My studio bathroom is finished! And I couldn’t be happier with the result. This bathroom is basically what my entire house would look like if I wasn’t married and didn’t have to consider that I share this house with a person who doesn’t love colors as much as I do. But since this is the bathroom in my studio and Matt has no say in how my studio is decorated, I was able to experiment a little with the color.
That’s how it happened. The walls are hand painted. My original idea of using wallpaper didn’t work out, and in the end I’m really grateful. It took a lot longer to create the painted design but I like it much better!
It may be a tiny bathroom, but now it really packs a punch.
Before I show you more, I want to show a detail that I needed to figure out. I painted the walls first and then the paneling. And after everything was painted, I had to caulk between the top trim of the wainscoting and the striped wall. I chose to place a paint pen on the trim and then attach painter’s tape directly to the top of the paint pen. This gave me about 1/8 inch clearance above the top edge of the paneling.
After wrapping tape around the entire room, I went back, caulked it, and then applied two coats of paint.
I removed the tape while the second coat of paint was still wet and was left with a perfectly straight and clear grout/paint line between the wainscoting and the striped wall.
With that detail out of the way, let’s now take a few minutes to go way back in time and remember where it all began. This bathroom is in my studio, which was originally our garage. Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of what the garage looked like to begin with, but I do have this picture of it after my father-in-law and I put up some drywall. The door on the left leads into what is now the breakfast room (living room). The opening on the right led to a storage area at the back of our garage. The storage room was the entire width of the garage and was about 2.10 meters deep.
And this is the side of the storage room that eventually became my studio bathroom. It originally housed the huge oven, but the second year we were in this house we got rid of it.
When we decided to convert the garage into my studio, the back storage room in the garage was converted into a back entrance (which now leads to our carport), with the bathroom on the left and a smaller storage room on the right. In the picture below you can see the area that has been partitioned off as a bathroom.
When I first finished this bathroom I did a crazy square spiral design on the walls. I loved it at the time, but after a few years I got tired of it.
The new design definitely suits me more.
Here’s a look at the other side of the bathroom in its previous colors…
And here it is now with its amazing 35 color walls and new artwork.
Here’s a look at the previous design from the back entrance. It’s funny to me that this previous design used a lot less colors, and yet it’s just so irritating.
The new design contains about 28 more colors than the previous design, and yet it still looks much more appealing to me. It’s bold and colorful, but it’s not distracting (at least for me).
And here’s another look at the previous design with the pocket door visible.
And now here’s a look at it. The color of the back entrance walls in this picture is not quite right. I think the sun came in through the back doors and washed out the color, but the actual color is more of a true green with far less yellow.
In the previous bathroom, on the wall opposite the mirror, there was a print that read: “Be the reason someone smiles today.” But I printed it upside down so it would show up properly reflected in the mirror. My mom liked it as much as I did, so she matched me to the new bathroom colors.
It’s a little harder to see in pictures due to the two different fonts. But when you stand in the room, it’s easy to see the reflection.
I was thinking about painting the ceiling in the room light pink. Now that I see the room is finished, I’m so glad I left the ceiling white. I love how the white trim and ceiling above and the white trim and wainscoting below really frame the colorful walls and make them the star of the show.
And even though I love, love, LOVE the walls, I felt like I needed something to break up all the colors and stripes, so I found this colorful floral art piece to download, had it printed, and then put it in a white frame with a large white mount. I think it’s a nice “break” in the wall design without covering too much of the walls.
I truly think this is my favorite wall design I’ve ever done. In fact, I love it so much that I almost wish I had saved it for a much larger room or a more prominent area in our home. But then again, I know I love it a lot more than Matt. That’s why I like that it’s stored in my studio bathroom.
And in reality, I can’t imagine taking the time to do this wall design in a much larger room. It took quite a while to build the upper walls in this tiny bathroom. Had I tried it in a larger room, I probably would have lost interest halfway through.
Since I chose all of these colors based on the wallpaper I originally designed for the room and these colors come from the floral wallpaper in the studio, the colors of this bathroom match the rest of the studio perfectly. When I sit at my desk and take it all in, it all looks so good together.
I’ll have to wait and show you pictures of the entire area at a later date. I was really hoping that I could get my studio back in order and get it sparkling clean so I could show you the entire area today, but I was running out of time. And after making a wall design using 35 colors, most of which I mixed myself, plus all my other tools and materials scattered around, I can just say that my studio looks a bit like a tornado. I’ll try to put everything away and tidy up soon so I can show you the larger view pictures soon.
In case any of you are new here, I would also like to explain why I have a sink and faucet in this tiny bathroom. This is also my studio bathroom and I do all sorts of projects in my studio. When we converted this area of the room into a bathroom, my original thought was to add a sink here. I wanted a deep sink and a large faucet because with all the different projects I do, I never know what I’ll need a sink for. But in the end I decided to build my own sink base instead of a kitchen sink and use a kitchen sink and kitchen faucet instead. I thought this would be much nicer and give me more flexibility than a kitchen sink.
One of my favorite additions to this room is this cute little ceiling light that looks like a flower.
It is made of hard plastic and is durable enough to be cleaned with a damp cloth or Swiffer duster.
But I’m very glad I swapped out the previous wall light for this simpler design that doesn’t compete with the cute floral ceiling light. I think this one is perfect for the bathroom. However, I overlooked the fact that this light requires a special bulb shape. I had the lamp installed and then realized that there was no way regular light bulbs would fit in these shades. So I had to order new elongated light bulbs to fit.
And in hindsight, I wish I had brought a set of four toilet prints instead of one large print. When I ordered the frame and print, I didn’t even realize that I would have a large print in addition to a large mirror. I think a series of four prints might have looked a little better. My mom suggested that I could actually cut this print into four pieces and frame them individually to achieve this look. I love this idea and maybe I’ll actually do this someday. But for now I’ve decided to just stick with the one big print.
I wanted to capture the entire wall, the flower ceiling light and the dressing table in one picture, so I set my camera to the wide angle setting and took this picture. I laughed so hard at how this wide angle shot distorted the shape of the toilet. But that was the only way I could put everything in one picture.
So that’s it! This project is complete and my entire studio area is now fully finished. I’ll show you all pictures of the entire area once I’ve rebuilt the studio and cleaned it sparkling clean.
Sources:
Flower ceiling light: Amazon (affiliate link)
Floral printable artwork: Etsy (affiliate link)
Mirror: Amazon (affiliate link)
Wall light: Amazon (affiliate link)
Elongated light bulbs: Amazon (affiliate link)
White 24″ x 30″ frame with mat: Amazon (affiliate link)
faucet: Home Depot
Corrugated basket: Amazon (affiliate link)
Paint colors:
vanity: Sherwin Williams Broccoflower
paneling: Behr Polar Bear
Floor: Benjamin Moore Classic Gray (color coordinated with Behr Porch & Patio Paint)
DIY projects:
DIY kitchen sink vanity
Striped wall design
