How To Tell When It’s Time To Give Your Bathroom A Refresh

Your bathroom is a part of your home that it’s easy to leave as it is. After all, a full renovation can take a lot of time, be disruptive and cost a lot of money. However, an old bathroom can date your home – even if you’ve kept it in good condition. 

Trends in interior design come and go. So, if your bathroom showcases some particularly outdated trends, it might be time to consider a renovation. House Beautiful asked a number of interior designers to share what they consider to be the signs of an outdated bathroom. 

Some of the suggestions are what you’d expect – like carpeted bathroom floors and oversized vanity units. We can probably all agree that those are trends that are best left in the past! 

But some of the other ways in which your bathroom can appear outdated are a little more subtle. 

Look at your shower enclosure

If you’ve got a glass block wall enclosing your shower, it is almost certainly time for a refresh! Instead, glass panes are much more popular and look a lot more stylish. When these are paired with the right fittings – like deep U channels for glass – which provide a definite border to the panes, they can look very stylish.  

What’s more, you can select a U channel in various metal finishes, ensuring that it ties in with the rest of your bathroom design. 

Another sign that your bathroom is outdated could be the use of fibreglass shower inserts. Current interior design trends are focusing on creating a spa-like experience in the bathroom, and these don’t cut it. 

Instead opt for sleek glass shower screens or enclosures and tiles, as they will look a lot nicer and more modern. 

Consider your tiles

When you last renovated your bathroom, did you choose tiles for the wall and/or floor that were bang on trend, but that now feel like they’re dragging you back to a bygone era? It’s a common mistake to make with bathroom design. 

So, if you keep looking at your tiles and feeling as though they are stuck in the past, it might be time for a refresh. While there’s nothing wrong with opting for bold patterns or colours, make sure you look for options that will stand the test of time. 

Look at the quality of your fittings

Quality always trumps cheap and cheerful, especially when it comes to bathroom fixtures and fittings. It is well worth spending a bit more money on high-quality taps and shower heads than trying to save a few pounds here or there only to be left with fittings that degrade quickly and look awful just a couple of years later. 

What’s more, choosing high-quality fittings will save you money in the long run as you won’t need to replace them as frequently. The old adage “Buy cheap, buy twice” certainly holds true here. These kinds of fittings are also more environmentally sustainable, because they last longer and therefore lead to less waste. 

In fact, if you realise that the quality of your taps and shower is what’s letting your bathroom down, replacing them with higher quality, more modern alternatives could be an affordable way of giving the whole space a lift.  

What’s the layout of your bathroom like?

The layout of your bathroom is a dead giveaway as to whether it is time for an upgrade. Older bathrooms often weren’t designed with comfort and aesthetics in mind. In many cases, their goal was to cram in as much as possible. 

So, take some time to view your bathroom with fresh eyes. Is the layout as optimised as it could be? Do you find that you don’t have enough storage? Or that certain parts of your bathroom feel very cramped? 

One top tip if you’re struggling to work out how to redesign your bathroom is to look at a hotel bathroom layout. Although it might not be what you want from an aesthetic point of view, hotels generally use space efficiently. Therefore a hotel bathroom might give you some ideas about how best to redesign this part of your home.

Taking this approach could be particularly useful if you are limited on space, as hotel designers may have come up with some ingenious ways of fitting all the amenities you want into a smaller room. 

This is also a good time to think about your bathroom storage. Could you add a niche that can house some shelves for your products? Or is there room for a cupboard under your sink to give you a bit more storage space?