Monstera bathroom

From the Resene colour inspiration – latest looks gallery

Nature is a great place to seek inspiration if you’re looking for an idea that will appeal to everyone who may be using your bathroom.

Family and guest bathrooms are a unique space within your home. They’re one of those places that don’t need to be formal, nor do they need to match or coordinate with the other rooms in your house – which makes them ripe for having some real fun with decorating.

One way to go about coming up with your look is to create a theme. Nature is a great place to seek inspiration if you’re looking for an idea that will appeal to everyone who may be using your bathroom, regardless of their age or gender. Plus, tropical plants have been a massive trend over recent years – with potentially no variety more popular than the highly-recognisable monstera, so you likely won’t struggle with finding décor to coordinate with your design if you look to this motif.

Rather than sticking to typical earthy greens for the basis of your bathroom colour palette, put a playful twist on it with refreshing blues, cloudy greys and pretty pinks. The walls of this bathroom are in Resene Longitude, a chalky and soft pastel grey blue that’s particularly easy on the eyes and lends itself well to being paired up with a range of other colours. Floorboards in paler Resene Midwinter Mist add even more neutrality to the base of the room, leaving room to have more fun with statement accent colours.

One of the best things about paint is that you can use it on just about anything, so long as you properly prepare your surface. That means you’ll never be stuck hunting high and low accessories to match! Soap dispensers, duck boards, baskets and storage containers are all fair game for getting fresh coats of paint to coordinate with your new colour scheme. We’ve painted ours in Resene Streetwise, Resene Juniper and Resene Paper Doll to match our shower curtain. But if you want a bolder look, trying adding a few pops of Resene Half Pohutukawa.

If you’re on a budget for your bathroom renovation or want a unique look, you could look to pieces of furniture you may already own or upcycle something interesting from a vintage or op shop. Give new life to an old hall table by cutting holes for the drain and water lines for a statement blush pink basin and gold coloured mixer and repaint it in Resene Juniper. Paint a colour block of Resene Juniper up on to the wall to create the look of a splashback with just some simple measuring and masking. With any painted wall effect, be sure to choose high quality painter’s masking tape – like those available from your local Resene ColorShop – so that you’ll be left with a crisp, clean edge when you remove it.

Liven up some plain coat pegs by attaching them first to a cut out monstera leaf coaster painted in Resene Streetwise before screwing them into the wall. Cut your desired shape using a jig saw or hacksaw out of a thin sheet of MDF or plywood. Make one for each family member so that it’s easy to tell whose towel belongs to whom. You could even use a small artist’s brush and a Resene testpot in a coordinating colour to paint each person’s name on to their leaf. Or, you could paint each leaf in a different hue to differentiate between them.

Since small bathrooms are often short on counter space, this bathroom has a painted peg stool in Resene Streetwise that can be moved about the room to wherever and whenever it’s needed.

For extra storage space, add a floating shelf in Resene Paper Doll for items you want to display and paint some lidded baskets or bins in your favourite Resene colours to stow items you want to keep tucked out of sight. If you’ve already colour coded the leaves on your towel hooks, paint your storage bins in the same hues to encourage family members to keep their grooming kits in order and keep clutter to a minimum.

Accessories — Basin and mixer from Plumbline, mirror from Palliser, shower curtain from Kmart, bathmats and towels from Adairs, basket, soap and sponge from Citta.

Project by Melle van Sambeek. Images by Bryce Carleton. 2021