Bathroom Color Schemes That Work

A bathroom has less wall and more hard surface than any other room in the house. Tile, a counter, a tub or shower base, glass, metal and a mirror take up most of what you see, and paint fills in the gaps. That changes how you choose color: the scheme is set by materials that are expensive to change, and paint is the last and smallest decision. This page gives the order to choose in and the principles that hold a bathroom palette together.

Choose in the order things are hard to change

Start with what costs the most to replace and work toward what costs the least. That way every later choice is made against real samples rather than a memory of them.

1. Tile. Floor tile, shower wall tile and any accent tile carry most of the color in the room. They are also the first thing ordered, because tile sets the schedule. If you love a particular tile, start there.
2. The fixed whites. The tub, toilet, sink and shower base each have their own white. Gather them before you choose a white tile or paint, because two whites that almost match look like a mistake. See white bathrooms for how to line them up.
3. Vanity and counter. The vanity is the largest piece of furniture in the room and often its strongest color. Painted, stained wood or a solid color, it should either echo the tile or contrast with it on purpose. Vanity colors and wood tones covers the options.
4. One metal finish. Faucet, shower trim, towel bars and light fixtures read as a line of metal across the room. Pick the finish against the tile and vanity samples. See bathroom fixture finishes.
5. Grout. Grout color changes how busy the tile looks more than most people expect. Decide it with the tile in hand; tile and grout color pairings explains the choice.
6. Paint. Last, once everything above is chosen or sampled side by side.

The principles that hold a palette together

One undertone through the room

Most neutrals lean warm (toward yellow, red or tan) or cool (toward blue, green or gray). A bathroom feels calm when its tile, counter, vanity and paint lean the same way. A warm cream tile beside a blue-white counter makes each look dirty. Hold two samples side by side on a white sheet of paper and the lean becomes obvious.

One clear contrast

A room with no contrast at all can look unfinished. Decide where the contrast will be: a dark vanity against light tile, a dark floor under light walls, or black metal against white. One strong contrast reads as a design choice; three compete.

Proportion

Designers often use a rule of thumb that splits a room roughly into a dominant color, a secondary color and a small accent. It is a guideline, not a formula, but it is a useful check. In a bathroom the dominant color is usually the tile or the walls, the secondary is the vanity, and the accent is the metal or a small tiled feature.

Texture counts as color

Matte and glossy versions of the same color look like two shades, and a handmade tile with an uneven glaze looks richer than a flat one in the same color. If a palette feels dull, vary texture before adding another color.

Light schemes and dark schemes

Reading LRV on a paint chip

Light reflectance value tells you how much light a color reflects. Sherwin-Williams describes the scale as running from 0 (absorbs all light) to 100 (reflects all light), and prints the LRV on the back of its color chips. The number is a fast way to compare how light or dark colors will feel in a bathroom with little daylight.

Here are a few manufacturer-published LRVs spread across the scale, to show what the numbers mean in practice. They are examples, not recommendations.

The right column is our description of how colors in each range tend to behave, not a measurement. For whites and how our cloudy daylight shifts color, see bathroom colors for Pacific Northwest light.

Small bathrooms

A small bathroom does not have to be white, but it rewards a few habits:

• Fewer breaks. Carrying the floor tile up the shower wall, or using one wall color and one tile color, makes the room read as one space instead of several small ones.
• Let the glass disappear. A clear glass panel instead of a curtain keeps the tile visible to the back wall, so the room looks as deep as it is.
• Put color where the eye lands. A colored vanity or a tiled niche gives a small room personality without closing it in.
• Light the face, not just the ceiling. Color depends on light, and a single ceiling fixture leaves the walls in shadow. See bathroom lighting.

The layout ideas that actually gain space are in small bathroom ideas.

How to test a scheme before you commit

1. Collect a real piece of every material: a tile, a vanity door or finish sample, a counter sample, a metal finish chip and two or three paint boards.
2. Lay them out in the bathroom itself, in the positions they will occupy: floor tile on the floor, wall tile upright.
3. Look in the morning, at midday and at night with the lights on. Bathrooms are often used before sunrise in winter, so the night view counts.
4. Take away one item at a time. If the scheme falls apart when one piece leaves, that piece is carrying the room; make sure you love it.

Seeing schemes in real rooms

Photographs of finished bathrooms are useful for deciding what you like, as long as you choose the final colors from physical samples. You can browse bathrooms our team has completed around Vancouver and Portland on our bathroom projects page. When you are ready to put your own palette together, JDI's designer reviews tile, vanity, metal and paint samples with you as part of the design process, and our Vancouver bathroom remodeling page explains how a project starts.