How to increase space in a small bathroom. How to visually expand the bathroom space? The role of color scheme in the design of a small bathroom

Equipment made from translucent materials is guaranteed to increase the volume of your bathroom. Once you hang a translucent or transparent cabinet, install the same washbasin, make the ceiling and walls light, you will see that the area of ​​the room has visually increased.

IN small room Avoid using furniture in intense dark colors. Use a range of cold tones - they visually push objects away. By the way, thanks to this you can hide design flaws. For example, hide electrical wires on the ceiling.

Horizontal stripes of a glazed tile pattern can also visually expand a room. However, remember that it should not be wide. The maximum is the width of one tile, and a small one at that.

Using tiles different shades can visually increase the space. But you shouldn’t lay out patterns - this will reduce it. There is also no need to use products with expressive texture.

Vertical stripes will make the space appear higher - this is an axiom for any designer. Use them as an optical illusion in a bathroom with a low ceiling. Illusionist painting will give the impression of depth.

But such effects are best done by specialists, because patterns and colors must be selected very carefully. Otherwise, the opposite result may occur. And instead of a visually high ceiling, you will get an even lower one.

Small bathrooms that accommodate only the essentials are considered characteristic features modern standard buildings. The desire to expand the bathroom area often leads to attempts to do this at the expense of adjacent rooms or by combining it with a toilet.

At the same time, there is a well-known method that allows us to quite simply (without redrawing the area) solve the question that worries us about how to visually enlarge a bathroom.

This issue can be solved by using special methods to artificially increase the visually perceived volume of the bathroom through the use of the following techniques:

• using materials of appropriate texture and color to decorate walls and ceilings;
• proper layout of plumbing and auxiliary equipment;
• using specially selected lighting.

Decoration of walls and ceilings

When choosing facing materials for bathroom renovations, used for finishing the walls and ceiling of the bathroom, you must consider the following:

• the success of solving the question of how to visually enlarge the bathroom largely depends on the design of the walls of the room;
• It is usually possible to achieve a visible increase in the volume of a room only by using light-colored finishes;
• the use of dark tones in decoration usually leads to the opposite effect.

Based on this, light-colored ceramic tiles are usually chosen for tiling a bathroom; Moreover, the use of mosaics for these purposes significantly enhances the effect.

It is sometimes possible to “raise” the ceiling visually by the most in unusual ways. So, you can make it mirrored or decorate it with spotlights small size. A good effect can be achieved by finishing the ceiling “under the starry sky”.

Selection of plumbing

The choice of plumbing equipment for small bathrooms should be made with special care. Proper arrangement of mini-plumbing fixtures and the use of special miniature furniture will allow you to unload the room to some extent and create a feeling of increased free space.

For this purpose, you can install, for example, a miniature sink, the dimensions of which are approximately half the size of standard sinks.

You also need to critically evaluate everything that is usually filled with an ordinary bathroom. Design experts advise adhering to the following rules:

1. Only the most necessary things should be kept in sight - other items ( household chemicals, for example) it is better to put them in lockers specially designated for them.
2. If necessary, you can transfer washing machine from the bathroom to the kitchen.
3. Be sure to take advantage of the space directly above the toilet - this area is perfect for placing a small toilet cabinet.

Using special lighting

As noted earlier, using spotlights with a rich luminous flux in the bathroom will allow you to visually increase its volume. Another lighting option you can choose is to place several small lamps in the bathroom area, above the mirror and above the sink. In addition, it is recommended

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We will tell you how to visually increase the space of the bathroom and place all the necessary things in it.

Visually enlarging the space is not so difficult. The main thing is to follow a few rules. Our tips will help you achieve the desired effect.

1. “No” to dark tones!

Light colors visually make any room larger, so when decorating a bathroom you should not use dark shades. This does not mean that the entire room needs to be made white. Beige, pale pink, light blue tones are also suitable. At the same time, you can harmoniously combine different colors, just avoid sharp contrasts and overly saturated shades.

2. Shelves and furniture blinds

The space under the bathtub and walls can be converted into places for storing necessary things, in particular cosmetics. While a man can often get by with just shampoo, shower gel, and pre- and post-shave creams, women often organize entire warehouses with cosmetics in their bathrooms.

Of course, we can’t wash our hair with shampoo alone. You need a conditioner balm, a mask, and a vitamin serum... And it’s better to have at least 2 such sets, because the same cosmetics quickly get boring.

Install furniture blinds in the bathroom that will hide your numerous jars of cosmetics from the eyes of her husband. After all, there’s no point in upsetting him once again because you spent half your salary on cosmetics again.

