We also have an 8' vanity in our remodel, I'm opting for no tower. I feel it looks congested.

I am a function before form on this, if you need extra storage I would do it if not save the money and counter space.

We have a lot of general storage, but I was thinking I could put an outlet for electric toothbrushes and hide other things in there that I don't want out on the counter. But perhaps it will be too crowded. Would it be reasonable to ask the cabinet-builder to just build the 8' vanity for now, and we can live with it for a few months. Then if we want to add the tower, we can do it later? If I wanted to do that, can the electrician prepare for that in advance?

If you center a duplex receptacle on the vanity now, then if you add a tower, later, the junction box can be extended, I'm pretty sure. It would not be so crowded with a shallow and narrower tower, say, 9" instead of the usual 12" deep.

Can anyone make a good guess ass to how wide the tower is in the picture above? The vanity is 7'9" not counting the 5" of build up on the left side.

That's a Houzz photo. I recognize the 5" side trim as it's a bit unique. You can do a Google image search for it and see if sizes were addressed in the Q & As. Also, a bigger photo might help us make a good guess.

How are you configuring your 96" vanity? That will determine the size of the center tower as it will probably look best to be a little narrower than the center drawer stack. Have you drawn it up on graph paper to work out the proportions?

A wild guess here...it appears to be same size as center drawers which could be 18".

I saw another picture where the drawer stack is wider than the tower. The Houzz person did not answer my question about the width of the tower. But here it is:

And on this vanity the end cabinets are 34" and the middle drawers are 28". If I did that I guess a tower of about 18" might look nice. What do you think? I'm working on a drawing right now. Do you like the bump out in the middle? I can do anything I want, I'm just having trouble determining what that is! My vanity would hit the wall on the left and touch nothing on the right. And we have 96"

Here's one I had in my Ideabook. The sink bases are much wider than the drawer base.

I prefer the towers to be pretty shallow, just deep enough to hold a few bottles and jars. I hate when they look like someone plopped a kitchen wall cabinet on their vanity counter.

Classic Informality · More Info

Mayflowers, are you saying to make the left cabinet 34", then the middle drawers 28" (but 14" plus 14" for his and hers), then the right cabinet 34"?

Here's a drawing. I haven't decided yet if I want the mirrors trimmed or just all glass to the edges. The lights I'm planning are Bryant single sconce by Circa.

I'll try to make it bigger and post again.

And I'll add the divider for the his and her drawers.

If I do a bump out, do I make the 34" cabinets 22" deep and the bump out 24"? Or more of a different than that?

It looks nice both ways. I know a lot of people will say the divided drawers waste space because of the drawer boxes (I think it's an extra inch per box), but 12" vanity drawers are standard. Is a cabinet maker building this for you? You want to be sure about the interior space of the drawer. I don't know why my Kraftmaid 12" drawers have only 9" interior space. Poor design, I guess. They don't use Blum glides, so maybe that's why.

A cabinet maker would have the final recommendations for the vanity. If he used a computer program, he can show you it in 3D and from every angle. I found that very helpful when my cabinet maker and I designed my kitchen peninsula and when he did a few vanity designs for us.

From my research, the bump out is usually 3" deeper. How deep is the tower?

Here is a top view. Thanks for helping me. I'm totally open to feedback, so please share. The bathroom over all is 10.5 by 15.

Layout of whole bathroom:

He's old school, but he built my kitchen from the ground up and did a wonderful job. So he's not going to give me 3D designs. If I sketch what I want he can do it. I feel confident in that. He's going to do frameless, full-overlay cabinet construction so there will be as much room in the drawers as possible, and will use the good Blum glides like I have in the kitchen.

Here are the kitchen cabinets. I like this style, so for the vanity he will build them like this. Then he's going to build a large hutch-like cabinet next to the shower which will be stained and will be more furniture-looking. So in a week or so I will be back on here begging for advice on that. Here is a picture of what he built in the kitchen:

I'm drawing the sinks and bases wrong. They aren't centered. I'll fix that.

I'm having trouble making everything center up. The mirrors, sconces, sinks, and base cabinets are all off. If this were actually built it would look terrible. Maybe I can solve this problem by making the tower and the middle drawers the exact same width like in Mayflower's inspiration picture. If the tower is not very deep that will work. I'm going to go draw some more. All I really need to put in there are electric toothbrushes plugged in, and other miscellany that I don't want out on the counter tops.

