Warm up your bathroom for the autumn and winter season

At this time of year, our thoughts turn naturally enough to ways of warming up our homes. If you’re looking to give your bathroom a warm glow, there are ways of doing this both figuratively and literally. Using a warm color palette and natural materials when updating your decor makes the room look warm, and adding innovations such as heated towel rails and underfloor heating will provide a warm feeling to match.

Your decor needs to match your bathroom furniture, so if you have existing cabinets and aren’t planning a full remodel, then think about the base color of your bathroom cabinets. If this base isn’t satisfactory and you’re willing to put in some DIY effort to tweak the bathroom to suit, you can paint your own cabinets with cupboard paint, a durable paint type available from DIY stores. Warm neutral colors from beige to ochre are a good starting point and can be complemented by richer accent colors: russets and orangey reds, warm greens, and shades of mocha, chocolate, bronze or gold.

Try using a combination of tile and vinyl (or washable) wallpaper: a neutral tiles and highly detailed wallpaper will bring a balanced combination of styles to the room. Or contrast walls of neutral bathroom paint with richer, more detailed tiled areas – tile small alcoves and a full feature wall, or add this detail in your shower enclosure or basin splashback area. Finally, you could tile or paint the whole room, according to your taste, and use bathroom accessories and art to bring interest and variety to the room.

Add real (rather than visual) warmth to your bathroom with underfloor heating (from £400 for a small area) – obviously this is something that will cause quite a bit of disruption so is best factored into a bathroom overhaul rather than a simple redecoration. Adding an electric towel radiator, provided you have the space, is something that can be done without disrupting your existing central heating system, as the power source is separate and the unit is self contained. Alternatively, you can exchange your existing bathroom radiator for a towel radiator.

 love the rectangular tub...

4 images above © betterbathrooms.com

Flooring additions like soft, cozy rugs or bathmats will amp up a bathroom’s comfort factor during the winter months, and task lighting combined with ambient lighting will bring warmth to the room (dark and cold just seem to go together, somehow) and ensure that you have sufficient light in the bathroom on gloomy winter days.

Here are some more bathrooms that I would just love to cozy up in on a cold winter's day:

This bathroom has a warm, Victorian-vintage vibe to it

via BHG

pardon my drool...I love the big armoire, rug, and beams in this eclectic bathroom.

2 above via Elle Decor

*disclosure: This post is sponsored by betterbathrooms.com