I would use one or the other but not both though I have a tray with disposable towels on the back of the toilet and then fancy to look at towels on the towel bar! LOL

I was thinking of maybe a towel tree on the pedestal sink. I think my only problem would be retraining my family not to use the towelbar towels. Guests would know better.

Lord, these things always confuse me.. I grew up in a house like that.. " don't use the towels!"... to which I would yell.. if you did not want me to use them you should have framed them!.. dang she would get mad! :-) to this day I am befuddled in bathrooms with obviously "look-at" towels and nothing else.. In our guest bahthroom there is one set of handtowels out at a time.. I don't hang others.. I just keep a couple on hand so I can switch them out since at places like Homegoods, hand towels are so cheap they are a good way to perk up a room for just a bit of money.

Maddiemom

I guess I am in the same camp as you DH.

Our PR is small not tiny. When we deocrated our PR I took out the towel rack the builder put in and decided to use a towel ring. Mine is hung pretty close the the light switch to the side of the vanity. I also have paper towels for guests on a glass shelf hung above the sink and below the mirror. I usually keep a small vase of flowers on the shelf. We don't have a pedestal sink but we do have a floating vanity.

Space was at a premium and in our PR the only way you would see pretty towels is sitting on the toilet. I have a large picture on the wall you see when you enter the PR.
So, I guess my suggestion is to think a little out of the box of traditional and more in the realm of interest and function.

We have a hook for the PR towel - just one out for use at a time. Below the basin, a stack of fresh ones. When we have visitors, it is easy to exchange with a replacement or our friends know to help themselves.

We are in the middle of our PR remodel and I just put up two towel rings yesterday after pulling down the old 18" towel bar. We are switching to the bronze type finishes from the old polished brass so still have to replace the light fixture, faucet and cabinet hardware and of course get rid of that old wallpaper and paint a nice warm color.

I decided to offset the two towel rings and would still like to put a standard 18" towel rack on the wall just inside the door to the left. I do think the towel rings are more interesting to look at though. (those are just kitchen dish towels in the towel rings...I'm shopping for new PR towels today)

If your space is limited, towel rings I think work great especially if you want more than one towel hanging.

Towel bars are for bath towels. If you don't have a bath, a towel bar does not belong in the room unless you're going to hang magazines from it. Do you have a towel bar in the dining room? No, because you don't use bath towels in there either :o)

I think it would be a mistake to put up a towel bar, and even more so, a mistake to hang towels you won't allow people to use. It's a towel, meant to be absorbant, and gosh it's nice if they're pretty while being absorbant, but that's it. I'll take it one step beyond Maddie...I don't find that confusing, I find it rude. After all, who is good enough to use that towel????

"I'll take it one step beyond Maddie...I don't find that confusing, I find it rude. After all, who is good enough to use that towel???? "

Well acording to my mother... NO ONE! ;-) but then I will admit that in my kids bathroom I installed a revolving towel.. so that they would quit leaving the thing in a wad on the counter.. I took a towel bar and cut o down to about 18 ish inches and then I took a couple of very bigger hand towels ( they were large.. strange size but right for what I needed).. I then sewed them into a loop and I hang the loop over the bar.. they dry their hands and it stays put!.. Very easy to change and I made a couple of them. Nobody is going to feature them in House Beautiful but it keeps me from going crazy.

maddiemom

no advice for you lovetoweed, sorry. I have to chime in to igloo and maddie. When I was a teenager at my boyfriends house, his step mother would not allow anyone to throw anything in the wastebasket in the the main bathroom! I used it one time not knowing and she actually yelled at me! There are just some "things" you have to throw out in the bathroom...I could never, ever understand it and hated using the bathroom there, very disturbing. How could a waste basket ever be "for show". I agree with you guys re the towels as well.

Well I've decided to go ahead and put another towel bar in and forgo the towel ring. We use that restroom more than any other in the house, because it't the only one on the main floor and we go through towels very fast. I like to keep two in there at a time. I just wish the rest of the family could learn to put a towel back the right way.