This Bathroom Went from Plain to Pink with a Bold Color-Drenched Redo
“Every room should have a point of view,” Jill Arden Lukeman, founder of The Mariner and the Muse, says. “Something that draws you in or leaves an impression, even in a small way.”
Located in South Norwalk, Connecticut, The Mariner and the Muse is a curated vintage store of all things furniture, homeware, and interiors. Unsurprisingly, Jill’s home is a reflection of her love for vintage and design — and the bathroom might be the clearest example.
“It’s an opportunity to take risks and create something memorable,” Jill shares. But before its makeover, this space was doing the opposite of that. Jill wanted to make the space “intentional, expressive, and alive.”
Her home in Connecticut had been in the same family for over 30 years, with many of the original details preserved — “giving it a real sense of history and soul.”
The bathroom was “frozen in time, with plain white walls, an older shower stall, a pedestal sink, and black-and-white tile floors,” Jill explains. “It was functional, but felt dark and disconnected from the rest of the home.”
So instead of changing the footprint or taking on extensive construction, Jill focused on paint, lighting, and layered pieces.
This Bathroom Became the Unapologetic “Ladies’ Room”
“I did not want it to feel overly serious or overdesigned,” Jill shares. “It was important that it carried a sense of humor, that it felt light, a bit irreverent, and full of personality.”
Each room in Jill’s home has a point of view, and this downstairs space became “the ladies’ room,” an “unapologetically feminine” moment within the home.
After deciding to paint the bathroom pink, Jill layered the walls with art and vintage pieces from her store, as well as her friend’s antique shop, Knock on Wood. Most of the artwork is of muses who inspire Jill, and she “treated the room as a small, immersive expression of that perspective.”
Jill spent several months sourcing the antique metal “ladies’ room” sign that she envisioned on the door. But once she found the one with the right character and patina, “it felt like the piece that anchored the entire space, so it was worth the wait,” she says.
But the finishing touch was a disco ball. “There is no reason a bathroom cannot also be a place of surprise and delight,” Jill adds. “And perhaps even a little dancing!”
A Hand-Painted Toilet Is the Show-Stopper
After reimagining how the space felt and functioned within its existing dimensions, rather than changing the square footage, Jill moved the placement of the toilet so it’s the first thing you see when you enter the bathroom.
“The hand-painted toilet is my favorite element in the room,” Jill comments. “It has [also] become one of my favorite pieces in the entire house and is invariably what guests comment on first.”
The toilet was sourced in Mexico and features Jill’s muses. But the mix of gradually collected artwork and joyful objects is what truly gave the space its personality.
An All-Pink Bathroom Was a Huge Creative Risk That Paid Off
With pink being Jill’s least favorite color, it only made sense to create an all-pink bathroom … right? Well, in her mind it did: “It [felt] like a creative risk, but one I trusted would work,” Jill explains.
But the first pink paint that was chosen looked too brown once on the walls, so instead of settling, Jill decided to repaint the walls with Farrow & Ball’s Nancy’s Blushes.
“[I] pushed the color further, leaning into something bolder and more confident, often described as bubblegum,” Jill comments. “Though I like to think of it as more of a Pepto Bismol pink.”
The push for more pink shifted everything else, too. “It brought clarity and energy to the space and gave it the sense of play and personality I had been after from the start,” Jill says.
And leaning into the theme felt more natural for Jill than she expected in the all-pink space. But “paint, in particular, is one of the most impactful ways to completely shift the mood,” she explains. And in this case, it’s bold and joyful.
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