You know what’s properly depressing? Walking into a beige bathroom every single morning when you’re already knackered from being up half the night with a toddler. That was my life when we first bought this house – everything in that bathroom was varying shades of magnolia and cream, like whoever decorated it was afraid of actually having an opinion about anything.
I’d stand there brushing my teeth while Amara banged on the door demanding to “help mummy” and just feel… nothing. The room worked, I suppose. The shower had decent water pressure, the mirror wasn’t cracked, the toilet flushed properly. But God, it was boring. Like aggressively boring. The kind of boring that makes you question your life choices at 6am when you’re trying to get ready for work on three hours sleep.
The thing is, we’d blown our entire renovation budget on the living room and Amara’s bedroom, so a full bathroom makeover wasn’t happening anytime soon. But I kept seeing these gorgeous bathroom transformations on Instagram – you know the ones, where someone paints one wall dark blue or puts up some fancy tiles and suddenly their bog-standard bathroom looks like it belongs in a boutique hotel. I thought, surely I can manage one wall? Even with no money and a three-year-old who treats every DIY project like an opportunity to cause maximum chaos.
My mum came round one day and caught me staring at the bathroom wall like it had personally offended me. She was like, “Just paint it then, stop overthinking everything.” Which is classic mum advice – practical but not particularly helpful when you’re seven months pregnant and the thought of choosing paint colours feels overwhelming. But she had a point. I was making this way more complicated than it needed to be.
I started with the wall behind the toilet, mainly because it’s what you see when you walk in but also because if I completely messed it up, at least it wouldn’t be the first thing guests notice. Spent ages on Pinterest looking at bathroom ideas – probably should’ve been doing actual work during Amara’s naps but honestly, scrolling through pretty house photos was the only thing keeping me sane some days.
Decided on these subway tiles in this gorgeous forest green colour. Not the whole wall though – learned that lesson from my friend Claire who painted her entire downstairs loo navy blue and it ended up looking like a cave. Just from about waist height up to the ceiling, creating this band of colour that somehow makes the room feel bigger and more expensive than it actually is.
The installation was… well, let’s just say I’m glad Liam was working lates that week because the language coming out of my mouth wasn’t suitable for little ears. Turns out being heavily pregnant makes it quite difficult to reach the top of walls, and tile adhesive is absolutely everywhere when you don’t know what you’re doing. There’s one tile that’s definitely wonky but I’ve decided it adds character. Plus Amara pointed at it and said “Mummy’s special tile” so now I can’t bear to fix it even if I wanted to.
What properly surprised me was how much difference that one wall made. Suddenly the white bathroom suite looked intentional instead of cheap. The chrome taps looked more expensive somehow. Even my half-dead spider plant (which I keep forgetting to water because, you know, pregnancy brain) looked like I’d placed it there on purpose rather than just dumped it on the windowsill.
It got me thinking about all the other ways you could do an accent wall without spending a fortune or taking on a massive project. Paint’s obviously the cheapest option – I’ve seen some stunning results with just a pot of paint and a weekend. My sister-in-law painted the wall behind her sink this lovely dusty pink colour and now her bathroom feels like something from a magazine instead of a 1990s time capsule.
Wallpaper’s making a comeback too, especially those peel-and-stick ones that are perfect for people like us who might want to change things again in a few years. I tested a sample of this botanical print in our downstairs loo and it completely transformed the space. Made it feel like a proper room instead of just somewhere you pop in and out of quickly.
But here’s the thing nobody tells you about bathroom renovations when you’ve got kids – everything has to be practical. That gorgeous grasscloth wallpaper I was obsessing over? Absolute nightmare in a steamy bathroom with children who splash water everywhere. The reclaimed wood trend that looks amazing on Instagram? Only works if you can properly seal it and you don’t have a toddler who thinks the bathroom is her personal swimming pool.
I learned this the hard way with my tile choice actually. Originally wanted these beautiful textured stone tiles but then I imagined trying to clean toothpaste splatter and Play-Doh residue (don’t ask how that gets in the bathroom) out of all those crevices and came to my senses. The subway tiles I went with are dead easy to wipe down, which matters when you’re dealing with the reality of family life rather than the Pinterest version.
The scale thing’s important too. Our bathroom’s tiny – like, you can barely fit two people in there tiny – so I kept the accent wall treatment to about two-thirds height. Any higher and it would’ve felt like being in a box. But my cousin’s got this massive bathroom and she went floor-to-ceiling with marble behind her fancy freestanding bath. Looks incredible but then again, her bathroom’s bigger than our kitchen.
Had to think about lighting too, which I hadn’t considered until I got the tiles home and they looked completely different under our bathroom lights compared to the shop. Spent ages in B&Q holding tile samples under different bulbs like some sort of lighting obsessive, but it was worth it because that green needed to work with both the bright morning lights when we’re all rushing around and the softer evening lights during bath time.
The colour temperature thing’s massive actually. Those tiles look completely different depending on what time of day it is and what lights are on. Sometimes they’re this gorgeous deep forest green, other times they look almost grey. I love that they change throughout the day – makes the bathroom feel less static somehow.
Best thing about the whole project? It cost me less than £200 and took one weekend to install (okay, one very long weekend with multiple trips back to the tile shop because I’m rubbish at calculating quantities). For the price of a decent handbag I completely transformed our bathroom from somewhere I actively avoided to somewhere I actually quite like spending time.
Now when people come round they always comment on the bathroom, which never happened before unless something was broken. Amara loves the green tiles too – calls them “mummy’s pretty wall” which makes my heart melt every time. And when this baby arrives and I’m spending even more time in there during night-time feeds and nappy changes, at least I’ll have something nice to look at instead of depressing beige walls.
The whole experience taught me that you don’t need to gut an entire room or spend thousands to make a real difference. Sometimes one well-chosen wall treatment can completely change how a space feels. Just make sure whatever you choose can handle the reality of your actual life rather than the perfect Instagram version of it.
