How to add a touch of style to the smallest room in the house
Our transformation of the downstairs cloakroom.
When I first joined Substack, I “bulk-copied” a selection of blogs I’d written for my website over to this new, exciting platform.
Not really knowing what I was doing, I felt, as a new “writer” I needed to have a sufficient level of content to entice people to follow my weekly posts.
However, with little or no followers at the time, a number of posts I’ve written have gotten “lost” amongst the buzz of Substack and are now hidden behind the paywall.
With that in mind, I’ve decided to trawl through the archive and update some of my original posts, which I believe deserve a little more airtime, and hopefully get seen by more than just the 27 people who saw the original post!
My first post I felt deserved resurrecting is how we transformed our downstairs cloakroom, which is quite literally the smallest room ever.
It can be really challenging updating a very small room in your home, often requiring some creative thinking.
Back in lockdown (doesn’t that seem a lifetime ago?), we decided to redesign our downstairs cloakroom, which is a measly 2sqm; there’s not even enough room to “swing a cat” (not that I encourage anyone to swing cats around)!
What didn’t help is that the door opened inwards, making it even more difficult as you had to navigate trying to walk into the cloakroom, without: (i). catching yourself on the door as you tried to close it behind you, or (ii). risk knocking yourself out if the door hit into the handbasin.
Hopefully the photo below gives you an idea of what we had to contend with.
The room is so small it’s virtually impossible to get a picture of the full space.
The first step was to maximise what space we had by reversing the door so it would open outwards rather than inwards.
For the actual design of the cloakroom, I wanted to keep it clean and clutter free.
Sourcing a new “compact” hand basin with an integrated towel rail from Lusso Stone was the perfect solution. The standard dimensions of the Art Stone Resin Hand Basin were too big for this space, so Lusso Stone made the hand basin to our specific requirements, which was perfect.
Keeping the overall design relatively simple with a monochrome colour palette, we created a feature wall using white metro tiles in a herringbone pattern with contrasting black grout (which our tiler wasn’t too happy about). We also chose Ca’Pietra Navajo Charcoal Encaustic tiles for that added wow factor.
One of the benefits of working in a small room is that you don’t need as many floor (or wall) tiles, so you can justify choosing something a little extra special, if budget allows!
Just because you’re designing a small room doesn’t mean any less attention should be spent on the overall aesthetics of the space.
Replacing the original standard toilet with a modern, sleek design has made the space feel much bigger, which I believe is also helped with the tiled feature wall.
Even though it was an additional expense, it was money well spent having the basin modified to our own specific dimensions to maximise what little space we have in this corner.
That, along with the combined towel rail, has made a huge difference. The finishing touch is the super slim radiator, now positioned on the wall, rather than having the pipes come up from the floor.
Hopefully, I’ve been able to share a few tips that you find helpful.
If you have a problematic room in your house and could use some help on how to maximise the space please drop me a message and book in for a FREE consultation.
For those of you following my “The Bathroom Diaries” series, there won’t be a post this Sunday, as the builders haven’t been on-site. However, roof trusses are due to be delivered later today, so hopefully, I’ll have more to share in next weeks post.
It’s the other half’s birthday this weekend, so I’m hoping we can get out and spend some time together that doesn’t involve making arrangements for the extension or talking about the extension.
Until then have a great week.
Please do tap on the heart 🤎 if you have enjoyed reading this post, a comment or re-stack click helps even more with visibility in getting my work shared with more readers 😊.
Love what you did to this space Sonya. I also have a tiny cloakroom & got funky floor tiles, which I’m so pleased I did. Look forward to your next post about the main bathroom 👍🏻