makeover, too) Location: Glendale, CA We purchased our mid-century ranch house in 2012. We were only the 3rd owners. The first owners commissioned Architect Robert L Earl to build the house, and it was complete in 1962. They lived in it for ten years, the second owners for 40 years. Other than some decor changes was pretty much in original condition. The second bath came to us with an egg yolk yellow bathtub, and brown carpeting, yuck!

Project by: Roger + Chris Location: Sharon Springs, New York The drab downstairs bathroom in our 160-old Italianate Victorian was in desperate need of a style infusion. Likely installed in the 1940s or 50s, the bath hadn’t received much attention in the ensuing years. A cute but well-used pedestal sink with separate taps, a tiled (and tiny) shower, fairly gross floor, and square tile running halfway up the walls. On the plus side, the large window brought plenty of sunlight into the space.

When the budget is tight and you can’t tear apart your entire bathroom to turn it into something you’d prefer, you’ve got to get creative. Jenna did just that with her bathroom, and it went from kind of sad to cheery! There are some simple but bold ideas in this makeover for both renters and homeowners.