10 Ideas For A Budget Bathroom Makeover

Bathrooms aren’t always the easiest rooms to give a makeover if you are on a tight budget. The fixtures and fittings aren’t exactly cheap or easily moveable! In our new home the bathrooms are well down the list of jobs to be done, so I’ve come up with 10 easy ways to do a budget bathroom makeover and make them much better to live with in the meantime.

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1. Makeover Your Bathroom Sealant and Grout

First things first – no bathroom that has grubby sealant around the bath and shower trays etc. is ever going to feel clean and inviting! Replacing it will instantly give your bathroom a budget makeover. It can be a bit of a messy and tough going DIY job, but it costs next to nothing and it’s so worth it! Little House on the Corner have an excellent tutorial on how to do this job:

Grubby bath sealant prior to bathroom makeover
Image: Littlehouseonthecorner.com
Yuk! Dirty Sealant is gross!
Clean Bathroom sealant following budget makeover.
Image: Littlehouseonthecorner.com

Cleaning / Replacing Grout

Grubby grout can also make a bathroom look shabby. Luckily this is really easy to fix with a grout pen! You can also use a grout pen to change the colour of your grout completely – giving your bathroom a complete makeover on a tiny budget. After you’ve given it all a wash, you literally get the pen and just colour the grout in. Definitely the kind of small budget bathroom makeover I like!

2. Use Paint To Give Your Bathroom A Budget Makeover

Painting is a great budget option for a dramatic bathroom makeover! I recently transformed our downstairs cloakroom from a dingy yellow to a beautiful emerald green pretty much just with paint. In the bathrooms below you can see how the paint colour completely changes the feel of the rooms:

You don’t have to stop at the walls either, repainting your bathroom cabinets can give them a dramatic makeover on a budget too. Chrissymarieblog.com has an excellent tutorial on this:

If you’re feeling really brave you can update your bathroom tiles without replacing them by painting them instead. Though if you choose to do this, make sure you use proper tile paint – I lived in a house once where the tiles had been painted in regular gloss paint; nothing like peeling strips of paint off the tiles while you’re in the shower! There are all kinds of paint and stencils available for the job now, for example the stunning shower wall in the bathroom below has been painted using stencils from Dizzy Duck Designs:

Stunning budget bathroom tile makeover using paint and a tile stencil.
Image: Dizzy Duck Designs: What an amazing transformation! Using Stencils and tile paint.

For more examples of the amazing (and affordable) tile transformations that can be done with paint and stencils, see my post on Instagram DIY trends – particularly the amazing things Jen @cracktheshutters has done with her bathroom.

3. Use Tile Transfers / Decals / Peel and Stick Tiles To Renovate Your Bathroom Tiles

If you want to update your bathroom tiles but painting them is a bit too extreme, why not add a bit of pattern with tile transfers or decals? This is a super-cheap and easy budget bathroom makeover idea. In our first home the bathroom was fine, except that the tiles in the bathroom were just those square white ones you get in public toilets?! So, I used some tile transfers to add a bit of pattern to the tiles – it was a triumph! The bathroom looked sooo much better. Here are a few ideas:

Blue tile stickers in a bathroom
These tile stickers from Not on the High Street, are no longer available however click here for similar ones.

Using these tile stickers is so much cheaper than peel and stick tiles, and they stay on brilliantly well too. If you have a fairly small area to cover, then peel and stick tiles are now massively popular and look amazing. I used them in our previous house to renovate a kitchen splashback and they were great! It’d be pretty pricey to do a whole room with them though – probably cheaper to actually retile it.

4. A Statement Mirror

An amazing mirror can totally transform a bathroom and give it real character. In my recent makeover of our downstairs cloakroom I chose a round mirror that really adds something extra to the room. Here are a few other ideas:

In the image on the left, the huge mirror really makes the space feel bigger and bounces the light around. In the image on the right, the characterful mirror (and lights) really sets a period feel in this space. Great mirrors are available from lots of places and need not break the bank.

5. Plants

Be they real or artificial, plants can really add a bit of life and colour to a bathroom and be quite a stunning budget bathroom makeover option:

6. Upgrade Your Shower Curtain

If you have a shower curtain in your bathroom, why not have some fun with it? This is a super-cheap and easy way of adding a pop of colour or pattern:

Or how about this one from Amazon

7. Transform The Bathroom Floor with Bath Mats / Outdoor Rugs / Lino Mats

Personally I’m not a huge fan of a fluffy bath mat, however if the floor is a bit ropey, they are a handy (and low budget) way of covering it up! Here are a few fun ones:

If you have a bit more floor space in your bathroom, why not use an affordable outdoor rug, or even a lino mat as an alternative:

8. Give Your Bathroom a Luxury Makeover (On A Budget)

Adding some candles is always a lovely way of updating a bathroom to feel more luxurious. If they are also scented then all the better!

Give a more luxurious feel with  stylish bathroom accessories shown next to a bath.
Image: Dunelm

Stylish storage pots and jars for soaps, cotton buds etc. can instantly add some style and glamour to the bathroom and don’t have to be expensive:

9. Treat yourself to some new fluffy towels

Why not give your bathroom towels a makeover? There’s nothing worse than ratty towels spoiling the bathroom look – lovely bright new fluffy ones instantly make a bathroom look better.

A pile of soft fluffy tiles - an easy way to give the bathroom a quick budget makeover.
Lovely fluffy towels from Dunelm

10. Makeover Your Bathroom With Art

Why not have something nice to look at while on the loo?! Adding a couple of pieces of art work can really change up the look of your bathroom, softening some of the hard edges and making it feel more luxurious. There are loads of low budget options available such as these digital downloads from Etsy:

And it’s really easy to change them when you get bored too!

Right, I hope you have enjoyed my ideas for giving your bathroom a budget makeover, I’m full of ideas now – I’m off to glam up my bathroom!