Bathroom Paint Colors are Baffling

Since you're reading this article, you've probably discovered that picking paint colors is extremely difficult, especially for a bathroom (not to mention the types of paint finishes). With hundreds of colors to choose from, you might be inclined to stick with a safe bathroom paint color like blue or beige.

This is a bathroom remodeling project my handyman business did for a customer. As the client traveled a lot, we worked with a decorator to help them pick colors quickly. The customer wanted blue, and with the help of the decorator, he picked a sky blue. However, bathrooms can be baffling, and even with the help of a decorator, the most careful planning doesn't always work.

A Bathroom Paint Emergency

One of the most important things to remember when choosing a bathroom paint color is to test your paint colors and view them often before making a final decision. This is important because many bathrooms don't get natural sunlight and paint colors look very different between morning and night, and in natural versus artificial light.

For this customer, we were on a tight schedule to remodel not one, but two bathrooms. The customer was focused on closing his new condo and he knew he wanted to update both bathrooms. We had an insane number of design decisions to make and only 90 days to get everything done – everyone was relieved to have an interior decorator on the team.

Step 1: The Design Board

Our decorator put together a design board after walking through the new condo with our customer. During the walkthrough, the customer said he wanted one of the bathrooms to be blue (a “safe” color, I know). The design board provided several neutrals (beige – another “safe” color) along with a recommended blue. This blue was one the decorator had seen in other bathrooms. This was important because, as stated before, even the best lit bathrooms can have be pretty sketchy when it comes to paint. Because the decorator had already seen this color in multiple bathrooms in different kinds of light, they were better able to judge how this color blue would look in our client's bathroom.

Step 2: Getting to Work

The tile floor went in followed by the wainscoting, both in neutral colors. We painted one short wall, then moved the new vanity, countertop, and sink into place. This was a great way to see all of the colors coming together. All of our hard work was stopped dead in its tracks when we got an email…

“We have a small color emergency at the condo. The blue we all chose for the second floor bathroom is not working at all in there. It looks more like battleship gray when you see it on the wall and it takes all the light and cheer out of the beadboard and the tiles and clashes with the vanity top. I think we should be looking at a far lighter color and probably not a blue. I left the color wheel in the bathroom for you to look at.”

Step 3: Dealing with It

Lots of phone calls followed this email. Our decorator added different shower curtains and other decorating elements to simulate a furnished bathroom and support rethinking the bathroom color. We painted the back wall with the “proposed new color” and you can see new yellow won.

Unless you're in the 1% (and maybe even then, I'm not entirely sure what the bathrooms of the super-rich look like), bathrooms are small. If you don't use neutral colors, the decorating elements you use will influence the overall feeling of the bathroom. In this customer's bathroom, the granite countertop was a warm, rich brown, and it simply did not work with the blue.

After we emailed the follow-up photos to our client, we got the following email:

“I think the new color looks great. Let's get that bathroom wrapped up. Thanks everyone.”

Getting ready to remodel a bathroom? Here are some related articles you might find helpful:

• Bathroom Tile: Chair Rail, Below & Above Rail
• Building a Color Pallet Based on Your Tile
• Roles Along a Bathroom Remodeling Timeline
• Freestanding Bathtubs – What Do You Like Best?
• … and we've got lots of bathroom photos on Pinterest.

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