Stylish Bathroom Renovations in NYC: Six Things That Make the Room

Style in a New York bathroom is mostly a matter of fit: a look that suits the building, a layout that wastes nothing in a small room, and light good enough to show the materials. Expensive finishes come after those. Six things make the room, and each has a practical side that decides whether it can be built in your apartment.

A style that suits the building

The city’s buildings run from pre-war to brand new, and its bathrooms follow. White subway tile, small mosaic floors, nickel fittings and a console sink sit naturally in an older building. Large tile, a wall-hung vanity and frameless glass suit a newer one. Industrial fittings and vintage pieces can cross over in either direction. The safest test is to stand in the hallway and look in: the bathroom should seem to belong to the same home.

Space in a small bathroom

Space is the constant problem, and the answers are well tried: fixtures hung on the wall so the floor runs under them, a compact vanity, storage recessed into the wall, and a large mirror that doubles the light and the apparent size of the room. A fixed glass panel in place of a shower curtain keeps the whole room in view.

What you usually cannot do is move the room about. Many co-op and condo alteration agreements do not allow wet areas to be enlarged or moved over a neighbor’s dry rooms, and the Department of Buildings gives adding a new bathroom as an example of work that needs a filed application (NYC Buildings). Good bathroom design in this city is the art of getting more from the footprint you have.

Comfort features

Function comes first, but a few comforts change how the room feels every day: a heated floor, a rain showerhead, a deep tub, a mirror that does not fog. Decide on them early. A heated floor lies under the tile and is wired by a licensed electrician, so it cannot be added once the floor is down. A rain head needs its supply in the ceiling. Each is simple at the framing stage and expensive afterward.

Color

Start from a neutral base and add color on purpose. Blues and greens are easy to live with. Yellow and orange bring energy in small amounts. The practical question is where the color goes. On paint, towels or a vanity front it can change when you tire of it. On tile it is there for the life of the bathroom, so commit only to a color you have liked for years.

Lighting

Lighting makes or breaks a bathroom. Use daylight if you have a window. Many New York bathrooms do not, and there the light has to be built in layers: light at face height on both sides of the mirror, a fixture rated for wet places in the shower, a ceiling light, and a dimmer for the evening. Accent light on a niche or a good wall of tile is what makes the materials look as they did in the showroom. A bathroom without a window also depends on its exhaust fan, so replace a tired one while the ceiling is open.

Water-saving fixtures

Efficient fixtures no longer mean weak ones, and the federal WaterSense label is the simple way to pick them. Labeled toilets use 1.28 gallons a flush or less, against a federal standard of 1.6 and as much as 6 in old models (EPA). Labeled showerheads use no more than 2.0 gallons a minute, against a standard 2.5 (EPA), and labeled bathroom faucets a maximum of 1.5 against 2.2 (EPA). LED lighting does the same for electricity. If you like the idea of recycled glass, bamboo or reclaimed wood, use them where water does not sit.

Putting it together

Decide in this order: what the building allows, the layout, the comforts that go behind the walls, the lighting, and only then tile and color. Our article on how to choose bathroom tile takes the last step further. The full process is on our page about bathroom renovation in NYC, the stages are in the bathroom remodel timeline, finished rooms are in the bathroom gallery, and what a board asks for is under co-op renovation.

Questions people ask