In a few weeks, Justin and I will be updating our small spare bathroom. We aren’t planning anything drastic and certainly won’t be gutting this space, but we feel like it could us a bit of a facelift.

This is the only bathroom in our home, other than our master bath, so it is most frequently used by guests.

Since it is a hard-working little space, our updates need to maximize the potential of the room (something you’re going to hear me say about every room in our house), be fully functional and be well-planned.

This bathroom is at the end of the hallway that connects the front half of our ranch home to the back (where the bedrooms are). When the bathroom door is open, you can look straight down the hall into the space.

It is a full bath with a sink, toilet and shower/tub combo, which is great, but there aren’t any windows (only one little garden window above the shower. Therefore, this room has no natural light and is pretty dark because of it.

My primary goal is to lighten up this spare bathroom with bright white paint (y’all know my favorite is Sherwin-Williams Extra White) and then add some low-light plants for pops of green, air purification, and a homey vibe to break up the white walls.

Project Budget: $250

Here’s what we plan to accomplish with our budget

  • Vanity light: Light fixtures are expensive and I’d rather not eat into my budget by replacing the one currently in this bathroom. Instead, I will paint the existing vanity light. Possibly matte gold, possibly black — I haven’t decided yet.
  • Toilet: We will replace the toilet.
  • Floor: If you’ve hung around on Dammit, Hali for any amount of time then you know my grievance with our floors. We are currently saving to replace the floors throughout the house, but I want to try painting the ceramic tile floor in our spare bathroom before we replace it. I figure if I paint it and it looks great, then that is one less room to replace the floor in down the road. And if I paint it and it looks like trash, then it’s no big deal because we were going to replace it anyway. I love the bold, dark grey mosaic tile floors in the inspiration pictures above, and I ordered this pinwheel tile stencil from Royal Design Studio to attempt on this floor. Wish me luck on this one.
  • Beaded Wall Panels: I went back and forth for a while on whether I wanted shiplap or beadboard on the walls. I finally decided on these wall panels for the lower portion of the walls. Since we are keeping this bathroom minimalistic, it is important to me to add texture and dimension to the walls with these panels; texture and dimension are a great way to make any room cozy. The wall space we need to cover is small, so we will only need three, possibly four panels, and these are mold resistant (which is what you want for a bathroom).
  • Wall Paint Color: Like I mentioned above, we will keep the room light and bright by painting the walls above the beadboard with Sherwin-Williams Extra White. I always have a gallon of this on hand, so no need to take dollars out of our budget to buy more paint.
  • Art, Plants & Decor: Again, since this will be such a bright white room with the fresh paint, we will need to add some decorative touches to break up the white. I’m thinking some framed art (such as dried flowers), plants that can survive in minimal light, and subtle decor will help make our spare bathroom a lovely place to be.