Cottage powder room ideas: the one bathroom where the wallpaper is allowed

Every other bathroom in the house is ruled by steam. It decides what goes on the walls, what the brass is allowed to do and how long the paint lasts. The powder room has none of that. It is a toilet, a basin and a door, and that small fact lifts nearly every rule the rest of the house keeps. This page is about using that freedom: the wallpaper, the colour, the basin, the mirror and the light, and the last ten minutes before somebody comes for dinner.

What a cottage powder room is, and why the steam rule is off

A cottage powder room is the small room with a toilet and a basin and no bath or shower, usually off the hall or tucked under the stairs. With nothing in it that steams, wallpaper stays flat, dark paint stays put and old brass is never wet for long. That makes it the one bathroom where the decorating can go as far as you like.

It goes by a few names. Powder room is the usual word here and south of the border, half bath is the listing's word, and in an English house it is the cloakroom or the downstairs loo. It is the same room every time: small, often windowless, and used by more people than any other room in the house, guests included.

The steam is what makes the big bathroom so careful. In a room with a shower, wallpaper lifts at the seams within a few winters and anything that rusts will. Take the shower away and the room only has to cope with washed hands and a hand towel. That is why the rest of this page can say yes to things the other bathroom pages on this site say no to.

Wallpaper to the ceiling, and the pattern a small room can take

Paper the whole room, every wall, right up to the ceiling, and choose a pattern a little bolder than you would use anywhere else. Nobody spends more than a few minutes in a powder room, so a big floral or a dark trailing leaf that would be too much in a sitting room is a pleasure in here, and it hides the awkward corners too.

Stop the paper at the ceiling, not a few inches below it, and run it behind the mirror rather than around it, so the room reads as one wrapped box. In a room this small, a picture rail or a border only adds another line to count. If the room has a sloped ceiling under the stairs, paper the slope as well. It turns the most awkward surface in the room into the best part of it.

Old patterns are easy to find. Sellers on Etsy list vintage floral wallpaper by the roll, and a powder room needs so few rolls that a small lot of old stock is often enough. Buy one more roll than you measured for. Old paper cannot be reordered, and the pattern has to match across every seam.

The darkest colour in the house, in the smallest room

Dark. A small room painted pale still looks small, only brighter, while a small room painted the deepest colour in the house loses its corners and starts to feel like a jewel box. Pair the dark walls with two warm lights at face height and a mirror, and the room glows instead of closing in.

If you are not papering, this is where the colour you have been too nervous to use goes: a blue-black, a deep moss, an ox-blood, the brown of strong tea. Paint the woodwork and the door the same colour as the walls, or one shade darker, so there are no white edges to break it up. A powder room is also the cheapest place in the house to find out whether you like a colour, because it takes a single tin.

Painted boards suit it as well as paper does. Tongue-and-groove to shoulder height with a dark colour above, or boards all the way up, gives the walls a bit of texture for the light to catch, and it stands up to a wet hand on the way to the towel better than flat paint does.

A washstand or an old basin rather than a vanity

Choose an old washstand with a basin set into its top, or a plain wall-hung basin with the pipes showing, instead of a fitted vanity cabinet. A powder room only needs somewhere to wash two hands. A vanity takes a third of a small room's floor to store things a guest should never need, and a washstand gives you a wooden top for the soap and towel.

An antique wooden washstand is the most cottage answer: it is the piece people washed at, with a jug and bowl, before plumbing came indoors. A small wall-hung basin is the right answer for a room under the stairs, where every inch of floor counts. Under the stairs, the low end of the slope takes the toilet and the basin goes where you can stand up straight. If your under-stairs space is still the cupboard, the pantry has a strong claim on it too, so decide which one the house needs more.

Leave a little room beside the basin for a bar of soap in a dish. A bar in a brass soap dish looks like it belongs in the house. A pump bottle with a crust round the nozzle looks like it belongs in an office.

The mirror, and two lights at the height of your face

Hang the oldest mirror you own over the basin and put a warm light on each side of it at face height, never one light in the ceiling. Light from above throws a shadow under every eye. Light from the sides at face height is kind to whoever is looking, and in a dark room it is what makes the colour glow.

A small mirror with a worn gilt or dark wooden frame suits the room better than anything new. Foxing in the glass is fine here; it is a mirror for checking your hair, not for shaving. The two side lights are the same rule the moody cottage bathroom keeps, and it matters even more in a room with no window, where the lamps are the only light there is. Use warm bulbs, and put them on a dimmer if the switch allows it.

If there is room for a picture, hang one small one, at eye height for someone washing their hands. A single botanical study in a dark frame is plenty. You can find a few in our shop, or start from the free sets on our vintage printable wall art page.

Brass that is allowed to go dull, and a floor that can be old

Let the brass tarnish. In a bathroom with a shower, unlacquered brass spots and streaks within weeks. In a powder room it only meets washed hands, so it darkens slowly and evenly into the warm brown that makes an old tap look old. The same goes for the floor: worn boards and old tiles last well in here.

That means you can choose unlacquered brass for the tap, the towel ring and the light fittings, and leave them be. A wipe with a dry cloth now and then is all they want. If you like them bright, polish them; if you like them brown, stop. Both are right.

The floor is the one place the room still takes some water, from hands and the odd splash at the basin. Old boards with a good finish, quarry tiles or a small rug that can go in the washing machine all do the job. A rug is the warmest of the three underfoot in a small room on a cold night.

The room your guests see with the door shut

The powder room is the one room a guest is alone in, so before anyone comes, stand in it with the door shut and look at it the way they will. Put out a clean hand towel that is plainly theirs, a bar of soap, a spare roll they can see without hunting, and check that the lock works.

A small stack of linen guest towels on the washstand tells a guest which towel is theirs without anybody having to say so. Leave the lights on low before the door goes, so nobody has to feel along a dark wall for the switch. It is the same thinking as getting a guest room ready: a guest will never ask for the thing that is missing, so the room has to have thought of it first.

With Thanksgiving and then Christmas coming, this is the room every person at the table will visit at least once in the evening. Ten minutes in here before the doorbell goes is the best use of ten minutes in the whole house.