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Give your half bath a refresh with these beautiful powder room decorating ideas!

They say sometimes the best things come in small packages. And after completing a makeover on the tiniest room in our house, I have definitely found that to be true!

Our powder room / half bath is only 5' x 4.5'. It started off pretty boring when we moved into this house...

The powder room is located right near the front door. So even though it's small, it's a pretty visible space. And it's also the bathroom that guests are most likely to use.

Pre-Covid, we hosted a decent size gathering at our house. Since the half bath was looking pretty dingy, I took half a day and gave it a really quick spruce up. I painted the walls, added a floating shelf, plunked down some accessories, and called it a day.

It wasn't terrible, but I knew we could do better. Recently Donnie and I set out to really update the half bath and make it beautiful.

7 Ways to Create a Gorgeous Powder Room / Half Bath

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Instead of seeing a boring and forgettable bathroom when we walk in our front door, we are now met with this view...

And we are so thrilled with how it turned out! Here are the 7 biggest things we did to take our bathroom from "blah" to beautiful:

1. Bring storage into the powder room with a pretty vanity.

If you've spent much time on this blog at all, you know that organization is always at the forefront of my mind. The pedestal sink that was in this bathroom when we moved in offered absolutely nothing in terms of storage, so I had been storing the supplies for our half bath in our entry cabinet instead.

This was an okay solution, but one of my top priorities when we set out to redo this space was to add some actual storage to the half bath. We ended up doing so in the form of this oh-so-pretty vanity...

I was a bit nervous that our tiny bathroom wouldn't be able to accommodate a vanity, but the 24" size ended up being a perfect fit.

The cabinet has plenty of space to hold all of the extra toilet paper and soap we need. And we even have room to grow if we end up needing to store more items.

2. Add interest with beadboard / wainscoting.

One of the great things about small spaces is that you can add an eye-catching wall treatment like beadboard or board and batten or shiplap without having to spend a ton of money to do it.

This was the first time we had ever used beadboard (also called wainscoting). We loved it because unlike shiplap that has to be installed one plank at a time, beadboard comes in full sheets. We were able to have the guys at Home Depot cut it to the correct height for us before we even left the store, and then Donnie just had to cut it to the correct width when we got home.

While we were at it, we also took the time to install chunkier baseboards and capped off the top of the beadboard with a finishing trim piece.

With the baseboard, beadboard, and top trim piece, our wall treatment ended up being 6' high, or 2/3 the height of our 9' high space. I have found that bringing the wall treatment to the 2/3 mark rather than splitting the wall directly in half is more visually appealing, and it also allows us to...

3. Draw the eye up with pretty wallpaper.

I am typically a little pattern shy, but I knew I could handle it in small doses in this room! Wallpaper can also be pricey, but since I was just doing the top 3' of the room, I didn't need a TON of it. (And the job of wallpapering was a lot less intimidating too. I'll have a tutorial up about it soon!)

I fell in love with this pattern as soon as I saw it, and with its light blue background and aqua accents, I knew it would fit in perfectly with the rest of our house's color scheme. If you are an aqua lover as well, you can find more than 15 other beautiful aqua wallpaper options in this post.

4. Add character to the powder room with chunky craftsman trim.

We have been slowly changing out the trim work ever since we moved into our house, replacing the minimal and cheap looking trim that the builder put in with chunkier craftsman style trim.

This view of the beadboard AND chunky window trim AND cute wood shutter makes my heart so happy. I just love all the character it brings to our once "cookie cutter" house!

The door got the chunky trim treatment as well (which made wallpapering this corner a little interesting, but well worth it)!

Chunky trim may not always be one of those things that you walk into a room and notice immediately, but it really elevates the overall feel of a space and makes it feel more custom and homey.

5. Show off the space with gorgeous lighting.

We have added or replaced more than 20 (!!!) light fixtures since we moved into this house 4 years ago. (I practically have our electrician on speed dial!