Should the tower stop at 8'? The ceilings are 10'. I don't like them that tall, but I don't want to fur them down bc ALL the bathrooms in my neighborhood are 10'-12' and I don't want to have the only 8' bathroom when we go to sell in the far-off future.

I worked on the drawings. I made the end cabinets 36" and the middle drawers and tower 24". I think everything centers up now. Is this better? My drawing doesn't have to be perfect like a real designer would provide. My cabinet builder will do all the exact and precise measuring based on my drawing. He just needs to know what I want and he can work from that.

If there's a 3" bump out should it be 22" and 25"?

Question: Trim the mirrors or not? If trimmed I guess I would install the sconces in the trim.

Here is the front view:

Here is the top view:

If you go to 36" for the sink base, I'd leave the 24" drawer base as one drawer because I think a split 24" gives you a 10" drawer and that's pretty useless. The divided drawer design is very pretty with your cabinet style though. If you keep that, you'd want to use slab fronts, which I also like for small drawer faces. Then the doors would be Shaker like your kitchen.

I have a 24" drawer base next to my stove, and it's easy to reach over and open it with a pull. The 24" top drawer would need inside dividers. I think there's a company called Wood Hollow that people on the kitchen forum have used for dividers. Might you want to change your drawer base to three drawers since you have the two 24" shallow drawers in your tower?

I think if you trim the mirrors you'll need a 12" wide frame for the sconces and that's too much. 9" is a good depth for the tower--I wouldn't go any deeper. I think I like the solid door on top of the tower because you have so much glass with the large mirrors. Who wants to clean up there anyway with it glass or open? I'm not sure what to do at the top of the tower. Ideally it would be
part of your ceiling molding for a more integrated look. I would look for Houzz photos where
there's a beveled mirror with a tower.

The cabinets would be 21" and 24"--add an inch for counter overhang. Here's a side view of MongoCt's vanity. He may have only gone two inches deeper. I love how he did the edge trim of the sink cabinet. If you did that or something similar with your center drawer base, it'd shorten the 24" drawer a little and make it more manageable. But I'd repeat the trim on the tower, which might make the 24" tower look better too.

Vanities and mirrors · More Info

Vanities are so much fun!

Thanks!

Your
feedback has been very helpful! Here is the updated vanity design.

There
are 2 open issues at this time:

1)
I'm having a problem with the placement of the sconces because the bathroom is
gutted and tacking up pretend sconces on the wall might not be working. I am
tempted to place them higher than the overwhelmingly recommended 64" -
66" (light source) from the finished floor. I think it's sort of an
optical illusion making them seem too low, and I'm worried I'll make a mistake
by hanging them too high in response. I am 5'5" and DH is 5'9",
so I have them drawn in at 66" at the light source (top of shade at 69" and electrical box at 58"). They are Bryant
single sconces (see pic). I have to decide the height now bc they are
going to be installed in the mirrors and the electrician has to set the boxes.

2)
Depth of the cabinet that is sitting on the counter (the tower): I have it drawn right now as 12" deep
still bc it's 24" wide. I was afraid that if I make it shallow (such
as 9"), it might look like a big Cheerios box up against the wall.
But the good news here is that the cabinet maker is going to build this
after the vanity is installed, so I can mock something up with cardboard later
to decide.

__________________

I'm
not a designer, so please be as gentle as you have been thus far. ( :

Starting
from the floor, this is where I'm at right now. (I am giving the
"homeowner numbers." My great cabinet maker will make all the
teeny tiny measurements work out; he built my kitchen so I trust that):

__________________

Overall
it’s a 96" wide vanity. There is a wall on the left side. On the right side there is no wall. The cabinet construction will be frameless,
full-overlay. The door and drawer front
style will be like my kitchen (shaker with a bevel).

There
will be some kind of pretty feet or trim on the bottom, tbd later.

End
cabinets are 36" wide and the middle drawer cabinet is 24" wide.
The middle part will be bumped out about 2.5".

Each
end cabinet will have a Kohler Ladena sink which is 18” x 12” (inside).

The
middle drawer cabinet will be divided into his and hers and will have 4 drawers
for each side, the bottom ones being bigger, about 10" tall. We might change this to have 2 bigger drawers
each side, so would end up with 3 drawers on each side.

