The moment I knew my bathroom renovation hadn’t failed me was 6: 47 AM on a Tuesday when I realised I had spent the last ten minutes under my rainfall showerhead with my eyes closed, not thinking about my to-do list or about that miserable meeting ahead. Just… breathing. Steam swirling around me, warm tile beneath my toes, listening to water pounding against rock instead of a tinny ping from a showerhead.
Sure, getting here took me three years. Three years of saving like mad on weekends editing wedding videos and living off boxed pasta during the week. Three years of browsing Pinterest boards named “Bathroom Dreams” and “Maybe Someday” full of hotel bathrooms and homes lofty enough to assume they could never actually afford them.
Those Instagram photos don’t come cheap, either. Marble countertops and vanities that sit precariously on absolutely nothing, plants you can’t kill even if your bathroom gets approximately zero natural sunlight, fluffy towels that have never touched a human body.
Mine did not start that way.
Ours was a small rectangle wallpapered in generic brightness. White subway tiles faded to grey at the grout lines. A bathtub with suspicious caulking.
One of those mint-green medicine cabinets with mirrored doors that never fully closed. Stepping into my bathroom felt something like showering in a porta-potty at a construction site every morning. It wasn’t until I had a stressful month at work that I started taking twenty-minute showers.
Three times a day. Using the bathroom as my sanctuary, except sanctuaries shouldn’t have mouldy grout or flickering fluorescent lights that make you look fifty pounds sick. Then one day I did the math.
If I’m in here roughly an hour a day (shower + brushing teeth + face routine + the occasional overwhelmed weekend bath), that’s approximately 365 hours per year I’m spending in a bathroom that straight-up depresses me. Holy crap. If I could have screamed from the rooftops, I would have done.
But instead, I stared into the fogged up bathroom mirror and started planning. Gutting the whole space would’ve been ideal, but funds didn’t allow for that level of bathroom drama. So, instead, I prioritised changes that would impact my daily experience most and tested out what felt like “splurge” versus what was purely luxury.
Number one on my list? Hands-down, that rainfall showerhead. I’d heard of them.
Mocked them. Accounted them as “too bougie for practical use” until I tried my friend’s showerhead and legit almost fell asleep standing up. Forty-eight hours later, I was at my local plumbing supply store with showerhead measurements and a mild caffeine overdose.
Installing it was half as intimidating as it sounded like it would be. (Tip: turn off water to your entire house until you feel confident, not just the bathroom. Learn from me.) But once that showerhead was hooked up to my shower arm, life would never be the same. My morning routine had begun to feel like something I powered through.
Not anymore. The second those raindrops hit my skin, I forgot about the emails waiting for me and let the showerheat wash over me. That luxury rainfall showerhead led me straight into heated floors.
Or, well, into contemplating heated floors for months. There was no question that I wanted them. But heating an entire bathroom floor for… what, ten minutes a day while I’m showering?
Did not seem worth the investment. Did not realise how often I stand outside of the shower cooled-off-to-death, scrambling to dry my feet before touching the cold tiles. Even if I sit down on the closed toilet lid to put my contacts back in post-shower, my feet still stick to the floor like a popsicle to the freezer.
Learn from me and get yourself some large-format porcelain tile that looks like natural stone but doesn’t require sealing every who-knows-how-long. We got electric radiant heating underneath and though the installation was a nightmare (all that dust, guys), and I took cold showers at the gym for two weeks, my feet have never felt better. Any plumber will tell you that lighting is easily over budgeted, but underestimated at your own peril.
That bank of fluorescents may as well blend into the shower if you’re trying to relax. We put dimmable LED lighting strips along the back wall of the mirror and hung a tiny pendant light in the tub space. Neither fixtures were groundbreaking or expensive, but allowed me to adjust the temperature and intensity of the light depending on how I needed to feel.
Bright and happy on Monday mornings. Calm and soothing for Sunday nights cuddled up in the tub with a book. Speaking of candles, I started browsing the DIY aromatherapy section at Target not long after that rainfall showerhead made its debut.
You Might Also Like
You know those wipes your baths come with? The ones that smell like trees died and wish you were relaxing in their arms? Yeah, I found a bottle of eucalyptus oil that when diffused smells basically identical.
Pop that little refillable diffuser behind the toilet (make it glamorous!) and add three drops of your favourite scent. Depending on my mood, I’ll either go for an energising essential oil like peppermint or calming like lavender. The evenings get lavender; the mornings get peppermint.
Another feature all your favourite bathroom spa posts have is greenery. Fine. Buh-bye Amazon.
Two impulse-bought succulents and a snake plant later, I know enough to realise that “low maintenance” is relative and my bathroom does not have enough light to support real plants. Enter: faux eucalyptus stems from Target that smell like a spa when your shower is steaming. Problem solved.
I cannot recommend investing in good storage enough. Every editorial bathroom has one thing in common: you don’t see a single stray bottle or tube. Life doesn’t work that way.
We have phones that we charge in the shower. Tubes of mouthwash. Back up bottles of shampoo.
Electric toothbrushes that have lives of their own. Floating shelves on the shower niche and matching glass cylinders for like items quickly solved that problem. Sure, it’s boring as hell.
But when everything has a home and looks curated vs shit littering the countertople? Magic. If you asked me last week what I wanted to change about my bathroom, I wouldn’t have mentioned the tub drain stopper.
Who cares about the thing you use to plug your bathtub, right? Right. Yet here we are.
Two months post-installation and I still can’t get over how simple life has been without losing our rubber stopper down the drain. Moral of the story: don’t sleep on the small stuff. The stops that are typically either stock clear plastic or extra $100?
Invest in those damn hinges. Yourfuture self will thank you. I can’t even put into words how this transformed my day-to-day.
If you’re spending an hour or more of your day somewhere you don’t absolutely love, you’re wasting that time. My morning self is happier, more relaxed. So are my evening routines because let’s be real: there are far too many mornings that I don’t “feel like doing my routine” but shower at night like it’s no one’s business.
Plus, all that stress over remodeling and renovations? Washed away with the first hemp bath melt I dropped into our tub. Did I spend more than most people would on a weekend getaway?
Hell yes. Has it been worth every second of planning and pinning for the last two years we’ve lived here?
Also yes.
You’re going to read all these fancy blogs telling you about the must-haves and grand investments you simply cannot live without. But here’s the thing about designing your dream bathroom: know yourself and your budget. Sure, that towel warmer might not score you a thousand followers on Instagram, but my towel will always be dry and toasty when I need it.
The mood lighting isn’t for ’grammable flat lays, but allows me to actually see what I’m doing while feeling relaxed at the same time. Would I do anything differently? Probably install better exhaust ventilation after installing that showerhead.
All that glorious steam has got to go somewhere. And go fast. I had to repaint the ceiling when I didn’t take that advice. #BathroomLessonLearned But overall?
I’d tell myself to stop overthinking. Just start.
