Remember walking into a hotel spa bathroom and feeling instantly calm? Mine did in a boutique hotel in Bath earlier this year. Pale, dusty sage green walls appeared to exhale stress as I entered the room.
I lingered, checking my hair in the mirror before finally allowing myself to relax against the tiles and simply breathe. Yep. Green is going to be big for bathrooms this year.
First things first, my bathroom wasn’t green when I started. Oh no, it was builder beiges and I fancied trying green for the new year.
Problem was I wasn’t entirely convinced green wouldn’t look ghastly with soggy bath towels and toothpaste splodges.
So I started by replacing my white hand towels with eucalyptus-coloured ones from John Lewis. Fifteen quid later and those boring beige walls weren’t looking so boring anymore. Even my flatmate Sarah commented when she got home from work, “Something’s changed in here haven’t it, it feels more calming.” Of course the thing about green is that its calming properties line up perfectly with our evolutionary instincts.
Humans are naturally drawn to green because we spend a lot of time looking at greenery (that’s nature for you!) Our brains are conditioned to respond positively to green. The tricky thing about decorating bathrooms in green however, is finding the right hue when you’ve got artificial lighting and damp to contend with. My first attempt at going green involved painting my downstairs toilet a dazzling emerald hue.
Emerald looked great online in the Farrow & Ball paint colour chart. Emerald did not look so great under the unforgiving glare of my bathroom’s LED ceiling light. Moral of the story?
Test swatch your greens. Buy the biggest sample pot you can (ideally A4 size or larger) and live with it for at least a week before committing. Look at it at different times of day, under artificial light and with your bathroom extractor fan on.
Green is particularly prone to looking different under variable lighting. I agonised over green bathroom paint colours for MONTHS before re-decorating my bathroom last summer. Paint sample pots are expensive but it’ll save you a fortune in the long run if you need to avoid a painting-your-whole-bathroom-green mistake like I did.
In the end I went with Dulux “Woodland Pearl” which is essentially sage with a tiny hint of grey undertone that keeps it from looking ‘hospital green’. Total cost of sample pots? About £40.
Pale greens like sage, fern and eucalyptus are perfect for small to medium-sized bathrooms because they’re receding colours that make spaces feel bigger. I painted my skinny en-suite bathroom Benjamin Moore’s “October Mist” and it seriously does make the room look wider. Darker greens like forest can work well in large bathrooms with decent natural light but beware: they will eat your window for breakfast if it’s small or non-existent.
Trust me on this one, green looks AMAZING with warm metals. I know, we’ve all been conditioned to expect chrome fittings androgynous, dusty sage walls. When I first picked out my brass bathroom fittings I worried they were too yellow-toned and would clash with the green.
Sage is brilliant with yellow-gold undertones though, so long as they’re subtle. You end up with a warm sophisticated look that’s light years away from dodgy seventies avocado suites. White bathroom fittings will always be a safe option for greening up your bathroom.
White paint and accessories create a bright, spa-like vibe. That said, I’ve seen some lovely bathrooms where people went bolder with darker green baths and even olive-hued subway tiles. Takes guts, but works.
Of which subway tiles. Green subway tiles are popping up everywhere right now and I totally get why. I used mint green metro tiles on a half-height splashback in my utility bathroom (that also doubles as the ‘wash your muddy dog indoors’ bathroom.
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Glamorous hey?) and they hide water marks way better than white tiles, aren’t as dull as grey and the shiny finish reflects light better than matte tiles. About twice the price of basic white tiles but they’ve stood up super well to muddy paw prints and dog shampoo experiments so far. Since discovering the joys of painting my bathroom green I’ve found green accessories are best served as part of a wider bathroom colour palette.
Plants go without saying. But instead of decking your bathroom out with a hundred sad little succulents, go for one big statement plant. I’m talking monsteras, peace lilies, heck even a lovely rubber plant.
I tried spider plants. Three of them. And they didn’t like my bathroom enough to survive.
If yours do then GO YOU. Mix and match your greens with towels. Play around with pairing sage-coloured bath towels with darker green hand towels.
Risky? Maybe. But it looks ace when you get it right.
My favourite green towels are from White Company. They don’t wash terribly and they don’t fade but they are pricey as hell. Surprisingly good and good value for money are Dunelm’s green towels.
Finally, my biggest rookie error? Buying shower curtain rings and washbasin trays that matched my wall colour exactly. Nothing disappeared into the wall quicker than those accessories.
Pick a deeper or lighter shade of green than your walls for accessories if your walls are pale, or go lighter if they’re dark. If there’s one unexpected bonus to going green with your bathroom decor, its that the colour green seriously makes you want to use eco friendly bathroom products. Hilariously enough.
Maybe it’s a placebo effect but ever since my bathroom went green I find myself reaching for my bamboo toothbrush and washable water bottle more often. Possibly. If you do decide to install a green bathroom make sure you put dimmer switches on your bathroom lighting.
Being able to transition from bright, white light to warm sunset amber seriously transforms your average green bathroom from feeling energising to relaxing in seconds. Dim your lights and watch as your sage walls transform from day bright green to deeper richer shade by night. Try cold white LED bulbs and your green bathroom risks looking clinical.
Why do I think we’ll be seeing more of the green bathroom trend? Millennial pink, industrial-style concrete and navy blue bathrooms will come and go but green taps into something far more fundamental than just aesthetics. Namely our increasing desire for biophilic design.
Biophilic design is the idea of bringing the outdoors inside.
We spend so much of our lives shut away in man-made buildings we’re craving natural elements in our homes more than ever. Interior designers bestie Megan Wilson predicted biophilic design would be big in 2020 back in January.
She wasn’t wrong. Personally, painting my bathroom green has made me realise that colour affects more than just your mood. It can affect your entire WELLBEING.
As I wash my face each morning before work I feel.. calmer. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not transformed into a Zen Buddhist monk when I step into the bathroom. I just feel nicer.
Gentler. And who knows, maybe that’s just me. But a little daily dose of calm surely can’t hurt?
