How to Design the Bathroom Of Your Dreams

According to data from Zillow, "bathroom remodels yield the biggest returns in terms of boosting your home’s resale value."

That means that learning how to design a bathroom won't just make your house more pleasant to live in; it's an investment that will pay off in the long run.

Read on for some essential tips you can follow to make the most out of your bathroom design project!

Using Dream Bathroom Design Tips

Everyone has different design sensibility, but some principles of layout, lighting, and fixture selection apply to every bathroom.

Remember: when you're designing a bathroom, make sure that it fits the over design aesthetic of the whole house. While the bathroom is a great place to put some extra design effort, you don't want it to stand out too much from the rest of the home.

Make the Most of Your Wet Wall Layout

Every bathroom has what are called "wet walls." These are the walls that some kind of water pipe comes through in order to provide for the water needs of each part of the bathroom. A bathroom will usually need water for a sink, a toilet, and often a shower or bathtub.

Typically, your bathroom can have between one and three wet walls. The more wet walls you have, the more complicated the plumbing becomes. On the other hand, the fewer wet walls you have, the more you need to put all of your bathroom fixtures on the same side of your bathroom.

A one wall bathroom might have just a toilet and a sink next to each other on the same wet wall. If you want a one wet wall bathroom to have a shower as well, you'll have to make one long wall to fit everything against.

If you're going all out, then a three wet wall bathroom will allow you to ignore wet wall considerations and just place your bathroom fixtures wherever you consider to be most convenient or most aesthetic.

Pay Extra Attention to Your Lighting

Our bathrooms are where we prepare ourselves to face the world. Our bathroom mirrors are usually the first places we see ourselves in the morning and the last places we see ourselves at night. How we light them can change how we see ourselves, and how the world sees us.

Most bathrooms also have a nice surface to lay your makeup or other grooming materials on while you use them on your body. You'll want to keep in mind how much space you need on your bathroom "desk" surface to hold your various products and tools. But perhaps more importantly, you need to make sure your lighting is working for you.

There are a few directions you can go with bathroom lighting. If you pick the right lights and make sure to have your fixtures installed in the right places around your bathroom, you can create an extremely flattering lighting.

This flattering lighting can make it very pleasant to look at yourself in the mirror. You'll be able to walk out the door feeling like every day is a good hair day, a good makeup day, a good day for your appearance in general.

On the other hand, the lighting out in the real world is not so flattering. Just because you look good in your special bathroom mirror and lighting doesn't mean you'll look good in the office, outside in natural light, or even around the rest of your house.

The other direction you can go is to try to copy the kind of lighting you spend a lot of time in.

If you're spending a lot of time indoors, then you want your bathroom lighting to be similar to that of your indoor spaces. That way, you can adjust your look in the bathroom to mirror how you look during your daily routine.

Or, if you spend a lot of time outside, you might try to imitate natural sunlight in your bathroom.

Regardless of what kind of lighting you put together, there are some rules that always stay the same. It's often very helpful to have at least one light placed directly above the mirror.

You don't want all the light in the bathroom to be coming from behind you while you're looking in the mirror. This will cast your face in shadows and make it hard to see clearly. It can also help to have lights mounted to both sides of your mirror.

Take into account the position of any bathroom windows and remember that sunlight will illuminate one side of the room during the day, which will make the other side more shadowy by comparison.

Let Your Bathtub Shine

The bathtub is the largest single fixture in the bathroom. That makes it the focal point of people's attention. You'll want to make sure your bathtub makes the most of the attention it will inevitably draw.

People's taste in bathtubs differ: Some like the classic gleaming white look, while others prefer something that looks like (or is) made of a fine stone material. Others prefer a vintage copper, or an industrial look.

The design of the tub is also important to take into consideration. A freestanding bathtub can be placed anywhere in the room. Many have either a smooth bottom surface that lies flush against the floor, or else rest on claw feet that elevate the tub a few inches off the ground.

In other cases, the bathtub can be built into the side of one of your bathroom's walls. While the bathtub's size will make it always draw attention, designing into the side can at least somewhat diminish how much people focus on it.

You'll also want to think about how to coordinate the coloring and texture of your bathroom with your tub. The tub is too large and central of a fixture to allow to differ too much from your central design idea. If you want to have some splashes of variety that really make your bathroom pop, try getting creative with smaller fixtures or aspects of the bathroom.

Learn How to Design a Bathroom for Your Needs

We hope you found something helpful about how to design a bathroom in this piece. To find beautiful accessories, fixtures, and more, check out our other pages.