A Cheerful Blue Bathroom Makeover With On-Trend Chequerboard Floor

Blue Bathroom Makeover With Chequerboard Floor

I’m delighted to finally be able to share our family bathroom makeover on the blog today! The new interior design scheme embraces blue wallpaper, on-trend chequerboard porcelain floor tiles, tongue and groove wall panels painted in Little Greene’s Portland Stone Light and an upcycled yellow vintage dresser for bathroom storage.

I’ve been working on this room for the past 3 months as it required a lot of prep work to get it into a decent state before I could decorate it. As one of the most hard-working rooms in the house, the space required a complete overhaul. The old wallpaper was stained and ripped, the hardwood panelling had expanded and cracked, the paint was chipped and I took this opportunity for redecoration to finally get rid of the awful slate floor in here. Laid by the previous owners, I just did not have time for the upkeep that the slate required to keep it looking its natural rich black colour, so I had it ripped up and replaced with bomb-proof glazed porcelain in on-trend monochrome chequerboard (these 30x30cm matt porcelain tiles are from Verde Tiles*).

Below, you’ll find a few shots of the old bathroom floor tiles, all the woodwork that I meticulously filled and sanded back, plus, the room after I had stripped off the original wallpaper. While we were not changing any of the fixtures, everything else needed to be decorated. I removed the old wallpaper off the top half of the walls and discovered that the ceiling paint was peeling, so I sanded that back, smoothed it over and repainted it. I then got some builders in to remove the slate which appeared an impossible task for me to take on by myself during the school holidays! The slate was super-heavy and they had to use hand-held pneumatic drills to get it up. Once the new tiles were laid and the sanitaryware was plumbed back in, I set about prepping the woodwork.

The tongue and groove panelling in here is made from hardwood and I was desperate not to lose it when they stripped out the old floor. Luckily, my builders were really careful and I only had to repair a small amount of damage. After filling all the cracked gaps with wood filler, I sanded the panels and cleaned them ready for painting. As the previous panelling colour was a deep green, this time I felt like lightening up the room with a neutral tone. The new floor already brightened up the space now it wasn’t all black and, this time, I really wanted to highlight the glossy blue bath. Against its previous green backdrop, the beautiful claw-foot tub had kind of got lost in the rest of the decor scheme. My plan as part of the new bathroom design was to create a lighter background to outline it. In the end, I went for Portland Stone Light by Little Greene in an Intelligent Eggshell, as it was a good mix of off-white, soft grey and beige.

I was lucky enough to collaborate with the established wallpaper and fabric brand Harlequin on this bathroom redesign on a social media campaign; when they sent over a selection of their new AW22 wallpapers, I instantly fell in love with Zori in a blue colourway. This bright and airy bathroom really craves pattern and interest with wallpaper, but I didn’t want a pattern that was overpowering or dominated the space. Zori’s* coral-like pattern - made up of tiny off-white dots contained within organic shapes - is an interesting, busy, modern motif, but it still allows for other bold colours and patterns within the room (such as the yellow cabinet and the chequerboard floor).

While the bulk of the room was now blue and monochrome, there was definitely a requirement for a third colour to be added into the mix to add more character and warmth into the space. I’ve currently been pinning a lot of yellow interiors over on Pinterest, so I decided that deep and warm mustard yellow would be a great colour choice to upcycle the existing bathroom cabinet in (a old eBay purchase I’ve had for years), as well as a feature colour for the accessories in the room. I painted the cabinet India Yellow by Farrow & Ball and updated the door and drawer pulls with some stunning antique brass knobs from Plank Hardware. *

One small thing I did that cost very little money but has been brilliant in terms of practicality was to screw in wooden pegs into the panelling to hang towels and accessories. I painted the wood pegs the same colour as the panelling so that they blended into the decor, but they have been great to hang towels, washing items and clothes on rather than piles of stuff accumulating on the floor!