I’ve been promising and intending to give the bathroom a refresh for quite a while now as I did with my hallway. I wrote about the initial bathroom renovation back in February 2018 and I can’t believe it’s taken me a year to get around to doing it. That’s why I’m so pleased to at last be able to share my luxury master bathroom makeover with you.

The main reason why it’s taken me so long to refresh the bathroom is that I kept changing my mind about how far to go with it. I was having some regrets about choosing beige nude tiles (I hate the word beige) during the initial renovation. I wished I’d gone for black and white tiles, and brass fittings instead of chrome.

Having considered replacing them, I just couldn’t justify the upheaval and cost of this. Then I thought about painting the tiles but worried that they wouldn’t be durable. So, I yo-yo’d with these ideas for a while before deciding to use the new decor to detract from the things I was unhappy with. And I have to say that since the refresh, these things aren’t a problem to me anymore!

The bathroom is north west facing so it’s a fairly dark room. This seemed to suck the life out of the initial nude colour we painted it in and leave the room feeling drab. For before pics, take a look at my initial bathroom renovation post.

The room needed a pop of colour. I’ve always loved teal (you may have noticed it’s now part of my branding following my recent blog makeover). I bought several tester pots from different paint brands in various shades of teal. The shade I plumped for was Vardo by Farrow and Ball in the modern emulsion finish. It has a lovely depth of colour and has definitely given the bathroom a much needed lift.

The scariest and bravest thing I did with the makeover was to carry the teal paint colour through to the ceiling. I know what you’re thinking–paint a ceiling in colour!, paint a ceiling in a dark colour at that!!, paint a DARK room with a LOW ceiling in a dark colour!!! 😮

I decided on this for various reasons. Firstly, because I’ve been questioning a lot with interiors as to why we always have to follow a rule and paint ceilings white. Why? Oh yeah, it’s because it makes the ceiling look higher (blah, blah, blah). I don’t think this is always the case as a dark ceiling can give the illusion of infinity. Secondly, I wanted to make an impact with the room, and thirdly because the room just looked bitty. The tiles are one colour, the mirror a different entity on the other wall, the teal walls and then the white ceiling. Below is a snap of how the room looked before I painted the ceiling.

As you can see from the picture below, continuing the colour onto the ceiling brought the whole room cohesively together and I don’t regret it. What do you think? Although I’m not sure if I would have had the guts to go through with it without Andy’s encouragement!. Yes the room is darker, but it was dark anyway and we always had to put the light on. I’d rather settle for a darker room when the light’s off than one that has no impact and looks bitty all of the time. This may not be for you, but ask yourself, if you have a light filled room that you’re painting in a light colour, why paint the ceiling white?

During my deliberations regarding tiles and bathroom fittings, I also wanted to replace the chrome handles with brass. However, it proved an almost impossible task to find any gold/brass handles as large as my current ones, with the same screwhole measurements. The only ones I did find were £80 each, and I needed 7. I just wasn’t prepared to pay over £500 for them. So I considered painting the handles, but as with the tiles, doubted the durability in the long run. I did however experiment with some gold spray paint, but the colour just looked flat (are you getting the picture of why this has taken so long 😆 ).

What I came up with to resolve the conundrum was to wrap the centre of my current handles with a gold leather-look fabric that I stitched at the back.

I continued the gold theme with a new blind from Dunelm, and the sheepskin stool was a DIY project that you can read about here.

I added new decorative accessories to the room which I’d been collecting for a while.

The above picture is my favourite section of the room. I jut love how all the new accessories tie in together. The toilet roll storage holder was changed for a lovely black rattan one from Dunelm, and the toilet roll holder for a gold one. The gorgeous print brings some blush pink to the room which is a perfect companion to the teal. I also added some blush towels to match, and a rug to break up the expanse of beige tiles.

The other art I introduced was an ‘Inhale Exhale’ typography print as a nod to my yoga and to remind us all to breathe and relax! And the thought provoking ‘Listen to Me’ by Andrea Castro.

I changed the windowsill styling and added other accessories around the bath. Another thing I spent absolutely AGES deliberating over, was how I could detract attention away from the TV (which you’ll know if you’ve watched my Instagram stories). I thought up several DIY ideas that ended up being complicated and impractical, and even made one, but it just didn’t work. In the end I popped to Dunelm one Sunday and bought a few accessories. I pulled together around the TV, and I’m happy with the result.

When you want to watch the TV, you just move the garland behind it and pull it out, as it’s on a hinged bracket.

As I mentioned, I couldn’t justify buying new hardware, so to bring some more lovely gold into the room, I changed the mirror lights to these elegant smoked glass balls. They are such an improvement on the old ones, which you can see in my initial bathroom renovation post.

These lights gave the vanity a real uplift, along with the soap dispensers, which are also a smoked glass, and faux plants I added at each end.

Luxury Master Bathroom Makeover – Before

Luxury Master Bathroom Makeover – After

The bathroom now feels cosy and inviting, and the colour makes me smile. Part 2 of my bathroom makeover shows the accessories in more detail with links to where you can buy them.