Ever get out of the shower and feel like you just took a ice skating lesson? That was my life for close to 1.5 years after moving into my flat. I decided to get these amazing porcelain tiles – expensive-as-hell tiles that looked incredible in the store – but as soon as water hit them they were slippery.
There’s nowhere to grab on when you’re slipping around on the floor of a bathroom that’s the size of a closet. You make every bathroom flooring decision ten times worse because of how small the space is. That gorgeous flooring sample you fell in love with at the store?
BAM. It’s now three feet by three feet on the floor of your entire bathroom.
I’ve personally dealt with pretty much every disaster you can when it comes to bathroom flooring.
Whether it was through my own stupidity or helping friends with their houses I feel like I can help you avoid some of the mistakes I made. So today I’m going to walk you through some of the things I learned about bathroom flooring in small bathrooms. I have luxury vinyl planks (LVP) on the floor of my bathroom in what they claim is “weathered oak” – sounds super fancy I know, but trust me it looks great.
It was around £180 for the material which I installed myself across a weekend while my girlfriend was at her mums (apparently my swearing gets very artistic when I can’t get the measurements right). I saved about £300 on installation but even though the install wasn’t overly difficult to figure out; once you figure how to cut the planks you’re good to go! It’s been three years and the LVP looks the exact same as when I first installed it.
Let me rephrase that… it looks the exact same and that’s more than I can say for most projects I’ve tried to complete. What I loved about laying the LVP was the direction I laid them in. I laid them parallel to the longest direction of the bathroom.
This gives the illusion of the room stretching further than it really is. It’s one of those tricks that actually works to create more space – unlike half of the tips you’ll find online. My bathroom is probably around four metres long but because of how I laid the LVP it really feels bigger than that.
When I first moved in they were covered with nasty tile mosaics. You know the ones I’m talking about – thousands of tiny squares with grout lines made to trap soap scum and turn grey after two weeks of installation. Whenever I would clean my bathroom I felt like I was An insane singer / cleaners that had somehow been locked in the bathroom, scratching at the tiles with an old toothbrush.
And even when you think you’ve cleaned them you can’ t ever really get them 100% clean. In a small bathroom everything is amplified. So when you factor in how much effort you have to put into keep flooring clean in a small bathroom your bathroom floor quickly becomes your arch nemesis.
If you can’t grip your foot to the ground after slipping in the shower you’re in trouble. My neighbour upstairs – let’s call her Sarah. Lovely lady but her taste in DIY could use some work – decided to have polished concrete installed in her en-suite last year.
The concrete looked gorgeous. Like something out of a magazine gorgeous. But guess what she had to do to make sure nobody slipped when they got out of the shower?
Lay down rubber bath mats across every surface of her bathroom. What about when people want to get out of the shower and not slide across the room? Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of spending your hard earned money on gorgeous flooring?
Here are some of my fav bathroom flooring ideas that work well in small spaces. TEXTURED VINYL. I’m obsessed with textured vinyl.
The technology that goes into modern textured vinyl is unreal. The newer options are so much better than the god awful textured vinyl from the 80s. Textured vinyl can be waterproofed in such a way that you don’t have to freak out every time someone spills water around the bathroom.
You can actually relax. Textured vinyl is also about ¼ the cost of natural stone. When I choose textured vinyl I go with something that has very little texture.
You Might Also Like
Enough to provide traction but not so much that it’ll be hard to clean. Sheet vinyl gets a bad wrap but the newer styles of sheet vinyl are fantastic. My sister has sheet vinyl in her en-suite.
And by en-suite I mean really small. You have to close the bathroom door to get to the sink kind of small. But she got a sheet vinyl that mimics high end marble.
We’re almost a year in and it’s taken major abuse from her two teenage boys that can’t seem to take a shower without flooding the bathroom. But it’s holding up great. Here’s the trick to sheet vinyl.
When you install the sheet vinyl lay a bead of silicone around the edge. We didn’t time it but probably spent around an hour doing this but it created a waterproof barrier so that when water flowed under the sheet vinyl it wouldn’t seep into the edges and expand over time. BIGGER FORMAT tiles / planks – I’m talking 60×60 cm tiles and up – can work in small bathrooms if you’re careful about the look you choose.
The less grout lines you have the less scrubbing you’ll have to do when cleaning your bathroom. Bigger tiles = easier clean and more seamless looks for a small bathroom. My friend Dave – who shall remain name – had large porcelain plank tiles (roughly 60×120 cm) installed in his bathroom.
It came finished with a concrete look. Not only did it make his bathroom look instantly beautiful but it made his bathroom actually look like it was bigger than it is. Another bonus?
Cleaning the bathroom went from being a full day event to just grabbing a cloth and wiping everything down. Grout colour matters more than you think. Grout is white when you install it but it won’t stay that way for long.
It will begin to show every stain from soap scum, shampoo etc. Whenever I specify grout for my customers I will select a grout that is one shade deeper than the tile colour. This helps disguise any staining that will happen over time and make it appear as if you meant for the grout to stain that colour.
Nobody likes to think their friend judges them on their cleaning habits. Natural Stone is the don’ t of small bathrooms. Now don’t get me wrong natural stone can look insanely luxurious but every water spot will be amplified in a small bathroom.
Darker stone like slate can make your bathroom feel like a cave. Polished marble is gorgeous but boy does it show every water spot. If you’re dead set on stone go for something with a honed finish.
Hone finishes help hide water marks and provide more traction when stepping out of the shower. Another tip I picked up from watching far too many YouTube videos – Don’t be afraid to bring your flooring material up the wall about 10 cm to use as a baseboard. It instantly gives your bathroom a more finished look and creates more visual space.
I did this with my vinyl planks and it’s one of those details that people notice but can’t place why the bathroom feels more finished and expensive than it is.
Budget wise you’re looking at around £15-£30 per square metre for luxury vinyl. Ceramic tiles can range from £20-£60 per square metre not including installation.
Sheet vinyl can range from £8-£15 per square metre. If we budget a small bathroom at around twelve square metres or less. The price difference between budget friendly and mid-range options can be as little as £150-£200.
But the difference on how the flooring performs day to day is drastic. Sometimes spending that little extra can save you hours of maintenance time down the road. Picking your flooring based on how it looks in optimal conditions isn’t realistic.
Those amazing photos your friend’s posts of their natural stone bathroom look great. But if your stressing about water marks and spending every Saturday giving your bathroom a deep clean you won’t want to spend time in your own bathroom. I’d rather have bathroom flooring that looks okay and functions great then blows your mind but causes me stress.
