How do I make a small bathroom work better?
Storage, ventilation and layout changes that make a cramped bathroom more usable without any building work.
- Difficulty
- beginner
- Time
- 1 hr 30 min
- Read
- 2 min
Short answer
Go vertical for storage, get everything off the floor and the bath edge, and fix the ventilation. Most small bathrooms feel worse than they are because of clutter on every surface and a permanent damp smell.
Small bathrooms suffer from three things: nowhere to put anything, poor ventilation, and surfaces covered in half-used bottles. All three are fixable without moving a single fitting.
What you'll need
- Over-door or wall storage (optional)
- Suction or adhesive hooks (optional)
- Baskets (optional)
Step by step
- Clear everything out and be ruthless.Half-used bottles, expired medicines, products you did not like. Small bathrooms are usually storing things nobody uses.
- Use vertical space.Over-the-door racks, tall narrow shelving, a shelf above the door frame. Floor area is fixed; wall height usually is not.
- Get everything off the floor and the bath edge.It makes cleaning far easier and instantly makes the room look larger. A corner caddy or shower rack takes everything off the edges.
- Use the space above and behind the toilet.An over-toilet unit or a couple of shelves is usually the single largest piece of unused space in a small bathroom.
- Contain small items in baskets.One basket per person or per category. Loose items on a shelf look chaotic; the same items in a basket do not.
- Fix the ventilation.Run the extractor during and for fifteen minutes after showering, or open the window. Damp smell and mould make a small room feel much worse than it is.
- Add a mirror, and light it well.A larger mirror genuinely makes a small room feel bigger, and good light around it removes the need for other surfaces.
- Choose a shower curtain or clear screen over a bulky enclosure.Visual clutter matters in a small space. A clear screen or a plain light curtain opens the room up noticeably.
Tips
- Wall-mounted dispensers replace three or four bottles on the bath edge and look considerably tidier.
- A door-back hook rail costs very little and holds towels, dressing gowns and bags off every other surface.
- Keep only what is used weekly in the bathroom. Backup supplies belong in a cupboard elsewhere.
Common mistakes
- Adding storage without decluttering first — More storage in a small room takes space and fills up. Reducing what needs storing comes first.
- Ignoring ventilation — Damp, mould and a persistent smell make a small bathroom feel far worse than its size warrants, and cause real damage.
- Leaving products on every surface — Visual clutter dominates a small room, and it makes cleaning slow enough that it happens less often.
Questions people ask
How do I add storage to a small bathroom?
Go upwards — over-toilet units, tall narrow shelving, over-door racks and shelves above the door frame. That is nearly always the unused space.
How do I stop a small bathroom feeling damp?
Run the extractor during and for fifteen minutes after showering, open a window when you can, and keep towels hung so they dry. Poor ventilation is the underlying cause of most bathroom damp.