3. Glossy furniture and mirrors

A shiny surface perfectly reflects light, visually enlarging the space, so for a small bathroom it is better to purchase glossy furniture.

Mirrors also help to “pull apart” walls. Don't limit yourself to just one mirror, which is usually hung above the sink. For example, make a ceiling from a glossy material that will reflect the elements of the room.

Do not place bulky items on the floor. The drawer under the sink is not the best rational decision. Even if you hide a lot of things in it, you will no longer be able to move normally in the bathroom: you will have to walk around the box all the time. As a result, you will get the impression that the room is even smaller than it actually is.

Mount a tabletop made of durable material (artificial stone) and install the sink on it. And now your bathroom no longer seems so small!

5. Shower instead of bath

If you only like to take a shower and can easily do without a bath, install a shower stall. It will take up much less space.

6. Matching tiles

Many people prefer to use tiles as bathroom decoration. Choosing finishing material, remember to avoid large patterns and ornaments. Light tiles with a small or barely noticeable pattern will make the room more spacious.

7. Keep it simple

Fine accessories, gilded cabinet doors and other bells and whistles are not very appropriate in a small bathroom. They will focus on the poor square meters X. It’s better to arrange the room simply, but tastefully: for example, in a minimalist style.

Take a bath or shower in comfort!

A meter to the right, a meter and a half to the left - unfortunately, thousands of tenants still have to put up with this layout of bathrooms. And this tightness sometimes causes not only physical, but also purely psychological inconvenience. Therefore even professional designers are constantly looking for new techniques to visually enlarge the bathroom. The main task is to eliminate the “stone bag” effect, but at the same time maintain maximum ergonomics of the room, so that all the necessary devices and objects are at arm’s length.

There are many ways in which you can visually expand a small bathroom. Firstly, a lot depends on color combinations and the selection of lighting. Secondly, it is convenient to model the space in the bathroom with the help of mirrors - after all, they must be there. Thirdly, it will do its job comfortable furniture, which by default will fall into “its” place and will not “absorb” extra square meters.

So, let's look at the popular methods in more detail. visual expansion bathroom

Colors and paints: insidious and magical

The darker the color, the more it “conceals” space or volume. The lighter it is, the more successful it works in reverse side, that is, it enlarges and expands. This rule is well known to any designer.

Critical options:

bright and rich colors - red, orange, crimson and others;

dark and gloomy tones;

contrasting combinations - for example, a bathroom in black and white will look good only if there is enough space in it. The same can be said about other contrasts.

Wall decoration

The most economical material for wall decoration in a small bathroom is plastic panels, which are mounted end-to-end and create the illusion of a complete, even coating. Also appropriate ceramic tiles, preferably medium size. Too small or large tile masonry can provoke optical disproportions in space due to the grout being too clearly visible at the seams.

plain texture;

smooth matte or glossy finish;

horizontal or vertical stripes as decoration or masonry technique (the former help to visually expand the room, the latter - to stretch it vertically). Of course, you need to give preference to either the first or the second, depending on the specific tasks.

Critical options:

Ceiling finishing

In small bathrooms, the feeling of crampedness often arises due to too much space. low ceiling. In fact, it is impossible to raise it above its level, but visually - please. Fashion trends and advanced technologies will come to the rescue.

suspended ceilings with a shiny surface. On the one hand, when installing them you will have to “steal” a few more centimeters of height from the cramped space. On the other hand, the end result will be a very attractive sight - you yourself will stop noticing that the ceiling is actually low;

suspended ceilings with a glossy surface - ideally they should be white;

mirrored ceilings - they can be treated differently, but they significantly increase small rooms, especially in height.

Critical options:

Plumbing

It is clear that you cannot install a large and comfortable bathtub in a small bathroom, and here it is not even a matter of visual problems, but a simple lack of space. But you still want the plumbing to be comfortable.

Critical options:

baths square shapes, including sedentary ones, they still won’t provide you with comfortable swimming;

models of toilets with installations;

using the sides of the bathtub instead of shelves - you should not place bottles of shampoos, jars of scrubs, etc. on them.

Furniture

Many owners of cramped bathrooms are hesitant to include pieces of furniture in their interior, believing that this will only aggravate the situation. In fact, well-chosen furniture helps organize the space.

Critical options:

various cabinets, including under the sink - you can do without this piece of furniture, and use the space under the washbasin to install a washing machine;

closed cabinets and shelves - it is better to replace them with models without doors.

When you need renovate a small bathroom, you'll likely want the result to be a practical space that looks larger than it actually is. There are many different factors that influence the perception of the size of a space, but in this article we will focus on the color of the walls. Is it possible to increase or decrease the perceived size of a bathroom just by using one wall color? We decided to test this using a virtual space modeling program.

