In today’s post I’ll share our process for how we decided what features we wanted for our bathroom vanity. Here’s how to design the perfect bathroom vanity for your family!
Using custom cabinetry in a bathroom to create your vanity or other storage solutions can really make a huge difference in how well your bathroom works for you and your family on a daily basis. Since we only have two bathrooms in this house, and the other one is super teeny tiny, I knew that I wanted to go with custom cabinetry in the master bathroom to really get the most out of the space. I also knew the room was going to be beautiful and everyone was probably going to end up using that room most of the time. I was right about that! 🙂
When you start looking at all the options available to you in custom cabinetry though, the choices can be pretty overwhelming! Since it’s custom, they can literally do pretty much anything you want. But how do you know what you want? How do you know which upgrades you should choose and which you’ll really use? I knew I was going to love our KraftMaid vanity once all was said and done in the bathroom, but even though I designed it specifically for us and our needs, I’m even amazed at how well it ended up functioning for us once we started using it in real life. It really fits everything that I designed it to fit perfectly… and then some! Here are my tips for making sure that you’ll love your bathroom vanity just as much as I love mine!
Look at your old/current bathroom
Before you ever start the process of designing and renovating, you need to take a look at how you really use your bathroom in real life. It’s easy to get carried away and think about how you wish you used your bathroom or what you’ve seen displayed/stored in other bathrooms on TV, but what you really want is something that will take your everyday real-life situation, and make it a little bit easier and a little bit better. You might wish that your kids kept all of their things in the hall cupboard, but if they always seem to end up in the bathroom, then chances are that those things get used in there and they should ideally have a place to be stored in there, if possible. We hadn’t been using our master bathroom in quite some time, so all of our stuff is crammed (pretty cleverly I might add) into the tiny bathroom off the kitchen. There were a lot of baskets on top of shelves and on the floor with towels in them and things hung on hooks all over the place. We were able accommodate all the hair tools that were on hooks and in baskets easily with this little rack on the inside of one cupboard in the new bathroom. It hardly takes up any space at all, but it easily stores a lot of necessary stuff.
Check to see if you’re storing any “bathroom stuff” in random places around the house.
Sometimes we just find a place to keep stuff and we don’t really ever give it a second thought, even if it doesn’t really make much sense to have it there. Have a quick peek around the cupboards and closets in your home to see if there are things that might be nice to keep in the bathroom that you’re designing the vanity for. We’d been keeping all of our towels in the bank of cabinets in the back hall off of our master bedroom and that wasn’t really a bad place for them because that’s right outside the bathroom door. However, I decided to try to store at least some of our everyday towels in the bathroom itself just for easyness and because I wanted to free up some more cabinet space for things like extra vases and bedding. It’s amazing how much can fit in this new vanity cabinet now though! We were actually able to move all of our regular bath towels in here and all the hand towels that will be used in this room! It’s pretty fun stuff if you get as excited about organizational projects as I do.
(Please note: We do have more than four towels, I just picked the pretty ones for the picture. 🙂 )
Get really inspired
Most of us don’t really know exactly what we want until we actually see it. Sometimes we have a brilliant idea out of nowhere, but often, you just need to see someone else’s idea and then tweak it to fit your exact needs. That basically means that you need to look at lots and lots of pictures. Pin them on Pinterest, compare them, ponder them, discuss them with your family, and finally decide what you want to do. There are so many amazing ideas and solutions out there, you just need to discover them and then make them your own!
Work with your in-store cabinet designer
KraftMaid retailers, like The Home Depot, have in-store designers to help you work out all of the finer details of your plan, which is super helpful. They can’t read your mind though, so it’s important that you have a clear idea of what you want and need before you go into the store. The designer will help make your plans a reality by making your vanity fit into place properly and function the way you want. They think of little details, like adding in 1-inch spacers here and there to make sure that your doors can open completely without hitting your wall, or making sure that visible side panels are as beautifully finished as your cabinet fronts.
Add some bells and whistles
Once you’ve made sure that you have the basics down, that your vanity will actually fit in your space and that it’ll serve all the major functions that you need it to, I definitely recommend adding in a few more storage features. Ask your in-store designer if your cabinet maker can make some of the ideas that you gathered before work in your cabinet design, or if she/he has any suggestions for things that you may not have thought about. There are so many neat, simple options that make storing your stuff, and using it on a daily basis about a million times better!
We actually ended up using some storage solutions that are usually meant for kitchens, like this back-of-the-door spice rack, that ended up working really well.
We also added in these spice drawer inserts in the top three drawers, which makes all the difference with all the little bottles and jars that can build-up in bathroom drawers.
This deep drawer with a simple movable divider makes it so easy to see and access bigger bottles and extra paper supplies.
I really can’t believe all the stuff I’m able to keep in here. I had planned extra space for some of this stuff in the cabinet just outside the bathroom, but that cabinet is mostly empty now!
It’s so nice to be able to keep the counters free too. Now I only have to put things there that I actually want to look at!
For me, an organized life is a good life. 🙂
Finishing touches
The last thing that we added on to our cabinet design was one of the optional trim packages that KraftMaid offers. I think adding a bit of extra trim in a bathroom gives your vanity more of a furniture feel rather than a builder-basic kitchen feel. The little “feet” in the front at the bottom as well as the pretty spindle detail on the sides were both extra trim and really helped take the whole room to the next level.
If you’re about to jump into a bathroom renovation that you’re hoping will make your home a little more beautiful, a little more functional, and a lot more enjoyable, I would totally recommend going with a custom cabinetry vanity from a quality cabinet maker like KraftMaid. My new vanity definitely makes me feel like I’ve been completely spoiled, at least in this one room of the house, and I have to admit that I love it. 🙂
*update!* I’ve had so many questions and requests for different details and dimensions for this vanity that I decided to go ahead and post the plans so anyone who wants them can just download them and print them off! You can find the free plans to download here!
I was not paid to write this post, however KraftMaid did provide the cabinetry for the bathroom vanity that appears in this post. All thoughts and opinions are 100% mine as always!
Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.