Small bathroom, big ideas

The biggest win in a small bathroom is usually visible floor. The more floor you can see, the bigger the room feels. That's why wall-hung toilets and basins work so well in tight spaces. The cistern hides in a boxed-in frame, the pan floats off the floor, and suddenly you can see all the way to the skirting. The boxing also gives you a handy shelf.

Before we suggest anything, we measure properly and draw the room with the door swing, the window, the soil pipe position and any boxing already in the way. Most small bathroom mistakes come from buying a suite before anyone checked the door clears the basin. We'd rather spend an extra half hour at the survey than have you living with a door that hits the toilet.

This is the big decision in a small room. If you have young kids or you love a soak, keeping a bath makes sense. A shower bath, wider at the tap end, gives you a proper standing area under the shower without taking more length. A straight bath with a hinged screen instead of a curtain feels much more modern and keeps the water in.

If nobody in the house uses the bath, swapping it for a walk-in shower is often the single best thing you can do for a small room. A long shower tray or a level-access wet room floor with a fixed glass panel takes the same wall but feels twice as open. It's also far easier to get in and out of as the years go on. Worth thinking about if you plan to stay put.

A few tricks come up again and again. A short-projection toilet saves a surprising amount of knee room in narrow bathrooms. A slimline or corner basin keeps the walkway clear. A sliding or outward-opening door frees up the space an inward door swings through. In a box room, running everything along one long wall, with the shower at the end, often beats spreading fittings around the room.

Storage is where small bathrooms usually fall down. A recessed mirror cabinet, tiled niches in the shower wall for bottles, and a shallow wall-hung vanity keep the surfaces clear. Clear surfaces are what make a small room feel calm rather than cluttered. If there's boxing for pipes, we'll often turn it into a shelf rather than hiding it.

Large-format tiles with fewer grout lines make walls and floors read as one surface, and small rooms look bigger for it. Running the same tile from floor to wall in the shower area does the same. You don't have to go all white. Strong colour works brilliantly in small rooms if you use it on one wall or on the floor and keep the rest calm.

Good lighting matters more in a small bathroom than in a big one. Ceiling downlights rated for bathrooms, a lit mirror at the basin and a warm light for evenings change how the room feels. Bathroom electrics have to meet the wiring regulations and be done by a qualified electrician. We'll organise that as part of the job.

Small bathrooms steam up fast and stay damp longer, which is how black mould gets into the silicone and the ceiling. A properly sized extractor fan ducted to the outside, ideally with an overrun timer, is non-negotiable. A heated towel rail helps dry the air as well as the towels. If the room has no window at all, ventilation becomes even more important, and we'll plan the fan and its route before anything else.

Small rooms also go quicker than big ones, but not by as much as you'd think. The plumbing, boarding and tanking still take the same care whatever the size. What a small room does save is materials, which leaves room in the budget for the details you'll notice every day: a better shower, nicer taps or a heated rail.