Making a Small Bathroom Feel Large: Six Decisions That Change Everything

Why small bathrooms feel cramped, and not only are

How large a room feels depends less on the square metres than on how much floor you see, how many edges and joints the eye counts, and how much light the surfaces reflect. A small bathroom with five materials, three colours and a shower curtain feels smaller than it is. The same bathroom with one material, a continuous floor and a glass screen feels larger.

Then there is the feeling in use. If you can turn round without bumping into anything, if towel and toothbrush have a fixed place and the door is not in the way, you experience the room as generous. For Ms S., then, it is not about gaining more area but about using the existing area properly.

A small bathroom does not need more space. It needs fewer things that claim it.

What squeezing past adds up to. Every morning you squeeze past the same edge, hold your breath at the same corner and tidy the same shelf. A cramped bathroom also starts and ends every day, so its mood sets the mood. Fixing it rarely needs a bigger room. It needs six decisions, beginning with the shower.

Decisions one and two: layout and shower

Putting the shower in the right place

In most small bathrooms, the bath is the biggest obstacle. A shower in its place saves area and lets the floor run through. How this swap succeeds is described in the article Bath out, shower in.

Position is important. The shower belongs at the end wall or in a corner facing away from the entrance. That way, when you open the door, your first view is not of a glass wall but of open floor. The WC ideally sits next to or behind the door, the vanity unit on the longest free wall.

Level-access and glass instead of a cubicle

A shower tray with a kerb and a cubicle with a frame cut the room up. A level-access shower with a single fixed glass screen lets the floor run from the door to the back wall. The eye reads the room as one surface, not as three zones.

Whether level-access is possible depends on the floor build-up. The details are explained in the article on the walk-in shower. For small bathrooms the rule is: a shower of 90 by 120 centimetres is often more pleasant than a square one of 90 by 90 centimetres, because it gives more freedom of movement and allows an open glass screen. Imagine stepping in barefoot over one unbroken floor, with no kerb and nothing to catch your toe.

Decision three: few materials, few joints

The smaller the room, the calmer its design should be. Two, at most three materials are enough: one for floor and walls, one for the vanity unit, perhaps an accent. When floor and walls are made of the same material, the edges of the room disappear. The room feels taller and wider.

Large-format slabs reinforce this effect because they drastically reduce the number of joints. In a bathroom of 2 by 2 metres, a few large slabs can cover the walls where hundreds of small tiles once sat. What to bear in mind technically is set out in the article on large-format ceramic in the bathroom.

As for colour: light, matt tones reflect light and feel spacious. Dark tones can be very beautiful in small bathrooms if they are used consistently and the lighting is right. What does not work is alternating light and dark on a small surface. How to coordinate colours across the whole home is described in the article on the colour concept. With layout and surfaces settled, the next gain is overhead: what hangs on the wall instead of standing on the floor?

Decision four: everything on the wall

Every object that does not stand on the floor makes the room larger. If you can see beneath the WC and the vanity unit, the floor visually continues.

• Wall-hung WC: It sits in front of a concealed installation frame in which the cistern and pipes disappear. The top of the false wall can be used as a shelf. Short-projection WCs are available that save valuable centimetres in small bathrooms.
• Floating vanity unit: A wall-hung vanity unit with drawers offers more storage than a base cabinet with doors and leaves the floor free. Where the room is shallow, a vanity unit only 40 centimetres deep can make sense. How to plan one to measure is covered in the article on the made-to-measure vanity unit.
• Niches instead of shelves: A niche in the shower wall or in the false wall replaces shelves and hanging racks. It takes no space away but uses the depth of the wall.
• Mirror cabinet in the wall: A mirror cabinet recessed into the wall offers storage without projecting into the room. In an Altbau this is often possible if the wall is thick enough.

For Ms S., this created storage for all the bottles and towels and a clear floor running from the entrance to the shower. Two decisions remain, and both have to do with seeing: mirror and light, and the door.

Decisions five and six: mirror, light and door

A mirror across the full width

A large mirror visually doubles the room. It should span the entire width of the vanity unit or even the wall, ideally up to the ceiling or to the top edge of the tiles. A small mirror above a basin, by contrast, emphasises how little space there is.

Light that makes surfaces glow

Small bathrooms often have no window. All the more important is the artificial light. A single ceiling light in the middle produces hard shadows and leaves the corners dark. Better is a combination of glare-free light at the mirror, indirect light that brightens the walls or ceiling, and possibly a light strip in a niche. How to plan this is explained in the article on bathroom lighting at the mirror.

Without a window, the bathroom also needs effective ventilation. A quiet fan with a humidity sensor prevents moisture building up in the small volume of air. More on this in the article on ventilation in the bathroom.

The door

A door that opens inwards takes up a quarter-circle of roughly 70 to 80 centimetres radius in a small bathroom. That area cannot be used for anything else. Two alternatives help:

• Door opening outwards: If the hallway allows it, the bathroom immediately gains area. This solution is also safer in an emergency, because nobody can block the door from inside.
• Sliding door: A sliding door in front of the wall or within the wall needs no space in the bathroom. It must close well and offer sufficient privacy. How sliding doors work as a design element is shown in the article on sliding doors and glass systems.

A 4-square-metre bathroom worked through

Here is how the six decisions work together in our example, Ms S.'s bathroom of roughly 2 by 2 metres:

The floor area stayed the same. Even so, the bathroom now feels noticeably larger, and Ms S. can turn round in it without bumping into anything. Imagine her first evening: indirect light on the large slabs, a mirror that doubles the room, and not one object in her way. As a guide for manoeuvring space: about 70 to 80 centimetres should remain free in front of the WC and vanity unit so that you can move comfortably.

In the end the bathroom was not larger. It was simply empty enough at last to show its size.

What is better avoided in small bathrooms

Some ideas sound like a gain in space and have the opposite effect. These are the points we often see:

1. Many small shelves: Every shelf, basket and hook creates visual unrest. Closed storage is better.
2. Shower curtain: It divides the room and looks heavy. A glass screen is the better solution.
3. Borders and changes of pattern: They cut up the wall and make the room feel lower.
4. Tiles that are too small with dark grout: The grid of joints becomes the dominant pattern.
5. Furniture on legs without purpose: A base cabinet on legs offers less storage than a floating one with drawers.
6. Only one central ceiling light: It leaves corners dark and the mirror shadowy.

If you are planning an even smaller bathroom or a guest WC, you will find further tips in the article on the guest WC. Many of the principles, incidentally, also apply to the kitchen, as the article Thinking big in a small kitchen shows.

At Richard Atelier we plan small bathrooms as carefully as large ones, often more carefully, because every centimetre counts. The made-to-measure vanity unit and the mirror cabinet are built by our own joinery Tischlerkultur, in the Viennese tradition since 1935, and you speak to one person from the first sketch to the last silicone joint. You can find insights into our work on the pages bathroom renovation and references.