To do this, we contacted the company Santa Ceramica and asked her to do several small bathroom interiors for us with tiles of different sizes and colors. The comparison results are in front of you.

So, the initial data: a bathroom measuring 1.6x1.7 meters and a height of 2.5 meters. As you can see, the bathroom is small, the total size is 2.72 square meters. For laying on the walls, tiles of 4 sizes were successively used: 10x10 cm, 20x20 cm, 20x50 cm and 40x85 cm in the same colors: white, green, brown and black. The laying seam was 1.5 mm. We decided to experiment with tiles different sizes, to exclude the influence of size on color, and see what effect the shade of the tile produces for all size options - from small to large tiles. It is generally believed that a light color increases space, while a dark color reduces it. Let's start checking.

1) 10x10 cm tiles in a small bathroom. Which color should I choose?

Let's say you want to lay tiles small size, 10x10 cm. Let's compare white and green tiles (hereinafter, the view of the bathroom from the door)

Which bathroom looks better? Probably white, although the difference is not that fundamental. Let's compare with a darker color - for example, brown.

Here the difference is already more obvious. A white bathroom looks more spacious than a brown one. Let's darken the color even more - let it be a black tile 10x10 cm.

Yes, the result is obvious. In black, the bathroom looks much smaller (and the furniture is white and gray, imagine what it would be like without it). Now let's complicate the experiment. It is quite possible that you do not want to make a bathroom in one color. Let's try making the bathroom floor a different color than the walls.

With a brown floor, the bathroom certainly looks a little more lively. But visually, unfortunately, it decreases a little. Of course, it still looks bigger than the completely brown version.

So, if you love a dark color so much but aren't willing to sacrifice much space, using a dark floor is a bit of a compromise. Here's an interior for green tiles with brown floors

Again, visually the size has decreased slightly. As for lovers of white and black bathroomsah, let's see what happens,if our bathroom floor turns from brown to black.

To be honest, the difference is quite strong. It turns out that after all, dark floors visually reduce space. We suggest you think a few times before installing subflooring in a small bathroom. However, there is good news. If you're a big fan of dark colors and still want to make your small bathroom dark, there's a way to make it look a little bigger. In exactly the same way that a dark floor reduces the area of ​​a light bathroom, so a light floor increases the area of ​​a dark bathroom. Here's an example

A room with a white floor looks larger. If you really want to make dark walls, then if you use a light floor, the final size of the bathroom will seem a little larger. Of course, a reasonable question arises - what to choose in this case? Dark walls and light floors or light walls and dark floor? Let's see.

I don’t want to upset those who love the dark, but still, light walls + a dark background give a little more space than dark walls + a light floor. How more contrast difference between two colors, the more obvious it is. Control check - white and brown tile combination:

Again, light walls win (although the difference is slightly smaller).

So, for a small tile (in in this case 10x10 cm) it turns out that light colors expand the space, and dark colors reduce it. This rule also applies in the case of partial use of light/dark colors: adding a dark color to bright interior makes it visually a little smaller, and adding light to dark interior makes it a little bigger. Let's see what happens with other tile sizes.

2) 20x20 tiles in a small bathroom. What color tiles make the space look bigger?

Let's check the 20x20 cm format tiles. Let's start with light shades: white and green.

As with the 10x10 cm tiles, the green version may look a little smaller, although the difference is not so fundamental. Let's check out the black tile.

The rule continues to work. A white bathroom looks larger than a black one even with 20x20 cm tiles. (During the rendering, the laying of the tiles shifted slightly, but this did not change the essence). Will a light floor make our small bathroom look bigger?

Expanded. If the walls are darker, it will also expand:

How great! Or maybe the use of white flooring in itself is so good,that it doesn’t matter what color the walls are? Maybe it’s the floor that will determine what size our bathroom will look like, and the rest isn’t important?

The answer is a bit ambiguous. It all depends on the difference between the shades. If you remember, in the first part, where there were 10x10 cm tiles, we compared an all-brown bathroom and a brown bathroom with a white floor. The bathroom with white flooring definitely wins in size. These two pictures above show a green bathroom. wins the brown one, but not with a huge advantage. This is because the difference in brightness between green and brown bathrooms is not huge. If we replace brown walls to black, the difference will increase. See:

The black bathroom in the picture looks less green, even despite the same white floor. Therefore, if you are choosing between two colors of similar brightness, give preference to the shade that you like best and do not think about the visual effect. And if the choice is between distant shades (for example, light blue and deep brown), then the lighter of the two will make your bathroom more spacious.

