Small Bathroom Remodeling

Most bathrooms in the older housing stock around Essex and Union County are between 35 and 50 square feet: a tub or shower at one end, a toilet, a small vanity, and a door that leaves you turning sideways. That was normal when these houses were built and it is what we work with most weeks.

The good news is that small bathrooms respond well to remodeling. Because every surface is close to every other surface, changes that would be minor in a large room are transformative here.

What actually makes a small bathroom feel larger

Almost none of it is square footage.

Clear glass instead of a curtain or a frosted door. The single biggest change. A shower curtain divides a small room into two smaller rooms. A clear panel lets you see the far wall, so the eye reads the whole space at once.

Show the floor. A wall-mounted or pedestal vanity with visible floor underneath makes the room feel larger than a full-height cabinet occupying the same footprint. It also makes the floor easier to clean.

Tile to the ceiling. Stopping tile partway up creates a horizontal line that cuts the wall in half. Carrying it up removes the break and draws the eye vertically.

Continuous floor. Running the same floor into the hall with no threshold strip makes both spaces read as one. In a curbless shower, the same tile through the shower does the same thing.

Fewer, larger tiles. Large-format wall tile has fewer grout lines and less visual noise, which reads as calmer and bigger. It does need a flat substrate.

A big mirror. Wall to wall above the vanity, not a small framed one. It doubles the apparent depth of the room.

Light that reaches the corners. A single ceiling fixture leaves the edges dark, which makes a room feel like a box. Sconces at the mirror plus a recessed light in the shower changes the whole feel.

Fixture choices that buy back space

Vanity. A 24-inch vanity instead of a 30-inch one returns half a foot of floor to the room, and that six inches is often the difference between a door that swings freely and one that does not. A wall-mounted unit needs blocking in the wall, installed at rough-in.

Toilet. A round bowl saves about two inches of projection over an elongated one. A wall-hung toilet with an in-wall carrier saves considerably more and puts the tank inside the wall, but it needs a wall deep enough to take the carrier, which usually means building out a section.

Shower. Converting a tub alcove to a shower in the same 60-by-30 footprint does not change the floor area at all but transforms how the room reads, especially with a glass panel. See tub-to-shower conversion.

Door. A door swinging into a small bathroom sterilizes several square feet. Rehanging it to swing out, or converting to a pocket door where the wall allows, recovers that space entirely. A pocket door needs a stud bay clear of plumbing and wiring, so it is not always possible.

Storage in a room with none

Small bathrooms usually have no storage at all, and adding it means using depth that is already there.

• Recessed medicine cabinet. Four inches of depth between the studs, free, and far more useful than a surface-mounted one.
• Shower niche. Also between studs, and it removes the caddy hanging off the shower arm.
• Drawers rather than a door in the vanity. A single cabinet with a P-trap through the middle is mostly unusable volume.
• Over-toilet shelving or a cabinet, which uses vertical space nothing else wants.
• A tall narrow cabinet in a corner, twelve inches wide, holding more than you expect.
• A recessed toilet paper holder, which sounds trivial and stops you clipping the holder with your knee every time.

Ventilation matters more in a small room

A small bathroom fills with steam faster and holds it longer than a large one. An undersized or absent fan means moisture sits on the surfaces, and the consequences show up as peeling paint, mold in the ceiling corner and, over time, damage in the walls.

The fan should be sized for the room, ducted to the outside, and ideally on a humidity sensor or timer. In a room this small it is one of the cheapest components and one of the most consequential.

What we would not recommend

A few things get suggested for small bathrooms that we would push back on.

A corner shower. A neo-angle corner unit looks space-efficient on a plan and is genuinely unpleasant to use, because the usable interior is much smaller than the footprint suggests. A rectangular shower in an alcove is nearly always better.

Very dark finishes on every surface. A dark small bathroom can look excellent, and it needs considerably more light than people plan for. If the lighting budget is not there, it will just be dark.

A vessel sink on a small vanity. It raises the effective counter height and eats the usable counter area, which in a small bathroom is already almost nothing.

Skipping the glass to save money. The glass panel is the change that makes the room feel bigger. If something has to come out of the budget, take it from the tile instead.

What drives the cost

• Whether plumbing moves. Keeping fixtures in place is the biggest saving available.
• Hidden damage, which is as likely in a small room as a large one.
• Tile selection and how high it goes.
• Glass, which is a fixed cost that does not scale down with room size.
• Recessed items (niches, medicine cabinet, in-wall carrier) each requiring framing work.
• Door changes, particularly a pocket door.
• Ventilation and lighting upgrades.

Related work

Most small bathroom projects involve a tub-to-shower conversion and end up as a walk-in shower. If the whole room is coming out, see full bathroom remodeling.

Small bathrooms across our service area

Compact hall bathrooms are the norm in Irvington, East Orange, Orange, Hillside and Elizabeth. See all service areas or return to bathroom remodeling.

Every town has its own bathroom remodeling page covering the housing there and what it means for a project. See the full service area.