Renovating a bathroom is kind of an amazing experience. It’s always so much more work than you ever thought it would be, and of course, it’s almost always a really expensive project. When you renovate a bathroom, you definitely gain an appreciation for all of these simple conveniences like running water, that we’re so used to taking for granted, but you also always start to become really aware of every penny that you spend. Those pennies can add up fast, especially if you’re trying to build your dream bathroom like we were! This all amounts to a whole lot of pressure to make every single decision absolutely perfect. After all, if you’re spending all of this dough, you want some pretty fantastic results, right? The bathroom fixtures, like the faucets and the toilet paper holder, are things that we often take for granted, but they really can make or break your room… and you’re budget! So how do you know if you’ve made the right choices? Here are some of my tips and guidelines to help you during this fun, but pressure-filled time!
Style
If you’re like a lot of people, then you probably find yourself drawn to more than one style when it comes to design in general. There are so many beautiful pictures out there of bathrooms in every style that it’s easy to, even just for a moment, find yourself loving modern design, or traditional, or rustic farmhouse. These days, you can’t really go wrong with any style, because it’s totally acceptable, and even desirable to mix and match styles to your heart’s content. It’s a good idea to look back on your own personal tastes for the last 10 years or so and think about what you’ve always loved. There’s a good chance that you’ll continue to be drawn to that style for years to come. I’ve always been a little traditional in my tastes, so for the things that would catch my eye first, like the shiny faucets and the light fixtures, I made sure that I kept them really traditional. Because I do enjoy modern style and conveniences too, when the time is right, I went with a pretty modern-looking tub and a really sleek toilet, which you’ll see in my next bathroom post.
Another tip for choosing a style that I love is to look at the exterior of your home when choosing the really eye-catching fixtures that will really dictate the overall “feel” of the room. Take your cues from the style of your home’s exterior (or how you want your home’s exterior to look if you’re in the middle of renovating that too) and go with that. We live in an old Victorian style farmhouse, so choosing fixtures that make sense for a house of that style and from that period, helps bring kind of a cohesive feel to the overall design of our house. Well, it’s a pretty rustic/basic Victorian style farmhouse right now on the outside, but I’m hoping to bring a little more polish to it eventually! So that’s what I went with. 🙂
Quality and Price
The good news is that beautiful bathroom fixtures are available in just about every style and at every price point. I would recommend going with a trusted brand like Moen who actually makes many different lines of fixtures at every price point, but who you know will always provide a quality product that will stand the test of time. Which particular product you choose will really depend on your budget and your vision for your space, but it’s worthwhile to have faucets, towel bars, and tub fillers that will feel like a quality product each time you use them and won’t start to rattle and fall apart on you after a year of use.
All of the fixtures in our bathroom, including the faucets, the towel bar, and ring, the tub filler, the knobs and drawer pulls, and even the toilet paper holder are from the amazing Weymouth line from Moen. The quality and craftmanship on these pieces is really superior and I think it really shows in our bathroom!
Light fixtures are really important to me and the light fixtures in this room are from the Waterhill collection from Moen. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen bathroom light fixtures that I like more than these! The proportions and the finishes of everything on these lights is just perfect.
Think about how you’ll use them
It’s a good, common sense, practice to think about which bathroom you’re placing all your fabulous new fixtures in before you go spending with reckless abandon to get the very best faucet and towel bar that money can buy. If you’re updating a powder room that will mostly be used by guests once a week or so, you may end up feeling pretty silly in a few months time if you spent $1000 on a faucet that has barely had the chance to accumulate a single water spot. Chances are, most of your guests really won’t be spending too much time pondering just how much that faucet they’re using to wash their hands cost you. 🙂 If this is your main bathroom though, that everyone in your home will be using several times a day, you will probably end up getting a lot of enjoyment and value from getting the absolute finest that your budget will allow.
Look at pretty pictures!
I can never overstate the importance of doing your research by spending as much time as you need with a cup of hot cocoa looking over pretty pictures on your favorite blogs and on Pinterest. 🙂 You will learn so much about what you love and don’t love, and what types of features might really be useful to you in your own bathroom, that it’s worth it to invest the time. Plus it’s fun!
Have you tackled any bathroom updates lately? What tips would you add to this list to make all the decisions that go along with a renovation a little bit easier?
I wasn’t paid to write this post, but Moen did provide all the faucets, light fixtures, towel bars, etc. for this project. Basically all the shiny stuff. 🙂 All thoughts and opinions are 100% my own as always!
Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.