Now let's complicate the input data again. Which bathroom will appear wider: green with green floors or brown with white floors?

The answer is even more vague. We think that a green bathroom looks wider, but, of course, a brown one is greatly helped by the presence of a white floor. (Just in case, let’s repeat once again - it’s not the green color, but its brightness. In our pictures we use a fairly light green tile, so it wins over the brown one. Instead of green, you could have used blue or pink with the same success). If we had taken an even lighter green, the left bathroom would have won the competition, but if we had taken a darker green, the result would not have been at all obvious.

Enough with 20x20 tiles, everything seems clear. Let's look at something rectangular. bigger size.

3) 20x50 tiles in a small bathroom. Which tile to choose to increase space?

We continue the experiment with 20x50 cm tiles. Let's start with a standard combination - white and medium-light (in this case green) tiles

The white tile won by a small margin. In order not to torment you with repetitions, we’ll say right away that all the darker shades looked even smaller. Does a light floor expand the space?

Expands. The same will happen with the rest of the colors. Now let's do something new. Previously, we only changed the color of the floor, but you can also play with the color of the walls? Who said that a wall can only be one color? Let's put a light stripe along the walls and take a look. what will happen:

The bathroom miraculously expanded a little. So. What if we put in a light floor?

What happens if you put a darker stripe in a light bathroom?

Maybe. It became a little prettier, but we lost a little in size. A little - because the stripe was still quite light. Let's make it darker.

The dark stripe made the light room appear smaller than the light one. What if we add a dark floor?

The bathroom began to seem even smaller. Pay attention to this, this option for laying tiles is quite popular: light and dark colors on the wall, dark floor... If this is not important for a large bath, then for a small one it can visually take away much-needed millimeters. Here's a look at the difference between a white bathroom and a bathroom with a black stripe and black floor:

If you still want to combine light with dark, reduce the contrast of the second color and put a light floor. For example, a brown stripe instead of a black one will cause less damage to the dimensions:

And even lighter - even smaller

In any case, it is also important to consider the size of your stripe. If it's large and dark, it will likely make the space feel smaller for a small bathroom. If it is large and bright, and even the bathroom is large, the result can be completely different.

A digression on the design of large and small bathrooms:

Either way, consider the total amount of light versus the total amount of darker. What, for example, is better: a darker bathroom with a light stripe or a very light bathroom with more dark stripe? It seems that in the first case the light stripe should expand, and in the second case the dark stripe should reduce it?

That’s right, but since the total amount of white is higher in the right picture, this small bathroom wins in size, it seems more spacious. The more light it is, the more likely it is that your bathroom will look bigger.

Now let's move on to the tiles large sizes

4) Tiles 40.5x80 cm in a small bathroom. Which color should I choose?

Many people are afraid to lay large tiles in small spaces. Whether this can be done or not, and what the effect will be, we will consider in a separate article. Now let's just look at the color.

The initial comparison is a classic one. Will the result differ depending on the tile format?

It looks like not much. The white bathroom, as usual, looks a little bigger. Let's check the brown one.

And again, as expected, the dark color of the walls visually reduced the space. Green or brown?

Lighter. Let's check the floor. Will a light floor expand the space?

It will be all right. Want to make your space bigger? No problem: let the light run

By the way, what happens if we increase the stripe size even more?

The more light the better. Visually the room has grown even a little bit larger. Of course, our green color is quite bright, so the difference is not fundamental, if we were comparing with black tiles, the difference would be much greater. Even if you compare completely green walls and green bottom - white top, the difference will be more noticeable

Let's add even more white and compare

Again, the more light, the better. The white bathroom wins.

Are you still with us? Time to take stock.

5) Conclusions. What color tiles should be placed in a small bathroom to visually increase its size?

So, when developing small bathroom design, the following factors should be considered:

Regardless of the size of the tile, tiles more light color will increase the space, and darker ones will decrease. White will maximize the visual size of the bathroom. Black color - reduce as much as possible.

If you want to combine two shades of color, then try to there was more light than dark. Also, if you are choosing between which tiles to lay on the floor- lighter or darker, choose the one that is lighter.

The more light the better. Combination dark wall+ a light floor will look smaller than light walls + a dark floor. which in turn will be inferior to the set of light walls + light floor.

If you in a small bathroom you want to combine several colors of tiles, try to choose light ones(for example, white - light blue, white - light green, two light beige, peach - vanilla, etc.). A combination of two light colors will look more spacious than light and dark (beige-dark brown, white-black, white-violet, etc.)

If you want to let strip (decor, border) around the perimeter of a small room, make a preference for more light shade . otherwise the strip will reduce the space.