The small rooms we see most
Cottage bathrooms. A room carved out of a rear addition, often two and a half metres by one and a half, with a bath under the window, a shower over the bath and a vanity wedged behind the door. Common in the older streets of Kiama, in Bombo and in the original parts of Gerringong.
Townhouse and duplex bathrooms. Slab on ground, no window, a fan that may or may not go outside, and an owners corporation with a view about waterproofing. Found through Kiama Downs, Minnamurra and central Kiama.
Separate toilets. A legacy of houses built when the toilet was its own tiny room, and in a cottage that wall is often the best square metre available to reclaim.
Second bathrooms in holiday houses. Small, hammered in summer, idle in winter, and generally fitted out with whatever was cheapest at the time.
What actually buys space
None of these are tricks. They are just decisions made in the right order.
Remove the hob and the door. A level-entry shower behind a single fixed glass panel removes the step, the swing and most of the hardware. In a coastal house, less hardware is also less corrosion. It is the change people notice most.
Wall-hang the vanity. Seeing the floor continue underneath makes the room read as larger, and a shallower vanity with drawers holds more than a deeper one with a cupboard and a pipe through the middle.
Move the door or change how it opens. A door swinging inward can consume close to a square metre. A cavity slider, or simply re-hanging it to open outward, gives that back.
Take the wall out. Where a separate toilet sits next door, combining the two rooms usually produces a bathroom that works rather than two rooms that do not.
Recess the storage. A niche in the shower wall and a recessed mirror cabinet put storage inside the wall thickness instead of out in the room.
Continue the floor tile. Running the same floor tile through the shower, with no threshold, stops the eye from chopping the floor into pieces.
Tile to the ceiling. In a small room the walls are close, so peeling paint above the screen is right in your face. Full-height tile removes the problem and lifts the apparent ceiling height.
Light in a small coastal bathroom
South-facing cottage bathrooms here get very little sun between May and August, and townhouse bathrooms often have no window at all.
- Clear glass, not frosted. Frosted glass turns a shower into a wall.
- A light at the mirror, not only in the middle of the ceiling behind your head.
- Lighter walls, a mid-tone floor. Pale floor tiles in a house that gets beach sand walked through it are a cleaning job you will regret.
- A skylight or high louvre window, where the roof structure allows it, is the biggest single improvement available to a windowless room.
Ventilation matters more, not less
A small room fills with steam faster and has less air volume to dilute it. A fan sized properly for the room, ducted to outside and running on for fifteen minutes afterwards is the difference between a bathroom that dries and a ceiling that grows things. This coastline is humid, and the escarpment behind keeps it that way.
Choosing fittings for a tight room
- A shower head on a rail rather than a fixed rain head, so the room does not get drenched from wall to wall
- A shallow basin set into or on top of a slim vanity, with the tap set to one side
- A slim-profile toilet with a concealed or thin cistern
- Hooks instead of rails, which need less wall and dry towels just as well
- A single mixer rather than three-piece tapware, for the space it frees at the basin
- Fittings specified for salt air, because in a small room the hardware is always within arm's reach and you will see it corrode
Where the money goes in a small room
Small does not mean cheap. The plumber, electrician, waterproofer and tiler all attend as they would for a large room, the membrane cures at the same rate, and the fixtures cost the same. What you save is tile area, demolition volume and the bath. What can add cost is the opposite of what you expect: tight rooms are slower to work in, and a set-out with awkward cuts takes a tiler longer per square metre than an open floor.
The cost page sets out the guide tiers, and how the job runs explains the sequence.
Doing the whole room properly
If the tiles are drummy, the floor is soft or the shower has been leaking, a small bathroom still needs the full treatment — see full bathroom renovations. Small rooms hide the same problems as big ones, in less space.
Renovation work is carried out in partnership with Coastal Renovation Group, a licensed NSW builder. Licence and insurance details are provided on request.
Call 02 4214 4021 or send the room details through.
Other bathroom work
- Full Bathroom Renovations
- Weatherboard, fibro and brick-veneer bathrooms taken back to the frame and rebuilt to last on a salty coastline.
- Ensuites
- Tacked-on ensuites and old sleepout bathrooms reworked into a second bathroom that earns its space.
- Accessible Bathrooms
- Step-free showers, seats, blocked-out walls and non-slip floors for people who'd rather not move house.
- Laundry Renovations
- Back-of-house laundries sorted out properly — sand, wet towels, dog bowls and all.
- Waterproofing & Tiling
- Membrane, falls and set-out: the invisible half of the job that decides how long the visible half lasts.
- Rental & Holiday-Let Bathrooms
- Hard-wearing bathrooms for long-term rentals and short-stay houses, programmed to fit between bookings.
Questions people ask before they commit
Should I take the bath out?
If nobody has used it in two years, yes — it is the single biggest gain available in a small room. If you have small children, or the house is a rental or a holiday let that families book, keeping one bath in the property is worth the space it costs.
Do big tiles make a small bathroom look bigger?
Fewer grout lines does read as calmer, so there is something in it. The bigger factor is how the set-out lands: a large tile that needs a narrow sliver cut at both walls will make the room look worse than a medium tile laid to a planned centre line.
Can a separate toilet be opened into the bathroom?
Frequently, and it is often transformative in a cottage. Whether the dividing wall is load-bearing decides how involved it gets, and the drainage has to be reworked, so it is a strip-out job rather than a refresh.
Is a small bathroom cheaper to renovate?
Less than a large one, but not proportionally. The same trades attend, the same membrane and cure time apply, and the fixture count is identical. Tile quantity and demolition volume are where the saving actually sits. See the cost page for the guide tiers.