Small Bathroom Remodel Ideas That Add Value

A small bathroom is the one room where people figure the remodel ought to be cheap and easy, because there's not much of it. Less square footage, less money, right? Not always. A small bath has all the same parts as a big one packed into a tighter space, and that tightness is exactly what makes the choices matter. The good news is you don't need a big room to get a great bathroom. You just have to spend on the right things and leave the rest alone.

Here's where I'd put the money.

Make it feel bigger without moving a wall

You usually can't make a small bath actually bigger without tearing into the rest of the house, and that gets expensive fast. But you can make it feel a lot bigger with the right moves.

Light, real and fake. A small dark bathroom feels like a closet. A small bright one feels open. Light walls and light floors bounce what light you've got. Good lighting at the vanity and overhead does more for the feel of a small room than almost anything else.

Bigger tile, fewer grout lines. It seems backwards, but larger tiles make a small floor look bigger, because your eye sees fewer lines chopping it up. A floor covered in tiny tile and a hundred grout lines reads busy and small. Run the same tile up a shower wall and you stretch the room further.

Glass instead of a curtain or a frame. A clear glass shower enclosure lets your eye see all the way to the back wall, so the room reads as one space instead of a room with a box in the corner. A shower curtain or a heavy framed door cuts the room in half visually. Frameless glass costs more, but in a small bath it's one of the best dollars you'll spend on feel.

A floating vanity. A vanity mounted to the wall with open floor underneath shows more of the floor, and more visible floor makes the room feel bigger. It also makes mopping easy. People love them, and they don't cost much more than a standard cabinet.

Storage that doesn't eat the room

Small bathrooms never have enough storage, and the wrong fix is a big clunky cabinet that eats the floor. The trick is going into the walls and up.

A recessed niche in the shower, framed into the wall cavity, gives you a spot for bottles without a single thing sticking out. A medicine cabinet recessed into the wall instead of hung on it does the same. Tall and narrow beats short and wide when floor space is tight. Use the vertical room. You've got more of it than you think.

What's worth it, and what isn't

I tell people the same thing every time. Spend where it shows and where it protects the house. Skip the rest.

Worth it: the shower done right, with the waterproofing under it done properly. Good tile and a real tile setter. Frameless or clean glass. A decent vanity and faucet you touch every day. Lighting. These are what you see and use and what holds up.

Usually not worth it in a small bath: a fancy soaking tub you'll rarely use that swallows half the room. Top-of-the-line everything when mid-grade looks the same in a small space. Heated floors and the like are nice, but they're a want, not a need, and in a tight budget I'd put that money into the waterproofing first. Speaking of which, here's why that buried layer matters more than the tile on top: why bathroom waterproofing is the part you can't see.

The layout, and the plumbing trap

Here's the honest warning, and it's the one that surprises people most. In a small bathroom, moving the plumbing gets pricey fast, and the room is so tight that people are always tempted to move it.

Every fixture, the toilet, the sink, the shower, sits where it sits because of the drain lines under the floor and in the walls. Slide the toilet four feet to the other wall and that's a lot more than moving a toilet. You're rerouting drain and vent lines, opening up the floor, and in a slab home that can mean cutting into concrete. In a small room, the percentage of your whole budget that goes to that one move is brutal, because the room was supposed to be the cheap one.

Sometimes the new layout is worth it and I'll tell you so. But a lot of the time, the smart play in a small bath is to keep the fixtures roughly where they are and spend that plumbing money on finishes and a better shower instead. You get a far better-looking bathroom for the same dollars. For the full picture on what drives a bath price, here's the breakdown: what a bathroom remodel really costs in Tampa Bay.

What it runs

A small bath isn't automatically a small bill, because the labor for tile, plumbing, and waterproofing is similar whether the room is big or small. You're paying for skilled work in a tight space.

General band, not a quote on your house:

A small bath remodel keeping the existing layout (new shower or tub-to-shower, tile, vanity, fixtures, lighting): generally $8,000 to $15,000

Move the plumbing or change the footprint and that number climbs, for the reasons above.

My honest take

In a small bathroom, restraint is what makes it look expensive. Pick a few good things and do them right. Light it well, open it up with glass and bigger tile, keep the plumbing where it is, and put your money into the shower and the waterproofing. A small bath done with that kind of focus looks better and adds more to the house than a big one done halfway.

One next step. Planning a small bathroom in the greater Tampa Bay area? Tell us about your project. Tell us the bath, what you're picturing, and where you are, and we'll let you know honestly whether we're the right fit. We take on a few jobs at a time so each one's done right.