Hey it’s my first reveal of the new year! Whoop! And while I keep adding to the list of things I want to do this year (currently deciding between the utility room/bathroom downstairs and my office), I knew I could squeeze in a small update to the bathroom over the course of a few weeks and happy days, we managed it! Although there is more we can do, I’m pretty happy with how it’s all come out for now.

Before we get into it, let’s remind ourselves what the bathroom looked like when we moved in just less than two years ago…

Within weeks of moving in, I decided with new paint and a few accessories and plants, I could at least get it to a point that I could live with for a little while. Enter Phase 1 of the refresh…

Now that little refresh bought me some time and yes it was liveable but there were still things I really wanted to do back then that I just didn’t have the cash for at the time. Added to that, over time, I lost my love for the black paint and decided I wanted to bring in a few bits I couldn’t the first time around and repaint it in a brighter fresher colour. 

I talked more about my plans and why I decided to step away from the black paint in this post if you need a reminder or missed that one.

But without further ado, here’s the new look! I genuinely couldn’t be more pleased with the transformation!

This post may contain some affiliate links which means if you click on a link and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission from the brand for the referral. I am not paid or asked to use these links. You’ll never pay more for clicking on these links.

So let’s talk through what we did. The first thing I did was spend a full weekend painting. The black was a bit of a bugger to cover (2 good coats and a light 3rd coat just to touch up a bit) but the Dulux Trade Diamond Eggshell went on a treat. 

I ended up going bespoke for the colour, using the packaging of a Boy Smells candle (seen on the bottom brass shelf) to be matched at my local Dulux Decorating Centre and called the colour ‘Peachy Keen’ so if you like it, you simply need to go to a Dulux mixing counter and ask for it by name! The paint is so hard-wearing and I already like it a lot better than the Valspar bathroom paint which we’d used previously – this stuff lives up to its name. (And nope, not sponsored, I bought it myself – in fact, I didn’t work with any sponsors on this little project)

I also painted all the woodwork including the door, window and the boxing in around the flooring. I did one coat in Earthborn Multi-Purpose Primer followed by a coat of Earthborn No 17 White Clay which I had left over from when we did the kitchen and dining room remodels. While you can’t really tell in the pictures, it went a huge way in terms of just freshening everything up.

Wayne replaced the old crusty chrome tap and waste trap with a gorgeous new brushed brass one from Drench for me which was something I wanted to do the first time around but wasn’t able to (ie I ran out of money).

It wasn’t as straightforward as we’d hoped (when is it ever, really?!) and involved an Amazon prime order, 2 emergency trips to Wickes, cutting holes into the flooring, removing the entire sink from the wall, updating some plumbing and reinstalling the whole thing. Oh, and an awful lot of swearing. Yes, he’s a star and I’m very lucky and if you’re reading, I love you baby, please don’t stop doing shit for me even though I know you really don’t want to do it but you just want to keep me happy/stop moaning at you.

Over the weekend, we completed two other jobs that I was also desperate to do the first time around. We put up the new brushed brass mirror from Bellini and the two brass and glass shelves I purchased from Amazon. Thankfully, those were more straight-forward and I couldn’t be more pleased with the great big dollop of brushed brass everything we have going on in here.

And then came the fun part – the styling! I do love a good faff, I have to say. I did go all #Instawanker and bought the Aesop hand wash, upon which, considering how pricey they are, there was crushing disappointment when I realised the bottles are plastic and not glass. WTF. But the packaging is pretty so there ya go.

I also brought in some new artwork. Most of the vintage style art is just downloadable art I purchased from Chaos and Wonder on Etsy and printed on my own printer – super easy and affordable to refill some smaller frames I already had. I also purchased that gorgeous floral print by Annie Dornan Smith from my favourite Shrewsbury shop, Workshop but you can buy it online too. 

When I did the first refresh, I must have said to myself about 14 times that I desperately needed some new towels and while I’ve had most of these for some time, they did all work very nicely with the new paint colour (almost like I’d planned it – which, yes, yes I did plan it because I’ve known for a while I wanted to go peach in here!). 

There’s a mix in here, some which I purchased, some which were part of previous collaborations. The fringed brown & white hand towels I bought from Zara, the large peach towels are from Christy (gifted from a previous collab), the pink and grey towels are from MADE (gifted from a previous collab), and the tan and leopard-print bath matt are from Allure Bath Fashion (gifted from a previous collab). I gathered up some of my hand and guest towels in a little belly basket as well just for some extra texture and colour in here!

And of course, I finished off with a bit of greenery! Most of the plants you see are fauxs but I did get a Philodendron for on top of the medicine cabinet and I hung the sweetest tiniest little string of hearts as well. I’m hoping with the whole room being so much brighter now, my plants will survive better in here! Fingers crossed anyway.

Shop the Look

I genuinely couldn’t be happier with the result of our second little refresh – it’s brightened up the whole space and it just look so much cheerier now! And of course, it just feels a lot more like me!

In time, we’d love to do a full remodel on this space but until we can get around to that (it’s probably a few years down the road), this will certainly do. Let me know what you think in the comment box below!