You can never have enough storage in a bathroom. From everyday essentials such as face cream and cotton buds to household staples such as painkillers and plasters, the bathroom has to work hard to keep everything within easy reach. And that’s before you’ve addressed towels or a laundry basket.
But the reality is most British bathrooms don’t have a very generous footprint. So how do you tick everything off while ensuring everything looks calming and stylish rather than cluttered? “When designing a bathroom, I always believe the most successful spaces are those where the practical elements almost disappear. Storage should feel intuitive rather than obvious,” says interior designer Portia Fox.
Seasoned designers have a wealth of techniques they use to address storage in a bathroom. From hidden wall cabinets to sink skirts, discover exactly how they do it.
The recessed mirror cabinet
A shelving unit minus the bulk is what’s achieved by positioning a medicine-style cabinet into a wall cavity. “It looks far smarter recessed into the wall rather than surface-mounted, because the volume disappears and you get all that storage without a box imposing into the room,” explains Alicia Meireles, the creative director of Own London. Interior designer Sophie Paterson, who uses them in most of her projects, says that they are a “must-have”. She explains how, if you are having a wall-hung toilet installed and placing a sink further along the same run, the wall has to be built out to accommodate the pipework, “so it’s actually making good use of the space that otherwise would just get lost”. Recessed mirror cabinets can be bought off-the-shelf and, so long as a soil pipe isn’t in the way, installed almost anywhere.
Optimising alcoves and chimney breasts
Another vote for recessed storage is the potential offered by the bathroom’s layout itself. In her home in north London, Leanne Kilroy, founder of London design studio Good Bones, took advantage of an existing opening in the chimney breast “and rather than close it all up, we created a cavity above the new fireplace,” she explains. Kilroy ordered a frame from Ikea, a print from Etsy and had her builders create some very simple shelves. The result is a surprising storage solution hidden in plain sight. The digital creator Sam Palmer (@the_flint_house) did something similar with an alcove in her home in Worthing when she converted a bedroom into the family’s main bathroom. She added moulding around the chimney breast as an architectural feature, and repeated it on a hinged door where the neighbouring alcove was. The result is a large but cleverly disguised cupboard that allows the space to look and feel minimal.
The shower (or bath) niche
The niche is a small but impactful component in the forward planning of a bathroom refurb that will pay dividends. An opening recessed into the wall of a shower “provides a specific spot for shower products that would otherwise be housed on the floor or in ugly shower caddies, bringing a luxurious and considered feel,” says Ali Childs, the founder of Studio Alexandra. Childs often makes a feature of the niche by using contrasting tiles, and steers away from metal tile trims (ask your tiler for a mitred tile edge or stone return for that interior-designed look). Waterproof wiring can be engineered to make your niche light up, and do consider what is opposite your shower niche: if it’s a sink or bathtub, it’s worth entertaining the same feature on reverse to hold more products.
A vanity with drawers
“Too often I see dinky vanities and too much floor space. You need to go bigger to maximise storage and also create balance,” advises designer Jojo Barr of House Nine. Barr has created her own range of vanities with the Yorkshire maker Parker & Howley, with options that are wall-mounted and free-standing. She suggests a style on legs for a family bathroom or en-suite, and a style that goes right down to the floor in a large bathroom that’s serving the whole household, because “that extra few centimetres of drawer depth adds up fast”. Interior designer Laura Stephens likes to pair drawers with open shelving where baskets can hold towels or slippers. If you’re on a smaller budget and feeling creative, a vintage sideboard can be customised into a unique vanity (with help from a can-do plumber).
The sink skirt
For a softer and more traditional alternative to a wooden vanity, a “skirt” (essentially a run of fabric) may be the answer. Holly Vaughan, co-founder of Vaughan Design & Development, likes the way one brings personality into a space often defined by hard surfaces. She advises avoiding fabrics that are too sheer, “as the whole point is to conceal the products and plumbing behind it,” or heavy and stiff, “as it needs to be easy to pull aside when access is needed. A good mid-weight fabric strikes the right balance.” Her go-to for installation is a 12mm metal rod with recessed brackets, “as it’s both sturdy and visually refined”. Fabric is also easy to retrofit around a basic pedestal basin (for which you can buy simple add-on shelving units in places like Argos and Dunelm). “In this scenario, fitting the fabric requires a little more creativity. We might use Velcro or curtain wire to achieve the same finish,” shares Vaughan.
The bathroom ‘spice rack’
Mirrored cabinets are a feature in their own right, and it can look odd to have more than one as it upsets the symmetry of a bathroom. So to display a multitude of good-looking lotions and potions – and the odd decorative piece – consider a wall rack. Sarah Limbert of Poets Corner Interiors designed what effectively functions like a kitchen spice rack for a family bathroom in south London. “It’s a simple wooden box with a frame, with bars to contain the products,” she explains. What’s unique is that it’s also the house’s only loft hatch: hung on a pair of hinges, it discreetly opens into the eaves and is held in place with a magnet. So when you’re next browsing the kitchen section of a homewares website, be sure to check out the bathroom offering too…
