The Cozy Retro Cabin Bathroom

Do you want to see how I designed this family bathroom? Let’s dive in right into it.

We defined this design as the cozy retro cabin. That was kind of the direction for this house. You can see that we have some of the chocolate wood trim. That was staying. It was all through the house. The clients loved it. It really made things feel super, super warm, and cozy. That was staying, but pretty much there wasn’t a whole lot else in the bathroom that could stay. The tile here, you can see it has little flowers on it. The vanity was not in really great shape, so unfortunately would have need to get ripped out. We knew that we had to keep the layout the same just in terms of budget, and things like that.

Colour story wise, we went with a warm colour with lots of the green and the rust tones. Bringing in some warm brass, and then going with some off-white and taupes, and things like that to create that really nice warm vibe. We wanted it to feel sort of like when you go to a cabin, but it’s been modernized. Right? We didn’t want it to be too dark with having too much wood or anything on the walls, but definitely painted wood would be a really great way to go about it.

As you can see, this was the before. Let’s take a look at that vanity wall. We did a really fun plaid, almost buffalo check pattern on the floors with four-by-four tile. Really inexpensive to do because four-by-four tiles are super inexpensive, and just by mixing up a few colours, and laying them in a specific pattern you can add a ton of interest to the room. And because a buffalo check is a very classic pattern and, we did it in a taupe, which is a classic neutral. You want to avoid beiges. You want to avoid greys. You want to stick with your whites, off whites, and your taupes, because those are your classic neutrals that’ll never go out of style. We mixed in light and dark taupe with an off white, which is just not so bright and shiny white.

Doing white above the paneling and bringing in a little bit of this board and batten type of paneling around the bathroom helped create height and interest, and adding this little linen closet here that would pull out, allowed us to add some towel storage into the bathroom as well. We didn’t need two sinks. They actually preferred to have more working space than having two sinks in this space, just because they never had more than one person in there already.

On the tile on the shower here, you can see we removed that bulkhead, which we’ve been doing a lot. The bulkhead was empty, and the vents needed to be redone anyways, so that allowed us to tile all the way up, and do a partition glass here just to protect the cabinetry, versus a curtain where the moisture might interfere with that cabinetry a little bit. A partition glass was a really great solution here, and allowed just for when the kids are in there. It allows you to kind of reach in, and nothing’s in the way.

As we go around here, you can see that, unfortunately, the toilet was the first thing you see when you walk into the room. Had we designed this room from scratch, or had we been able to move some plumbing, this would be a no go, but unfortunately, that’s just the way that it needed to stay. We can see we carried up some of that board and batten, added a few pieces of art here, just to create a little bit more height and interest, brought in an inside mount blind, instead of the outside mount valance, or bringing something in here. I’m not sure that there was going to be enough room. I think because we were doing a shade there was going to be enough room on that, and then a couple of pegs over here just to hang a towel while you’re out of the shower, really important that way.

As we go in here, that’s the before on that wall. We can see it’s a small room, so we don’t have a lot of views to show you here, but building in a little niche in the shower, and bringing in these warm gold fixtures. We found this great prefab vanity on, I think Wayfair actually, really tough to find something in that right green colour, but we knew that we didn’t have the budget for custom, so we wanted to go with something that was prefab. This really set off the tone for the room, and had some of those legs that the client really loved. Just wanting to share that with you. Wanting to share with you the concept around this room, because there were some really fun elements, and they’re maybe some great ideas that you could take into your space.