European Cottage Guest Bath Reveal

Last spring, I participated in the one room challenge to design our guest bathroom and recently realized that I never wrote a follow up post with the final reveal. In case you were wondering…we did in fact finish the project (ha!) and it turned out really beautiful I think 🙂 I’m excited to share the final product with you, sources*, a behind the scenes look into my design process, and what I would do differently next time.

When coming up with concepts for this guest bath, I found myself circling back to bathroom inspiration with terracotta tiles and I could not get it out of my head. I knew I had to incorporate it somehow! The space is small, so I needed a smaller format tile, and I was pleased to find a terracotta tile that was only 2”x2” from my favorite tile shop – Bedrosians Tile & Stone. Once I finalized the tile selection, selecting the rest of the details to play off the warmth and earthiness of the terracotta was relatively easy! The result was European Cottage old-world charm vibes with modern touches and I really love how it turned out 🙂

Design Selections & Retrospective:

Tile: Overall, the tile selections are my favorite part of this space! One bit of advice for installing ceramic and porcelain tiles is to make sure to use an impregnating or penetrating sealer prior to grouting, or a grout release. Sealer will help keep your tiles cleaner longer and protect from day-to-day wear, and grout release helps to protect the surface from grout stains.

Floor Tile:

Makoto 2″ Round Matte Porcelain Mosaic Tile in Umi Terracotta
LATICRETE Marble Beige Grout

Shower / Bath Tile:

Bedrosians Cloe 2.5” x 8” Ceramic Tile in Creme
LATICRETE Marble Beige Grout
No spacers vertically, ¼” spacer horizontally

Glass bathtub door: My husband was very anti-glass door simply because he thought it would be difficult to reach the kids while bathing them. I somewhat agreed and understood his concern, however I also didn’t want to hide the beautiful shower tile with a curtain so I decided to go for it anyway(…and of course accept the consequences if I was wrong lol!) So, would I do it again? 100% Yes! While having a completely open space would definitely be easier to bathe the kids, I can still get it done with the current setup, and can slide the glass shut when they start to splash to avoid a huge mess. I also personally think having a shower door is more desirable for resale purposes, and have seen a lot of clients trying to get rid of their baths all together to convert to showers.

Recessed Medicine Cabinet: Best decision ever! We needed storage for toiletries, so having a medicine cabinet mirror was a must and a great call by my husband. I made it my mission to find a pretty one that would also be hidden or recessed because “beauty + function” is my motto 😉 and I found several great options. I’ve since recommended recessed medicine cabinets to multiple clients with the same storage dilemmas and they love it as well.

Sink: We knew we needed a smaller sink for this space, but I think the scale may be a little off. So with this same set up, I would go a little bit bigger next time. It looks like the one we got was discontinued anyway, so I’m sure there are better options available!

Sink Trimscape: My original idea was to incorporate a beautiful brass trimscape kit like below since the plumbing would be exposed under the sink:

However, I waited too long to tell our contractor and the plumbing lines had already been run. The straight lines would not work with plumbing set up, so we had to use flexible water lines instead. I ended up Rub n Buffing them and I will say, they’re a pretty close match to the P-trap and other hardware so if you run into the same water line dilemma, I highly recommend Rub n Buff . Or better yet, have your trimscape selected BEFORE the plumbing is done, because I definitely prefer the look of hard straight water lines 🙂

Lighting: I love the look of the rattan sconce that I selected and the texture it adds to the space. However, our contractor hung it too high and I was not willing to pay to have it moved. Lesson learned on marking up the walls for every single fixture before installation! I also wish we would have added some recessed lighting in here since the bathroom is facing the back of the house and doesn’t get a lot of light.

Faucet and Shower Head: I chose brass faucets for warmth, and have no complaints with the ones we chose. I think they go great overall with my design, and I especially love the shape of the sink faucet which feels vintage and a little feminine to me.

Paint Color: I was going to do taupe paint in this bathroom but chickened out, and I’m so glad I did because this warm white is perfect for this space. It’s creamy with no yellow tones, which is everything I look for in my white paint. I mentioned this space doesn’t get a ton of light, so white was definitely the right call.