The question is: Is there any chance you could put a full-sized tub in a bathroom no larger than a closet?
At least, I thought so. My last flat was a shoe box of a bathroom we’re talking maybe five by six feet with a toilet practically kissing the sink. The previous tenant had crammed in a corner shower unit that looked like it came straight out of a caravan. Getting ready each morning was like squeezing into a phone booth.
But the thing about small bathrooms is that ditching the tub is almost like quitting. Where else do you go to melt after a terrible day? Or rinse off the dog after he’s rolled in who-knows-what? (This has happened. More times than I care to admit.)
So when I moved to my current flat with yet another small bathroom I was determined to make a tub work.
It turned out the key to making a tub work in a small bathroom wasn’t the amount of floor space. It was smart space. My bathroom is about seven by five and a half feet and I’ve managed to squeeze in a 54 inch tub, a toilet, a pedestal sink and even a teeny weeny linen cupboard. And it works. That’s because I gave up on arranging the bathroom like a hotel bathroom and started thinking about how I actually use the space.
My first step was to measure everything. Twice. With a proper tape measure. Not that flimsy cloth tape I’d been using. (That lesson was learned the hard way when my “60 inch” alcove turned out to be 58 inches. No surprise the tub didn’t fit.)
Standard tubs come in lengths of 60 inches, but you can easily find good quality tubs of 54 inches or even 48 inches. The difference in length will leave you with an extra foot of floor space to play with.
I ended up buying a 54 inch acrylic tub from American Standard. Not the fanciest brand around, but it’s done fantastically for three years. And at £280, it was a price I was happy to pay given I hadn’t had to rip the whole room apart. I also love that this size of tub allows for a proper soak (I’m 5’6” and can get my shoulders submerged), but doesn’t dominate the entire room.
The big breakthrough was positioning. Rather than placing the tub dead centre on one wall, like you normally see in bathroom layouts, I placed it in the corner. This allowed me to place the toilet in the other corner. All of a sudden, the room felt twice as spacious. In truth, walking space is far more important than having the room look symmetrical. People don’t take photos of your bathroom to check if it looks perfectly symmetrical they want to know if they can actually walk around in it without hitting anything.
Shower-tub combos get a lot of criticism, but in a small bathroom, they can be brilliant, provided you pick the right one. For example, I fitted a rainfall shower head to the ceiling, rather than a wall mounted one. It keeps the lines of sight nice and clean and leaves plenty of elbow room. I also fitted a hand-held shower attachment to a slide bar for rinsing off my hair (and, you guessed it, the occasional dog). The curtain is clear vinyl (sounds dodgy, I know, but it creates the illusion of space) with a plain white fabric panel for blocking out prying eyes when needed.
Something nobody tells you about renovating a small bathroom is that storage becomes absolutely crucial. When you have little or no floor space, every item you own needs to earn its place. I discovered a narrow rolling cart that fits perfectly between the toilet and the tub. It’s about six inches wide, but it’s ridiculously roomy for toilet paper, cleaning materials and bathroom goodies. I got it for £35 from IKEA and it’s been great.
Another space-saving solution that actually worked was the pedestal sink. A wall mounted sink may seem like the obvious choice for a small bathroom, but pedestal sinks offer you slightly more storage (you can stash stuff at the bottom) and they’re a heck of a lot easier to install if you’re not going to have to re-do the pipes. Mine’s a compact Kohler model that’s only 18 inches wide, but it’s still functional for two people.
Good lighting made a huge difference to the overall feel of the bathroom. I swapped the single overhead light for three LED spot lights one above the sink, one above the tub and one for general room lighting. Three spot lights sounds like a lot for a tiny room, but good lighting makes everything feel bigger and more indulgent. The dimmer switches alone were worth the price tag for relaxing baths in the evenings.
In small rooms, color choices matter far more than they do anywhere else. I went with white subway tiles halfway up the walls, and then painted the top half of the walls a soft dove grey. Going with white would have been safer, but the grey gives just enough personality to the space without making it feel dingy. The floor is white hex tiles. Classic, practical and they’re better at hiding soap scum than I expected.
Mistake number one: Overestimating the need for storage. I originally purchased an over-toilet cabinet that looked like it would be perfect in theory, but it made the ceiling feel lower and the whole room feel cluttered. Less often equals more, especially when you’re desperate for storage space.
The entire renovation took about two weeks (mostly waiting for the tiler) and cost approximately £1,200 with labor. That’s certainly not peanuts, but given how much more I enjoy and use the bathroom now, I think it was well spent. I even look forward to baths again instead of dreading the cramped experience of using the shower.
Three years on, the layout still works beautifully. Friends are always amazed at how spacious the bathroom feels, even though the dimensions are still incredibly tight. The secret isn’t to cram as many items into the space as possible it’s to choose the right items and put them in the right spots. Sometimes the best design solutions are the ones that seem obvious once you’ve seen them, even though they never seemed obvious before you started.
