What Works? What Doesn’t?
Last month we posted all about art for bathrooms - rooms with toilets, sinks, showers, and sometimes baths that tend to be filled with tile and humidity changes. This month, we’re tackling Powder Rooms, which come with an unexpectedly different set of rules. Why? Well, Powder Rooms are just toilets and sinks. They tend to be smaller and because they don’t have a shower or bath, humidity is not an issue. Here are some simple tips for making your Powder Room walls, and in turn, your Powder Rooms themselves, look their best.
Texture in the Powder Room - Design by Tina Ramchandani
1: Powder rooms are great places to be a little adventurous. They’re small, used regularly for short bouts of time, and changing them up can be relatively affordable because of their size (unless you tile everywhere, which looks gorgeous but is more permanent than paint, wallpaper, and art, and comes at a cost). Consider using all those paint colors or wallpapers you felt were “too much”, “too dark” or “too risky” for anywhere else in your home for this space.
2: Dark paint or heavily printed wallpapers work REALLY well in powder rooms on every wall. Please don’t just do an accent wall - the space is so small that going all in just looks worlds better. If you do paint/wallpaper every wall, don’t forget the ceiling. It can stand out in a bad way if it’s left white. One trick is to paint it the same color as the walls “cut 50%” so it reads a tad lighter. If you’re wallpapering walls, paint the ceiling one of the accent colors from the wallpaper pattern. Colors we like for powder rooms are; Farrow & Ball Down Pipe; Farrow & Ball Railings; Benjamin Moore Mysterious; Benjamin Moore Stormy Monday.
Wallpapers we like for powder rooms are: Astek Home’s Kushy Koala; Unison Home’s Grid Graphite; and Phillip Jeffrey’s Cork Pathways (note, this one shouldn’t get wet, so it should only go in a room with tiling behind the sink.)
3: Art for a powder room can really be anything, though something too textural creeps me out a bit because it’s not so easy to clean. I’m also super opposed to photos with people that you know on them, but photography, as well as small works on paper, do work well because you can get close to these works and appreciate the details. We also love this gallery wall of photos wrapping the corner of a powder room for Project Big Project. The photos represent places that are meaningful to the client without including any people.
Powder Room Gallery Wall
Image via Chris Loves Julia
4: The grand finale accent for powder rooms is styling. Invest in some pretty and nice smelling soap. (Chris Loves Julia just did a whole spiel on hand soap.) Put it on a little tray. Add a candle, get a pretty tissue box cover, and store anything that’s not appealing (plungers, for example). I went deep on some bathroom styling back in the depths of lockdown and shared some favorite toilet brushes, organic towels, and more here.
And that’s a wrap. Did we miss anything? Was this helpful? We’re happy to share more Powder Room recs and hope designers will chime in with any tips on the nitty-gritty of tile, toilets, and hardware - OH MY!
