A Serene Bathroom Makeover

Today’s Scandi style bathroom comes from Irene, owner of the beautiful Instagram account Nordicllar. Irene and I were chatting over email about her serene bathroom makeover, and one of the first things I had to ask was how those gorgeous matt taps are holding up. Read on to find out!

We bought our 1930s mid-terrace house at the end of 2016 and as first time buyers, we knew we wanted something in fairly good condition that we could just freshen up with some DIY here and there (little did we know what we were getting ourselves into!).

We visited Copenhagen for the first time a year before buying and fell head over heels in love with the simplicity of Scandinavian design. From the moment we left we knew that this love for nordic interiors would be at the heart of everything we did in our home. Keeping it minimal, clutter-free and above all functional.

The bathroom was by no means in bad shape when we moved in. It was just fairly plain with light blue walls and the generic fixtures and fittings that you seem to find in most two-up two-downs. However, the more we styled and decorated the rest of the house, the more this room felt like it was falling behind. We knew it had so much potential and were desperate to save up and transform the space. When we thought about the room we wanted, we visualised a calm, relaxing space that we could chill out in; somewhere that felt inviting and stylish, a space that didn’t create a feeling of clutter or untidiness. Heading into the project, we were complete renovation novices – we’d done as much DIY as we could around the house, exposing the floorboards and painting the walls but we decided that we needed professionals to do this particular job for us.

We had been dreaming about having a freestanding bath for a while now (thanks pinterest!) but the current bathroom had been fitted pretty poorly, with pipework left exposed and shoddily plumbed in fittings. To have the bath we wanted the entire bathroom would have to be gutted and the pipes repositioned under the floorboards. This was a pretty frightening prospect and slightly more costly but we are so glad we took the leap as this has completely transformed the room and added a huge feeling of space.

We hired an incredible team of local tradesmen who went above and beyond to help us achieve the room we wanted. Richard from R5 Bathrooms & Plumbing was our main bathroom fitter and he was so helpful – nothing was ever too much trouble. He made sure that everything was done correctly and patiently accommodated all our newbie questions. The wall and floor tiling was done by Ady Evans and we couldn’t be happier with the combination of hexagons and herringbone finish – it’s such a subtle clash of patterns and we absolutely love it!

It took a total of ten working days to complete the work and we sourced our products from various websites to save money where we could. The biggest surprise was that we ended up using Amazon for some of the essential bathroom fixtures and we are so impressed with the suppliers we used through them. Some of our favourite parts are our homemade concrete sink by a wonderful Etsy supplier called Dekornia and the wall-hung ‘scandi’ unit from Wickes. Oh and our black matt tap! Overall, we are so thrilled with the finished result – we knew this transformation would change the way we felt about the room but we never quite anticipated how much joy it would bring us!

{STEAL THE STYLE}