Bathroom Remodeling - Maximizing Your Space
Few spaces in the home are as personal, and as practical, as the bathroom. Besides the obvious necessity, bathrooms are a place to wind down with a soak after a long day and the same place we go to get going in the morning.
Serving so many functions, and often needing to accommodate multiple individuals, makes bathroom design a challenge. But it's also an opportunity for tailoring what is often the smallest room in the house to suit some of the most important needs.
The first challenge is often size. So, we must get creative to maximize the space available. Few of us have the chance to build a bathroom as large as we might want. Even in new home construction, cost often limits how much space can be allotted to the bathroom. But there are usually many pockets of wasted space that can be used to open up floor space and add elbow room.
Depending on the height and size of the bathroom, consider building your medicine cabinets into the wall, shelves can also be partially built into the wall. These shelves are often placed at chest or chin height in high traffic areas. Consider moving them higher to create a more open feeling and more elbow space. Use these shelves to free up counter space for makeup application, shaving and so on. 
Another way to make a smaller bathroom feel bigger is in paint selection. A small bathroom should never be painted a dark color. Choose a light, airy color and low profile ceiling light fixtures that provide plenty of light.
The shower door gives another opportunity to increase the size perception of a small bathroom. Use a clear shower door to open up a small bathroom by allowing the space of the shower to become part of the room.
The second challenge is cost which is almost always a limiting factor, but there are two ways to maximize your dollars.
You can select higher quality materials and accept a higher initial outlay. The longer use will make the average cost per year the same as using cheaper materials with a shorter life span.
If that's not feasible, plan the design so that lower quality materials can be easily replaced every couple of years. TIP: Lay linoleum in a roll and secure with colored,
If you choose to use lower quality materials, one benefit besides the lower initial cost is the ability to redo your bathroom as your tastes and style changes. But, whatever option you choose, don't scrimp on the cost or installation effort for smaller, but important, fixtures. A noisy fan will quickly become an annoyance. Lights that don't sit at the right angle or provide harsh illumination will produce frustration every time they're used.
Make sure you allocate enough percentage of the budget for quality shower components. Shower heads, knobs and behind-the-wall valves, don't last forever and will lead to leaks and more frequent replacement. A small behind-the-tile pipe leak can lead to hundreds of dollars in repair costs, increased insect invasion and weeks without a shower.
Consider heating options. For the first time in decades electrical heating is more cost-effective than gas, especially for small, confined spaces like bathrooms. And the odds are it will stay that way for some time to come. If you're planning a floor tile replacement, try freeing up the floor space that the out-dated space heater is taking up, and install radiant under-floor heating.
Several different styles are available, some as easy as rolling a thin sheet of material lined with wiring or mesh that connects to the house electrical system. They're safe and, since heat rises, help to take away not only that cold floor tile but warm the entire bathroom for pennies per day.
There are many ways to maximize the space in your bathroom and make it as comfortable as possible. Start creating the personal space that gives you the ideal place to soak your cares away today!
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