Clever Bathroom Layout Gives 2 Sisters Shared and Private Spaces

Each girl gets her own vanity, toilet and door to the shower, making for smoother mornings

Becky Harris March 18, 2019

Houzz Contributor. Hi there! I live in a 1940s cottage in Atlanta that I'll describe as "collected." I got into design via Landscape Architecture, which I studied at the University of Virginia.

Houzz Contributor. Hi there! I live in a 1940s cottage in Atlanta that I'll describe... More

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Change Your Bathroom©

Photos by Michelle Fee

Bathroom at a Glance
Who uses it: Two sisters
Location: Atlanta
Size: 73 square feet (6.8 square meters)
Designer: Michelle Fee of Change Your Bathroom

Sharing a bathroom made it tough for these two sisters, one tween and one teen, to stay out of each other’s hair, especially in the mornings. So bathroom designer Michelle Fee laid out the room to give them each a private area outfitted with a vanity and a toilet, divided by a shared shower stall.

She worked with the girls to get a sense of their style. “I wanted each sister to have fun with the style of their bathroom, so we went shopping together and made piles of things they liked, then put them together in different combinations,” Fee says. A big priority was making sure that the bathroom was easy to clean.

Younger Sister’s Space

This portion of the bathroom belongs to the younger sister. The chevron glass mosaic backsplash extends from the counter to the ceiling, providing pattern and movement. “The colors work really well with the gray concrete look of the floors and the brown in the dark-stained oak vanity,” Fee says.

Although the vanity’s facade looks as if it has six identical drawers, Fee customized the storage inside to meet the tween’s needs. The left side contains two drawers, and the middle portion is a full cabinet door (to handle the plumbing under the sink). On the right is a pullout hair appliance unit, complete with an outlet.

Light fixtures and toilet: Kohler

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Floor plan. The layout solution is clever and dramatic. It’s a little hard to visualize when looking at the before-and-after shots, so let’s jump into the floor plan before exploring further. The younger sister’s vanity, shown in the previous photo, is in the lower right corner; the shared shower stall is in the lower left corner; and the older sister’s space is above it on the top left. Each sister has her own entrance to the shower stall, and pocket doors lead to their respective bedrooms.

Before Photo

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Before: This photo lines up nicely with the floor plan. The existing bathroom had a combination tub-shower (to the right of the toilet), one toilet and an unusual bench with storage overhead between the two vanities that was a big waste of space. The toilet in this photo is in the same place as the younger sister’s toilet in the next photo, which will help orient you when comparing this “before” photo to the “after” photos.

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The younger sister’s space is in the foreground, the shower stall is on the left, and there’s a peek through the shower to the older sister’s space in the background on the left.

The flooring in both sisters’ spaces is a large-format porcelain tile that looks like concrete. It’s nonabsorbent, and Fee used an epoxy grout. “This grout has 0 percent absorbency. It’s a commercial application that dries and plasticizes, which means even if they spill nail polish on the bathroom floor, it can be wiped up,” she says. “It’s significantly more expensive to use epoxy grout, but it’s worth the investment.”

One small but important thing that doesn’t need frequent cleaning in here is a toilet flush handle. Both sisters have Kohler toilets outfitted with a touchless flush — waving a hand over the sensor in the top of the tank activates the flush.

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Change Your Bathroom©

The countertop is quartz with flecks of mirror in it. The faucet is a combination of white and chrome. Both are low-maintenance. “The faucet resists water spots, and the quartz is nonabsorbent, so it’s easy to wipe down,” the designer says.

Faucet: PuraVida, Hansgrohe

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Shower Stall

This photo was taken from the younger sister’s shower door, and the door on the right leads to her older sister’s private bathroom space. Both shower doors are frosted glass for privacy.

The 3D tile adds a clean and contemporary touch to the shower, while the penny rounds on the floor add some playful movement. The shower head is a mix of white and chrome, chosen for its resistance to water spots.

Shower head: PuraVida, Hansgrohe

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An important functional element in the shower is this niche. At 5 feet high by 14 inches wide, it has plenty of room for both sisters to store their products on the shelves. Locating it a foot off the floor created a good shaving shelf on the bottom. The glass mosaic matches the younger sister’s backsplash, and the shelves are marble.

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Older Sister’s Space

Fee continued the 3D tile on the vanity wall in the older sister’s bathroom. “This tile is edgy but not too modern. It fits in with the rest of the transitional home’s style and adds an architectural splash,” she says.

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The designer replaced the doors that lead from the bathroom to the bedrooms with pocket doors so that she didn’t have to allocate space for door swings. This teen’s vanity is a little smaller than her sister’s, but opting for a vessel sink allowed for two large drawers beneath the countertop.

Change Your Bathroom©

The recessed Robern medicine cabinet with outlets inside gives her an easy spot to plug in hair appliances and her electric toothbrush. And its integrated lighting is a more minimalist approach that saved wall space.

This sister fell in love with the idea of a glass vessel sink. It is handmade, one-of-a-kind and looks like a piece of sculpture. Fee chose a chrome faucet instead of the white-and-chrome one so as not to draw attention away from the artful sink. The mirror-flecked quartz countertop matches the countertop in the younger sister’s space.

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Sharing only the shower instead of the entire bathroom has made getting ready in the morning so much easier for these two. And each sister can put her own stamp on her private space.

Takeaways

Think about what you need to reach for on a daily basis and what needs an electrical outlet when arranging bathroom storage.
Talk to your designer about materials that will make a bathroom easier to clean.
Consider epoxy grout for bathroom floors.
Place a shower niche low if you want it to double as a shaving shelf.

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