Decorating the smallest room

We moved into our house about a year and a half ago, and we've been slowly working our way around decorating a room at a time. We started with the key rooms - so far we've done the living room, our bedroom and Mia's bedroom. We're lucky that most of the rooms aren't in too bad a shape, just not necessarily decorated to our taste. When I was offered £50 by MoneySupermarket to show how you can change the look and feel of a room on a budget I decided that it was time to update our downstairs toilet.

Here's the before pictures. It's an internal room with no window, so has no natural light. It was painted cream which the electric light makes appear yellowy, and the floor is the same colour. I like the tiles above the sink, but they didn't match the colour of the walls at all. All the fittings were pine which I thought made it look quite old-fashioned.

I chose pale blue for the walls and then used white for the ceiling and woodwork. We bought new fittings in white painted wood and some new towels in dark blue. Moving the position for the towel rail keeps it tucked out of the way and adding a soap dish keeps the sink clear.

The old mirror no longer matched, so instead of buying a new one I decided to save some money and paint the old pine one. It was much easier to do than I expected and made a huge difference, so here's how I did it:

1 - Lightly sand the wood

2 - Use masking tape and newspaper to cover the mirror inside the frame

3 - Paint the frame. I used white emulsion paint (the same that I used for the ceiling) and a small paintbrush. In the end I did three coats of paint to make sure that it was evenly covered, the photograph shows it after two coats.

The room is still a little bare and definitely needs some artwork on the walls. It's a big decision though so we are going to wait until we've found the perfect piece! I quite fancy something to do with the seaside as we live close to the sea, and I rather like the vintage train posters that you can buy advertising our nearest seaside resort.

It's amazing what a difference a coat of paint and a change of fittings can do to update the look of a room on a low budget. Fortunately we already had some white emulsion paint and gloss paint left over from decorating our bedroom, and it's only a small room so we didn't need much.

Here's what I spent:

Towel ring - £7.98
Toilet roll holder - £7.18
Toilet roll pole - £2.98
Soap dish - £7.18
Two hand towels - £6
Dulux Mineral Mist emulsion - £18.98

Which makes a total of £50.30. Thanks to MoneySupermarket for giving me the push that I needed to get this room done!