Our houses are getting smaller, and so are the bathrooms. A shower head, a toilet bowl and a sink: these three essentials can barely fit into bathrooms of new flats.
But small bathrooms will not necessarily look messy and cluttered. For starters, keeping your toilet clean is a great way to give your bathroom a fantastic clean look. Even the best design will fall short if the bathroom is messy and unmaintained. A couple of tips and tricks can give your bathroom an attractive clean look. Here are six hacks:
1. Eliminate Odour
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Forget air fresheners, they seem to only add on to the smell of the stinky bathroom and give the air an artificial sweet scent. Instead, use non-brewed coffee ground to eliminate odour. Just pour coffee ground into a bowl, (preferably with a large surface area) and leave it to let it work its magic. You can also pour coffee ground into a nice sock and hang it up as an ornament cum freshener. The best part is the bathroom ends up smelling like coffee — great for coffee lovers and sleepyheads in the morning.
2. Get Rid Of Moisture
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The bad smells in the bathroom are primarily caused by moisture and humidity. Never leave your wet towels in a humid bathroom, no less a small bathroom.
After showering, remove your towels from the bathroom and hang it elsewhere more airy to dry. This will lessen the odour and speed up your towel’s drying process as well. To further reduce humidity in a bathroom, use coarse salt.
Salt is a good absorber of moisture, just leave out a large amount in a bowl for a few months until you notice that the salt colour changes to a black or dark shade. That’s a sign that the salt has reached its saturation point and cannot continue to absorb moisture.
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3. Add Some Life And Colour
Boon Tiong HDB Standard 4-Room BTO by The Local INN.terior
Plants are great decorative items that give small spaces a fresh look and a warmer atmosphere. Besides green-dominant plants, you can get plants that produce bright flowers like the orchid. Most indoor plants are small and shouldn’t be placed on the floor and not all indoor plants should be placed in bathrooms.
Make sure to check with the nursery if the plants you want are suitable for lowlight, moist and humid environments. Fluorescent lights are great artificial lights to replace the sunlight indoor plants need, but they are not the most energy-efficient. Alternatively you can keep your LED lights, and keep the plants off the floor by hanging them near the window.
4. Create Space
BLK 808D CCK by Renozone Interior Design House
Mirror cabinets are a good option to both create additional space, as well as make your tiny bathroom more spacious. Keep the sink area clear of your daily cleansing products and store them all into the cabinets. A decluttered sink is bound to put you in a good mood every morning and night. They are away from sight and right where you want them to be.
Will putting mirror cabinets in small toilets make it look more crammed?
Randy Tan from Image Creative says: “The outlook won’t be crammed if the depth of the cabinet is not deep. Choosing the correct cabinet size is crucial in accordance with the space of the toilet.”
Having dark-coloured tiles will also make the toilet look smaller than it already is, says Judy from New Interior Design. “To counter this, bright lighting would be suitable than warm lighting in order the make the toilet feel spacious.”
5. Reduce Mould
BLK 43 Chai Chee Street by Weiken.com
Mould and grout do not go well together. Grouts are the gaps between your wall or floor tiles and we all know how unsightly it can become when the white lines are stained black from the mould. You can choose darker coloured tiles with narrower grout lines, making the grout less obvious from far. But cleaning the grout out would still be inevitable. If endless scrubbing is a terrifying process for you, reducing grout can also mean reducing mould.
Go grout-less with back-painted glass, especially at areas with lots of moisture (E.g. sink). Coloured back-painted glass can brighten the bathroom and create a clean, classy look. Its smooth, glossy surface with no grouts at all is a bonus, making it easy to clean and maintain.
For back painted glass, Daniel Lim from Square Room Interior Design commented that the glass surface is smooth, and the paint will peel over time if there isn’t a protective glass coating. He also suggests acrylic as a cheaper alternative. “But it is susceptible to scratches and it is not as resistant as glass.”
6. Keep Off The Ground
HDB-157B Rivervale Crescent by New Interior Design
Placing items on the dampest and largest surface of the bathroom is a huge no-no. Not only will the floor look cluttered with bottles of body soap and shampoo, it also causes more mould and soap scum to build up. To save space, place shelving at the corner of your bathroom. Away from the floor, the bottles will be able to drip dry.
A fuss-free way of keeping a stainless steel shelf shiny is cleaning it with toothpaste. Rub it well every other time it appears to be dulled with water stains and it will last longer than plastic or wooden shelves in our humid environment.