The
countertop will be 2cm marble, laminated with a pretty edge, tbd later.

The
backsplash will be 6” marble.

__________________

Tower
details:

The
tower box will go up to the 8’ mark. At
the bottom, there will be a panel because there will be 2 outlets installed
there. Either that or my cabinet maker
may have a clever idea to use that space.

There
will be about a 36” high cabinet in the tower, followed by about an 18” high cabinet
at the top. The top cabinet will have a
glass front and 1 light.

Right
now it is drawn as 12” deep, but I can change that because he is building this
after the main vanity bottom is finished.

__________________

So,
for mirrors, we will do 2 36” wide x about 53” beveled mirrors above the end cabinets
that will not be trimmed. The mirrors will
fill the whole space.

In
the mirrors we will install 4 Bryant Sconces.
They are 14.25” tall, with shades that are 4” wide at top, 5.5” wide at
bottom and 6” tall. The mounting plate
is 4” diameter.

From
the top of the tower and mirrors to the ceiling:

The
wall will fur out to the depth of the tower, and there will be some kind of
pretty trim and panels to tie everything to the ceiling.

Underneath
this fur out area there will be 2 lights, one above each sink. My cabinet maker and electrician said they
can be installed flush.

__________________

Here is my drawing. If this image is hard to see, let me know and I'll scan it instead.

Please help me with the 2 dilemmas: placement of sconces (need to decide today) and
tower depth (I have some time to decide this).
Thank you!!

The sconces seem low in the drawing, or rather, the mirror seems tall. I searched in Houzz, and some of the Bryant sconces seem to be placed high. Maybe the person was compensating for the long base like you are. But putting the light above your face when it should be alongside your face seems like it defeats the purpose. You might call their customer service and ask their advice.

https://www.houzz.com/photos/query/circa-bryant-sconce/nqrwns

I'm wondering if you should bring the sconces inward another inch. They're really hugging the wall and the tower at 1" and are right on top of the bevel. That gives you 18" for mirror. My oval mirror in my powder room is 19" wide so I think 18" is fine.

I'm not sure about a 12" deep tower. That's quite a cabinet for a bathroom counter. It seems we don't get any kitchen and bath designers on GW anymore so you might ask in Houzz Design Dilemmas where there are some.

Projection on that sconce is 8.75". I think you'd want the tower to be deeper, right? How would a 10" deep tower look?

I could add some trim at the top of the mirrors to shorten them. Is that something I could decide later?

I could go a little bit higher with the sconces I guess. In the picture the light bulb is at 66" above the finished floor. Could I move them up just a few inches to say, 68"? The top of the shade would be at 71" if I do that.

I will post this on the Design Dilemma spot like you suggested.

I'm 5'6 and 62"-64" seems like the best range for me. I haven't installed sconces so I can't help much.

I have seen vanity mirrors with a maybe 4" trim on top. I'm not sure if the sides need trim too. Sconces could be mounted on the trim, but it is nice to get the light bounce with them mounted on the mirror.

As for the design, I wonder if using a slightly dressier door style might make the tower appear less kitchen-y. I have Shaker in my kitchen but I wanted a prettier, more feminine look for my guest bath, so I chose a flat paneled door that has a groove and beading. Easier to just show than tell:

96" is a very long vanity and could look too plain in Shaker. I think a little something extra would complement your marble, the dressy sconces, and the beveled mirrors. Most cabinetmakers buy their doors rather than build them. Conestoga at the Cabinet Joint is one supplier--it's a RTA line, but most of the high-end cabinet companies use Conestoga for their door and drawer fronts.

Here's a pretty Shaker with beaded edge. They have a few others that I like, like the simple applied molding style CRP-101728. Just avoid a mitered corner for painted cabinets as the wood separation due to humidity will be very noticeable.

https://www.cabinetjoint.com/cabinet-door/madison/

Thanks! I was thinking about doing a dressier door style. The cabinet maker will bring me some samples.

I just came across this photo and thought of you. The top drawer is split to give you the his and hers but the rest are full drawer. It's also got just the top of the mirror framed as part of the tower crown. The mirrored front on the tower is nice too. How's yours coming along?

Beach Vacation Home · More Info

Thanks! Cabinet maker is building now. Thanks for thinking of me! We stayed with the split his/hers design. I think DH will appreciate a little of his own space because I convinced him to go with a double vanity rather than 2 separate ones.