Guest Bathroom Decor and Design Ideas (2024)

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Guest bathroom decor and design is made simple with these easy design tips! Learn how to decorate your guest bath to create a welcoming atmosphere in just a few steps.

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Guest Bathroom Design Ideas

Designing a guest bathroom can present certain challenges.

You want the space to be beautiful, clean and organized. However, it also needs to serve a specific purpose and function for your family on a daily basis. After all, most guest bathrooms are used daily by our own families!

In most homes, a guest bathroom may be the only bathroom on a main level. So, it needs to serve our families daily while also being a clean and tidy spot for guests when they are over.

Here are a few ideas for designing a guest bathroom so it can serve both purposes.

• Invest in closed storage. Open shelving is beautiful, but cabinets are most functional for a guest bathroom. Whether this is a full vanity, countertop tower, or floor to ceiling cabinet, design with cabinetry in mind.
• Pair down to the essentials. Many times bathrooms become the landing zone for clutter. Instead, utilize linen closets, bedroom closets, or laundry rooms to store items you don’t need on a daily basis.
• Tuck away essential toiletries in obvious places. Example: extra toilet paper should be stored under the sink or next to the toilet so guests aren’t searching for it if in need.
• Corral daily used countertop items on a pretty tray to keep it tidy, yet accessible.
• Elevate the space with a few simple swaps. I’ll dive into this in more detail next.

Simple Swaps to Elevate your Guest Bathroom Decor

Let’s face it, the bathroom is one of the main places in a home where we need to have “ugly” items accessible.

Shampoo bottles, skincare regimens, kleenex, q-tips…all these things aren’t the prettiest to look at, but we don’t always have space to hide them away.

Instead, invest in a simple swap to elevate your guest bathroom decor. Here are a few items that we typically need to have accessible, that can be swapped for a prettier and just as functional version.

• Use Kleenex covers to hide kleenex boxes
• Decant shampoo and conditioner into pretty bottles
• Swap plastic laundry baskets for wicker or bamboo options
• Switch hand towels out when they are worn
• Upgrade hand soaps into pretty dispensers
• Place a soap dish in the bathroom to avoid soap residue dripping down shower walls
• Add a lidded trash can to hide trash without having to hide the container
• Utilize a beautiful countertop tray to corral daily used items into a neat display

You can shop all my favorite bathroom essential and simple swap ideas in my storefront.

Guest Bathroom Decor Ideas

Now that we’ve covered some of the basics of design, and a few tricks of the trade for masking everyday essentials in plain sight, let’s talk about decor.

In my humble opinion, guest bathroom decor should be very simple.

A piece of art. A simple wall treatment. Perhaps some pretty wallpaper woven into the bathroom design. Or even just very nice hand towels that go well with your color scheme.

All of these things can serve as decor, without having to actually add decor.

The more decor you add to a guest bathroom, the more cluttered and cumbersome it becomes. Especially if it is a small bathroom.

So, instead of adding a ton of decor to bathrooms, I like to put my time and money into quality finishes during the design or remodel process.

Instead of focusing on decor, focus on these finishes to decorate a bathroom:

• Quality faucets, towel bars and hooks
• Statement lighting
• Timeless tile
• Millwork or wallpaper if you’d like to elevate the overall look of the room
• Clean toilets (Quite literally. Clean, modern lines are lovely, but a clean toilet is truly all a guest needs.)

When you focus on the design of the bathroom, rather than the decor, it essentially decorates itself. Here are a few articles on bathroom design that can help if you are thinking of remodeling.

My Bathroom Sources

Our 70s home remodel included a full gut bathroom remodel.

We knocked down all the walls, rebuilt them in a new configuration, added a shower and double vanity, and more! We took a tiny powder bath and transformed it to the guest bathroom of my dreams.

Why is it my dream bathroom? Because it’s very functional.

Not only is it the only bathroom on our entire main level, it also doubles as our laundry room and mudroom. You can watch the 4 month remodel process in this YouTube video!

Here are the design sources for our bathroom remodel if you are interested!

• Bathroom vanity
• Vanity lighting
• Vanity Mirrors
• Towel bars
• Towel hook
• Faucets
• Vanity pulls
• Vanity knobs
• Toilet paper holder
• Floor tile
• Shower wall tile
• Shower niche tile
• Shower bullnose tile
• Shower head
• Shower pan

If you are looking for ways to fully design a bathroom, make sure to check out this article on designing a timeless bathroom that will surpass the trends for years to come.

Stay Connected

Thanks so much for stopping by today! I hope this has been helpful as you plan your guest bathroom decor and design.

Make sure to grab all my free guides, DIY tutorials and free printables available to my Grace Notes subscribers while you’re here.

You can also follow along daily on Instagram and weekly on YouTube!

~Sarah