Brighten Your Bathroom with Fresh Lighting & Paint

Often, bathrooms have tons of reflective surfaces, but even your gleaming mirrors and metallic plumbing fixtures can start looking even brighter with a great combination of paint colors and light fixtures. If you want to brighten up your bathroom and bring a fresh, clean feel into the room, it’s easy to combine a light paint color with effective lighting. Whether you choose new light fixtures for your bathroom or you use what you already have in combination with a fresh coat of paint, this simple makeover process will make the room shine brightly.

Straight to the Source

Before you make any changes, take a look at your bathroom. What are the main reasons it currently looks dark? Is the window obscured by heavy curtains that you could replace with sheers or diaphanous shades? Are the lights not designed in a way you love? Is there even enough light to begin with? Do your walls feel light and bright enough? These are all things to think about in your bathroom makeover. Even if you like the shade of your current bathroom wall color, it could be that another color will work even better.

Brighten Up

Dark walls can look glamorous and romantic in any room, but this end of the color spectrum may not hold your ideal bathroom paint color – especially if your goal is to lighten and brighten the space. Most dark colors don’t reflect light back as effectively as lighter ones, so they can make the whole room feel a bit darker – which is great if you’re going for a little extra drama. For a highly functional space like the bathroom though, pastels, whites, taupes, and greys can reflect light out into the rest of the room and help you find what you need a little faster in the morning.

Serious Shade

So what is the best bathroom paint color? The answer is different for everyone. There’s no “wrong” shade for the bathroom, so don’t feel obligated to go with a white wall if you don’t love that look. Light gray, pastel blue, pale sage green, sunny yellow and pink are just a few of the color options you can consider for your bathroom. You can choose stronger shades of bright, warm colors like yellow and orange, but if you’re going for red, you might want to stay in the warm, bright side of the color spectrum rather than a darker burgundy or berry-inspired shade. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can even opt for a metallic wall or ceiling, whether from paint, leaf or wallpaper. It’ll dial up the drama and give the space an even greater sense of reflected light.

Bright & Breezy

Lighting may be one of the first things you consider when you’re wondering how to brighten a bathroom, and that’s a perfectly logical step. In this process, though, it can come after considering your paint colors. The light fixtures you choose can be the finishing touches in the room. Choosing your light fixtures after picking out your paint color also lets you coordinate your metallic finish shade with your color choice. Think about balancing cool colors like blue and green with warm brass or gold-toned light fixture finishes, or pair walls of this color with cool silver-toned lights for a water effect.

With a great light-reflecting paint color picked out, it makes sense to accentuate it with some wall sconces. Sconces are a great lighting choice for the bathroom, and when you pair them with a fresh, bright wall color, their light-casting abilities seem even more effective. Place your sconces near your sink/vanity area to make good use out of these fixtures.

Don’t Forget to Look Up

Most bathrooms use flushmount lights on their ceilings to cast diffuse light throughout the room, and the ceiling is often painted white. White makes good sense for a bathroom ceiling because it’s so good at reflecting light and looking crisp and clean. Even if you’ve painted your walls a different color, you may want to leave your ceiling white, at least in the center of the room. If you really want to add color up there, consider making it a border around the perimeter of the room, and use a glossy paint finish so it helps reflect even more light.