Bathroom storage is an area where a little work can pay a big dividend, as being able to hide the clutter can make a bathroom look a lot larger. The clutter comes in various forms, as well as the bathing and beauty products and the teeth paraphernalia the bathroom is often the home for the cleaning stuff and medicines. Then of course there are the towels and flannels, not to mention bath toys if you have young children.
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Wall Mounted Bathroom Cabinets
The initial steps are fairly obvious, bathroom cabinets come in various forms and sizes and often have mirrored doors so they can perform a dual function. Be careful when placing them above basins though, if a basin is quite small then people may keep banging their heads on the mirror as they bend to wash their face or rinse a toothbrush.
If you’ve got the space, go for a double bathroom cabinet or even two separate ones. But if you do go for more than one, don’t mount them next to each other unless your bathroom is really big. Place the second one on a different wall.
Bathroom Vanities
Many bathroom cabinets are available as floor standing units that can double as bathroom vanities. A vanity unit was initially called that because it was a place to hide items used to enhance the appearance, so it could in fact have been anywhere.
These days many bathroom vanities actually provide support for a basin so that it doesn’t require such massive supporting screws to hold it against the wall. Although very useful pieces of bathroom furniture, they are often robbed of space by the sink trap and waste outlet pipework which has to be positioned directly under the basin. However, on the positive side, this does ensure that the pipework is hidden away neatly.
Free Standing Bathroom Cabinets
If you have the space, a bathroom cabinet can be a free standing piece of furniture and even be wardrobe sized. If that’s possible then it can be used as storage for towels and flannels, although they may get damp if the bathroom design has omitted to tackle ventilation. It’s not often that any bathroom furniture other than a suite can be fitted into a bathroom but if you do have the space it ought to be used.
Make a Bathroom Cabinet out of Your Bath
If you need extra space for things that don’t need particularly matter, such as cleaning products and stocks of bathroom products still in their wrappers, then there’s a bit of storage space in the bathroom that not too many people exploit.
This works best if there is more space at one end of the bath than the other. Often a bath is shorter than the wall it is positioned against and the gap is boxed in to make it look neat. You may not be able to access this space if there is a plastic bath panel, or the bathroom design is very clean and minimalist and to stick a door in the side of the bath would ruin its lines.
But if you replace the bath panel with something like MDF or tongue and groove, you can then cut a door into it. The space under there won’t be particularly clean, so you might want to line it with something to make it a bit more palatable.
A Final Bathroom Storage Tip
One further bathroom storage tip is to put a shelf up over the door. This won’t be seen by many people, certainly not when they first open the door, so it won’t make the bathroom look any more cluttered. You will need to make sure there’s someone in the family who can reach it before you install it though.
