before & after: downstairs bathroom with clawfoot tub

If you’ve been following along on Instagram, you may know we recently made some updates to our downstairs bathroom! Let me give you a little backstory on this bathroom. When we moved in, our home had two bathrooms – a master bath off of our bedroom, and this hall bath. We’ve since renovated the upstairs and added a third bathroom. For the most part, this bathroom is used by Lucy for her nightly baths, and for our guests when they have to use the restroom. I’m also a huge bath lover, so use it pretty regularly (especially before we added the upstairs one).

Honestly, the bathroom’s only redeeming quality was the clawfoot tub. This bathroom has never been a priority for us renovation wise, but I did previously make some small tweaks since we moved in. About eight months after moving in, I made some easy decor tweaks to the bathroom – some good and some bad. I shared more in this post! The good – swapping the gross medicine cabinet for a more modern round mirror, changing the old faucet for a more modern nickel one, adding floating shelves above the toilet, adding statement artwork above tub, and using cute baskets to store towels and other toiletries. The not-so-good – painting the room a dark gray. I was inspired by some cute gray bathrooms on Pinterest and overall, could have worked if 1) I wasn’t terrible at painting and 2) if the bathroom had a window. But – the gray WITH a room without a window made it way too dark and blah.

From a design perspective, there are quite a few challenges to work around, including no window/natural light, a funky green window to work around, bead board detailing (not bad – just something to work with!), and no storage (given there was a pedestal sink). I approached Eric with the idea of updating the bathroom (and if you follow HIM on Instagram you probably saw his hilarious journey documenting this project haha!) and he said yes!

So here’s what we (read: 95% Eric) did! We first painted the bathroom a bright, crisp white – Chantilly Lace by Benjamin Moore. This is the color that most of our house is! It’s really amazing what a good white paint will do. The bathroom used to be white (and the bead board / trim was still white) but sort of a blah/sad white. Plus, once the gray paint was repainted white – wow! The bathroom was a whole lot brighter. We swapped out the pedestal sink for this vanity which was a GAME CHANGER! We didn’t have a ton of options given it’s a slightly awkward layout in here, but I’m super happy with the one we picked out! It really helps modernize the bathroom. Eric spray painted the drawer pulls gold. He added this brushed gold modern sink faucet and truly – I LOVE the way the vanity looks! We ended up hanging the same mirror above the sink. It’s not my very favorite, but it’s fairly new and didn’t seem worth it to replace.

One of the biggest updates was the new modern faucet for the clawfoot tub. it’s the first thing you see when you walk into the bathroom, so it really makes a difference! When we moved in (October 2019), the bathtub had lots of poles and rods as it was used as a shower too — you can see some before and afters below. We took those down a few months later and only used this as a bathtub. BUT the faucet was very old and definitely not modern, so this is a crazy good change! Eric also painted the legs of the clawfoot tub to tie into the other gold accents in the bathroom.

We didn’t buy any new shelves, baskets, or art, but used what we had! The floating white shelves above the toilet store medicine and other toiletries. They also come in various sizes, depending on the length you need! This round basket is on the shelf. We kept this surf piece above the tub, which we’ve had for awhile and ties into the green window. The smaller print hanging to the right of the mirror was also in a different room but works perfectly in here! I wasn’t planning on using a floor basket, but really like this one, so have it sitting out with towels in it for easy access.

I might swap out the rug in here, but love the pop of color it adds! I bought it in Morocco on our vacation last fall! It’s a little beaten up after being in our kitchen for months, but works for now! I *might* swap out the light in here, but not in a rush. And, I do want to order brushed gold towel hooks to hang under the interior window next to the vanity. But for the most part, the bathroom is done! I think it looks super good and we’re really happy with the updates!