10 Ingenious Half Bath Decorating Ideas

Give your half bath a refresh with these beautiful powder room decorating ideas!

They say sometimes the best things come in small packages. And after completing a makeover on the tiniest room in our house, I have definitely found that to be true!

Our powder room / half bath is only 5' x 4.5'. It started off pretty boring when we moved into this house...

The powder room is located right near the front door. So even though it's small, it's a pretty visible space. And it's also the bathroom that guests are most likely to use.

Pre-Covid, we hosted a decent size gathering at our house. Since the half bath was looking pretty dingy, I took half a day and gave it a really quick spruce up. I painted the walls, added a floating shelf, plunked down some accessories, and called it a day.

It wasn't terrible, but I knew we could do better. Recently Donnie and I set out to really update the half bath and make it beautiful.

7 Ways to Create a Gorgeous Powder Room / Half Bath

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.

Instead of seeing a boring and forgettable bathroom when we walk in our front door, we are now met with this view...

Powder Room with Gray Vanity, Beadboard, and Aqua Wallpaper

And we are so thrilled with how it turned out! Here are the 7 biggest things we did to take our bathroom from "blah" to beautiful:

1. Bring storage into the powder room with a pretty vanity.

If you've spent much time on this blog at all, you know that organization is always at the forefront of my mind. The pedestal sink that was in this bathroom when we moved in offered absolutely nothing in terms of storage, so I had been storing the supplies for our half bath in our entry cabinet instead.

This was an okay solution, but one of my top priorities when we set out to redo this space was to add some actual storage to the half bath. We ended up doing so in the form of this oh-so-pretty vanity...

I was a bit nervous that our tiny bathroom wouldn't be able to accommodate a vanity, but the 24" size ended up being a perfect fit.

The cabinet has plenty of space to hold all of the extra toilet paper and soap we need. And we even have room to grow if we end up needing to store more items.

Gray Bathroom Vanity with Organized Toilet Paper and Hand Soap

2. Add interest with beadboard / wainscoting.

One of the great things about small spaces is that you can add an eye-catching wall treatment like beadboard or board and batten or shiplap without having to spend a ton of money to do it.

This was the first time we had ever used beadboard (also called wainscoting). We loved it because unlike shiplap that has to be installed one plank at a time, beadboard comes in full sheets. We were able to have the guys at Home Depot cut it to the correct height for us before we even left the store, and then Donnie just had to cut it to the correct width when we got home.

Half Bath with High White Beadboard Wainscoting

While we were at it, we also took the time to install chunkier baseboards and capped off the top of the beadboard with a finishing trim piece.

With the baseboard, beadboard, and top trim piece, our wall treatment ended up being 6' high, or 2/3 the height of our 9' high space. I have found that bringing the wall treatment to the 2/3 mark rather than splitting the wall directly in half is more visually appealing, and it also allows us to...

3. Draw the eye up with pretty wallpaper.

I am typically a little pattern shy, but I knew I could handle it in small doses in this room! Wallpaper can also be pricey, but since I was just doing the top 3' of the room, I didn't need a TON of it. (And the job of wallpapering was a lot less intimidating too. I'll have a tutorial up about it soon!)

I fell in love with this pattern as soon as I saw it, and with its light blue background and aqua accents, I knew it would fit in perfectly with the rest of our house's color scheme. If you are an aqua lover as well, you can find more than 15 other beautiful aqua wallpaper options in this post.

4. Add character to the powder room with chunky craftsman trim.

We have been slowly changing out the trim work ever since we moved into our house, replacing the minimal and cheap looking trim that the builder put in with chunkier craftsman style trim.

This view of the beadboard AND chunky window trim AND cute wood shutter makes my heart so happy. I just love all the character it brings to our once "cookie cutter" house!

Window with Wood Shutter and Craftsman Style Trim

The door got the chunky trim treatment as well (which made wallpapering this corner a little interesting, but well worth it)!

Door and Window with Craftsman Style Trim

Chunky trim may not always be one of those things that you walk into a room and notice immediately, but it really elevates the overall feel of a space and makes it feel more custom and homey.

5. Show off the space with gorgeous lighting.

We have added or replaced more than 20 (!!!) light fixtures since we moved into this house 4 years ago. (I practically have our electrician on speed dial! 😂) Many of the rooms didn't come with light fixtures at all and the ones that did were pretty generic, so we've been switching them out for ones that are more our taste.

Powder Room Corner with Vanity, Large Rectangular Mirror, and Brass Light Fixture

I found this simple, inexpensive brass fixture when I was searching around for the perfect pieces for the powder room, and I just love it so much. It ties in with the small gold-ish accents in the wallpaper too, which makes my type A self more than a little giddy. 😉

And speaking of brass fixtures...

6. Focus in on fixtures.

We ended up with quite a few of them in this space! I chose a pivot mirror because I knew that it was going to have to clear the ledge of the beadboard. Having it out away from the wall a little bit gave us the flexibility to do that.

Half Bath with Large Mirror and Brass Towel Holder

We had to purchase our faucet separately from our sink, so while I was at it, I chose a brass version for that too. (Well technically, it's called champagne bronze. And incidentally, I ended up picking the same faucet that had been on the previous pedestal sink in the powder room, just wider set and in a different finish.)

I also nabbed a cute towel holder/toilet paper holder set to round out our fixtures. Who knew I would be so excited about a toilet paper holder?!

(And it's just a bar and doesn't have one of those tricky tension rods, so I'm hoping the rest of my family will be more likely to change the toilet paper roll. Maybe? A small chance? A mama can dream! 🙂 )

7. Finish up the powder room with beautiful details.

There wasn't much extra space for decor and accessories in this itty bitty room, but I snuck them in where I could!

The area above the toilet needed a little something, so I found this cute square frame to fit the spot. It was originally a lighter gold that didn't match the other metals in the room, so I used Rub 'n Buff to fix the color. (If you've never used Rub 'n Buff before, you can get a quick tutorial in this post.)

Picture Frame and Faux Plant in Half Bath Powder Room

Also, I cut that beach picture out of the table of contents in a Magnolia Journal magazine because it was the perfect color combo for this room! You can find "art" just about anywhere! I placed a faux plant from TJ Maxx on the back of the toilet as well.

Some pretty soap and one cute votive holder on the top of the vanity later, and our little powder room was finished! Yippee!

Aqua, Gray, and White Powder Room with Brass Fixtures

Let's take a peek at the before and after...

Powder Room Half Bath Before and After Photos

Oh, how I love when a plan comes together! I was so excited to share this finished space that I skipped right over some of the tutorials for the projects we did, so I promise to be back with those soon.

Sources

In the meantime, if you're looking for any of the items we used in our half bath, you can find them via the links below:

Vanity

Faucet

Mirror

Light Fixture

Beadboard

Wallpaper

Wood Shutter

Picture Frame

Faux Plant- TJ Maxx

Towel Holder and Toilet Paper Holder

Towel- HomeGoods

Soap- TJ Maxx

Votive Holder- HomeGoods

Clear Bin Under Vanity

Trash Can

If you'd like to come back to this post later for inspiration, be sure to pin the image below so it's easy to find:

You can find the rest of the posts in the powder room series here:

Planning a Pretty Powder Room

Aqua Removable Wallpaper Ideas

Thank you so much for following along! Have a wonderful day!

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.