I don't know if this helps but I am currently threatening my teenage daughter with the prospect of a pedestal sink. I told her yesterday that I was thinking about a pedestal sink with a built in medicine cabinet because I was sick of her leaving all the junk out on the cabinet. That way she would have to put things away because there just simply wouldn't be enough room for it around the pedestal sink.

We also have two small 1.5 baths, hall about 37 square feet and the master just the half 22 square feet. The hall bath had a vanity, and we replaced it, but the half bath had just a wall-mounted sink. Used to refer to it as the "gas station bathroom sink."

Although I love the look of the pedestal, even with a medicine cabinet the storage was very limited. So, we got a vanity, and it has made a huge difference. I only keep my cup and soap on the sink. I am very glad with my decision since I use this bath in the morning.

We have no kids.

Before:

After:

Ncamy-If my husband's pedestal sink is any indication, she'll find a way, LOL.

ScienceChick-Going back and forth between your pictures, I think that the vanity actually makes your bathroom look bigger. (As well as much nicer!) So what do you store under the sink?

We do have a nice big closet in the hallway, in between the two bathrooms, for extra rolls of toilet paper, a caddy of cleaning supplies, extra medicines, and more.

Thanks! Mostly things that are too tall or wide for the medicine cabinet shelves. Taller bottles such as nail polish remover, peroxide, mouthwash, my sonic care brush refills, extra bottles of lotion. So, it's not the mess I envisioned under there. In the other bath, we have some stackable shelving for DH's toiletries like shaving cream and mouthwash.

I have a pedestal sink in the house in our upstairs bath and I hate it. I have a vanity down stairs. I guess its a matter of preference.
vanity is a good place to store washcloths, combs, hair items, tweezers,shavers, feminine items.

We've been redoing bathrooms here and have struggled with that same question. In the masterbath we decided to go with a vanity so each of us has a place to put our toiletries.

In the half bath downstairs we did a pedestal sink and love it. We have a medicine cabinet above it for some storage.

Now we're doing the upstairs hall bath, and have discussed it over and over. Finally we bought a vanity, deciding that we need/want some storage for our daughters. If we put a pedestal sink in there, we would have needed storage of some kind, either a cabinet or baskets.

I do love pedestals but only in powder rooms.

TP and cleaning supplies, primarily. Extra TP in the hall closet isn't very convenient if you run out while you're on the can. ;-p

In small baths I prefer pedestals.

If it's a small rectangular powder room with a toilet on one short wall and the sink on the opposite short wall and the entry door in the middle of one of the long walls, I'll put a medicine cabinet over the sink, and above the toilet I'll put a wall cabinet up high. You can usually get more storage with easier eye-level access versus in the high wall cabinet than you can with the under-the-sink cave that sometimes happens with a vanity.

Even in a typical 5' wide bathroom, I'll sometimes put in a pedestal sink. Somewhere on the wall I'll install a 2-stud bay wide pantry. I'll build it out maybe 1-1/2" proud of the wall, so including the depth of the stud bay you get a 5" deep storage area that only projects a bit into the room. A good location for this pantry is on the wall behind the bathroom door when the bathroom door is open.

5" deep is plenty deep for rolls of toilet paper and bottles of cleaning supplies.

Much depends on the floor and how the room is laid out. Footprint-wise, sometimes vanities seem like they intrude into the room too much, or if you have a fabulous floor tile and gorgeous border design, you might not want the footprint of the vanity to break up those lines. In that case a pedestal might be the wiser choice.

Pedestals and vanities both have there places. Sometimes a vanity is mandatory for storage. It all depends on how you make the storage versus design work.

There's no real right or wrong. It's more just what works best for you for the particular space you're working with and with the design scheme you have in mind.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply! I will try and describe my layouts...

On paper, the master bath is a 6 x 8 ft rectangle. The door opens outwards (in to the bedroom) and the sink is at the far end of the room. The toilet is on your right. Also on the right is a big (5 foot x 32 inch) shower w/ 3 shower heads. Rather than have it surrounded by glass, the architect made two walls sheetrock-with the only glass the framed door used to enter the shower. That makes the sink feel like an alcove and the toilet feel like an alcove. I've seen a few pictures of these pantry-type built-ins, and I am planning to ask my contractor about creating one. (The spot I have in mind is on the outside wall, and this bathroom is on the third story, so I'm not sure how much he can recess it.)

The hall bath (which I use as my bathroom) is harder to explain. When you enter, there's a 5 foot whirlpool on your right. The door opens inward and hides a lot of the tub. The tub has a shower but I never use it. The toilet faces the door, but it too feels like it is in an alcove because our house is 18 inches wider where the toilet is. So it has wall on 3 sides and is recessed. The sink is to your left as you face the room-another alcove created by the closet in the next room.

Since both of these spaces have alcoves-and I have access to a fabulous custom cabinet maker who did our kitchen a couple of years ago-it would look totally logical to build in vanities. The house is 15 years old but it is a very faithful reproduction of a Craftsman home, I was reading today that Craftsman era homes rarely had vanities (but they did sometimes have recessed storage closets.) If at all possible, I'd like to be faithful to the style, as there are lots of real Craftsman bungalows in my town, but I don't think a vanity that matches all of our other built-in would look too weird.

I'm leaning towards spending the money on recessed storage and buying a couple of Kohler pedestal sinks.

It sounds like you have storage possibilities in your bathroom. I have a pedestal sink in the master bathroom and hate it. The first thing is the lack of countertop. I use nothing less than two hot appliances, comb and brush, and a product to get my hair looking somewhat decent. I have to go to the hallbath to do this. My spouse shaves and uses Sonicare - again hall bath gives more space to do it. We do keep some things on the hall bath countertop in a decorative tray holder - hairspray, mouthwash, bug spray, sunscreen, rubbing alcohol, and the toothpaste for the kids. Other than the rubbing alcohol most of those things are daily use. Also keep water cups for the kids and a toothbrush holder on the countertop.

As for junk drawer - for the most part the drawers in the hall bathroom serve a purpose. I use one drawer for makeup and another for hair appliances. The kids have one drawer with extra toothpaste and toothbrushes. Not sure what my husband uses his drawer for - extra razors I think is in one. I'm normally a packrat but other than going thru old makeup, the drawer part of the vanity is fairly organized. I think part of it is because there aren't that many drawers and they aren't that wide. I think underneath the cabinet behind the doors can get kind of junky - I think extra TP, feminine products, extra shampoos, and cleaning products get stored but since we have childproof locks right now only things that we don't need to get to on a regular basis are stored there.

I, too, have a tiny bathroom so here's what I plan for the about to happen re-do - a very modern wall hung sink with pretty good counter space, a medicine cabinet and a couple of colorful African baskets under the sink for toilet paper, etc.

If you have a LOT of money, and room in your walls, there are very modern medicine cabinets that are 6" or 8" deep - if they're big enough, they can hold much of what goes in a vanity, with much better sightlines.

Another option, for things that live on the sink, is a shelf above it, below the mirror.

My vanity was a horror so I took everything except extra toilet paper and cleaning supplies out and put an Elfa drawer unit in the closet next to the bathroom. VASTLY more efficient, very sturdy - you can get drawers in varying depths, divide them, etc. and the whole thing is inexpensive. And there are knock offs.