Most Irish bathrooms are small. Many of the rooms in our gallery are under five square metres, and several of the cloakrooms are barely two. Small rooms can look stunning, but the tile choices matter more than they do in a big room. These are the rules we come back to on every job.
1. Bigger tiles, not smaller
It feels wrong, but large-format tiles make a small room look bigger. Fewer grout lines mean fewer visual interruptions, and the eye reads the wall as one surface. A 600 by 1200 porcelain slab on a two-metre cloakroom wall needs only a handful of pieces, and the result is calm rather than busy.
2. Run the same tile on the floor and walls
Using one tile everywhere removes the line where the floor stops and the wall starts, which is what makes a room feel boxed in. Most of our favourite small rooms, like the slat-wall cloakroom and the beige stone en-suite in the gallery, use a single tile throughout and let one feature carry the interest.
3. Put the feature where you look, not everywhere
One feature wall or one niche is enough. A slat wall behind the WC, a patterned floor in the shower niche, a strip of metro tile with an LED above it. The rest of the room should be quiet so the feature can do its job. Two features in a small room fight each other.
4. Match the grout to the tile
This is the decision nobody talks about. Dark grout on a light tile draws a grid across the wall and makes every tile count. Grout that matches the tile colour almost disappears and the surface reads as one piece. In a small room, matched grout nearly always wins. The exception is a deliberate brick or metro look where the grid is the point.
5. Go lighter on the walls, and use the light you have
Light, warm neutrals bounce daylight around. If the room has no window, a backlit mirror and an LED niche do the same job after dark. Gloss tiles reflect more light than matt but show water marks in a shower, so we often use a matt or satin finish in the wet area and gloss elsewhere.
Bonus: lose the floor-standing furniture
A wall-hung vanity and a wall-hung WC leave the floor tile running underneath, which makes the floor area look larger and makes the room much easier to clean. If you are renovating fully, framing in a concealed cistern is worth every cent in a small room.
Want help choosing?
We bring samples to the site visit and tell you honestly what will and will not work in your light and your layout.
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