I chose to paint my walls a dark shade of navy blue in order to create a jewel box-like effect. I figured dark walls might draw people's eyes away from the ugly bits. The walls are now Benjamin Moore Soot in semi-gloss, and the trim and door are painted Ben Moore's Gentleman's Gray in high-gloss. (A hopeful name...do you think it will send any gentlemen my way?) After I stripped the walls of the bad wallpaper, I found that my walls were not in great shape. I blamed previous workmen, but I'm starting to believe that I'm the culprit. A set of early 18th c. prints were hung to hide the wall's flaws.
Soot on the left and Gentleman's Gray on the right
What made things easy was that I chose to treat my guest bathroom as a powder room instead. I didn't have to worry about the shower as no one would be using it. (That's the beauty of living in a building with guest suites; you can put guests there rather than having them stay with you.) So, I chose to hide the shower behind some greek key curtains in navy and cream from Pottery Barn.
In order to hide the vanity, I whipped up a tailored skirt using Stitch Witchery. I went with a pale blue cotton/linen fabric from Lewis and Sheron, and hot glued some tape trim at the top. It's kind of a pain when you need to get underneath the sink as you have to flip the bottom of the skirt up over the sink, but hey, I'm not down there very often.
Lighting became a bit of a problem, especially as the dark walls made everything, well, dark. I put two column lamps on the vanity to help with lighting and to help distract from the medicine cabinet behind. I had to go with off-white shades, something which I normally don't use, in order to maximize the light. That said, I like to use only the lamps for lighting in there to keep things a little moody, a little dramatic. The medicine cabinet actually came in handy- it gave me a place to shove the lamp cords.
I really got stumped about what to do with the hideous fluorescent light fixture above the mirror. With the help of my sister the artist, we came up with a wooden valance to hide said fixture. The design was inspired by a bedspread from a 1940s bedroom. The nice thing is that you can still use that light, but it's been toned down considerably.
Now maybe I'm kidding myself, but I do think that with the dark colors, the pattern, and the lamps, you don't notice the bad stuff quite as much as before. I think that there is enough there to catch one's eye, perhaps even preventing them from paying attention to the vanity or the mirrored thingamajig. And I was amazed at how little I actually spent on the whole thing. My goal had been to create a temporary fix for the guest bathroom to buy me about a year until I was ready to forge ahead with a renovation. Now, I'm actually liking the powder room and may not even bother with redoing it. If only someone could help me come up with a solution for the french fry lamp in my ceiling.
