~ This is a guest post ~
From the garden to the attic room, re-designing any area of your home is an exciting prospect. There is one room in particular though that always causes the most concern, because it’s ‘success’, in terms of design, is absolutely reliant on the fixtures and fittings: the bathroom. In today’s post, I’m looking at a few top tips for picking out your next bathroom suite; from what to buy to where to buy it, hopefully, this article should steer you clear of making mistakes.
To avoid missing vital calculations, strip
the bathroom clear of anything you don’t want to keep, and then take as many
measurements as possible before laying out your ideas. Draw chalk guidelines
out on the floor as rough estimates of where the toilet will go, where the bath
will go and so on, but remember to allow space for practical use. You may be
able to squeeze a toilet in-between a bath and a wall, but put a chair there to
see how much space you will actually need; if there’s only enough for a small
child, it’s time to re-think.
Quality
is essential
You can’t compromise when it comes to the
quality of the suite you buy. You might think that the deal you saw yesterday
was a bargain, but what’s the brand? Who made the product? What kind of reviews
do they have? Look for answers to these questions when you’re shopping for your
bathroom suite. If you’ve spent thousands on the rest of your home to make it a
warm and welcoming environment, but the toilet leaks or the sink basin chips and
cracks, not only could these cause nasty accidents, but they create a bad
impression for anyone who comes to call.
Don’t
go crazy with colour
No matter what size your bathroom is,
keeping it light and bright will always work well. The use of black tiles or
dark stone generally only works in very large areas where you won’t feel closed
in, so if you want to inject some colour, look at using subtler tones. Go for
whites and pebble greys throughout, but include cobalt blue or sea green in the
candles, towels and decoration to give it some personality.
Shop
around, then showroom
Just because you’re opting for luxury
doesn’t mean you have to pay the price for it, providing you know where to
look. Shop around online for seasonal discounts and multi-buy deals on
high-quality brands, before going and looking in a local showroom to “test out”
the product itself, and see how it looks in a bathroom setting. There are
plenty of retailers who do this, such as www.betterbathrooms.com, and it will give you a much more realistic
viewpoint in terms of colour, quality and how it will look in your home.
I hope you find this article useful when
you come to giving your bathroom a re-design. Do you have any more top tips for
readers? Be sure to leave a comment below if so.