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How to Make Your Bathroom Look Luxurious with Paint

Find out how to make a master bathroom look expensive with a simple coat of paint.

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This month I’m teaming up with a group of very talented bloggers to bring you some awesome ideas on how to update your home with paint! Be sure to hop on over to the link below and show them some love when you’re done checking out this post.

See More Update With Paint Projects
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I’ve also rounded up some of my favorite DIY paint ideas to give you a little inspiration.

There’s really nothing at all wrong with our master bathroom design. Except for the fact that it doesn’t quite fit my champagne taste on a beer budget style. The layout’s great and there’s plenty of room to do what you gotta do.

DIY bathroom countertop cabinet

But, I’ve just never been able to get over the low quality builder grade materials that were installed in this awesome space. So I was determined to come up with some ideas to get a luxury bathroom look for less in this room.

how to make a master bathroom look expensive

Because let’s face it, bathroom remodels can get super expensive, and this design junkie momma’s on a budget.

Bathroom remodels on a budget

The cheapest way to update any space on a dime is with my close personal bff….paint.

This whole project started out because we had a major leak coming down into our kitchen ceiling from our master shower area. (Yay! Looking forward to repairing ceilings later…. full of sarcasm).

how to make a master bathroom look expensive

So re-caulking our shower and tub, led to repairing our broken tile grout, which of course led to painting said grout, because clearly you can’t have mismatched grout lines. But also because it was super dirty and stained over the years. Gross.

So….. new floors!

how to make a master bathroom look expensive

Well, kinda…. but anyway, back to the paint project.

After all the caulking and repairing cracked walls, ceilings and nail pops we were primed to paint FINALLY! I feel like I spent an entire day prepping the wall surfaces for paint, but it’s a necessary evil to get a smooth finished surface.

How to make an old bathroom look new

After we wrapped up our powder room renovation last fall I fell in love with white paint. So much so that I went into crazy detail about why it’s the new go to neutral paint color in my last post.

how to make a master bathroom look expensive
Our powder room painted in Benjamin Moore’s Simply White

So naturally I was inspired to try my new favorite white paint out in our master bathroom. Benjamin Moore’s Simply White is the prettiest shade of creamy white paint that I’ve come across.

how to make a master bathroom look expensive
Powder room painted in Simply White

It’s definitely not stark white and it’s soft enough to compliment any color in a room as a neutral backdrop.

And given that I was trying to coordinate paint colors with beige tiles on the floor and shower/ tub surround I needed something neutral.

how to make a master bathroom look expensive

I’m not gonna lie, I had a minor freak out moment when I started painting the walls white. I mean I had zero reservations about this color in my tiny windowless powder room, but on a larger scale master bathroom it was A LOT of white.

how to make a master bathroom look expensive

To make matters worse I tried to be efficient (ahem, lazy) about painting. I didn’t feel much like taping off the trim to do the walls in a different paint sheen so I thought I could get away with using the same satin paint sheen on both the walls and the trim.

how to make a master bathroom look expensive
White painted walls and trim

Yeah, I definitely ended up painting over it. The very sweet paint clerk at Lowe’s assured me there’s very little difference between the two sheens when I went to exchange a gallon. Ummm NO. My OCD brain picks out the subtlest differences. What can I say, I’m detailed.

PRO TIP:

The best paint sheen combination I’ve found is to use a satin finish on the doors and trim and an eggshell finish on the walls.

Semi-gloss, at least for me, always ends up looking streaky and way too shiny while showing every little imperfection in the surface. Satin on the other hand is still durable and scrub able with a hint of shine that appears more like a soft glow and less glossy.

I’m always amazed at how a fresh coat of paint can make any room feel like a whole new space again.

Classic paint colors that instantly make your home look more expensive

I’ve totally gone down the rabbit hole of design with our Master Bathroom. It was just meant to be a quick and easy update with white painted walls, but well.

One coat led to another and now we have these amazingly gorgeous black doors that I could literally sit and stare at all day long.

how to make a master bathroom look expensive

The perfect shade of black (in my opinion) to complement any room. But what really got me was how they instantly made the space feel more refined aka expensive. All that’s missing is some gorgeous gold hardware. See, down that rabbit hole again.

The black paint color I chose was called “Cheating Heart” by Benjamin Moore. It has a dark bluish gray hue to it in the can and goes on like a dark gray, but once it’s dry it has a soft moody black tint to it.

how to make a master bathroom look expensive
how to make a master bathroom look expensive

My husband even noted that it had a blue tint to it when it was dried. Such a proud wife moment. I trained him well in the matters of interior design.

how to make a master bathroom look expensive

But in all seriousness, if you’re looking for a go-to color that will instantly make your home feel luxurious then black is the way to go.

how to make a master bathroom look expensive

And pairing it as an accent to the creamy white walls makes it stand out even more.

how to make a master bathroom look expensive

I’m jumping all in to the black door trend and plan to paint the rest of the doors in our house with this same paint color.

how to make a master bathroom look expensive

It’s gonna be a long year.

Luxury bathroom vanity ideas

I love this paint color so much that I decided to try to tackle painting this builder grade vanity in the same shade of black.

how to make a master bathroom look expensive

It’s going to tie the whole room together and help camouflage our boring beige tile. Although I don’t mind the tile as much now that we have the walls and doors painted.

how to make a master bathroom look expensive

I hope this post helped to give you some ideas on how to update your own bathroom with paint. It’s all about working with what you’ve got and choosing the right shades of paint to compliment your existing space.

If you’ve been following this budget bathroom Reno journey on Instagram, then THANK YOU! And if you haven’t, you totally should!

I get real about my mistakes, lessons learned and some awesome ideas to upgrade your home for less. And I’m pretty pumped to move on to phase 2 of this project next week so stay tuned!

P.S.

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18 Comments

  1. I would love to see your bathroom vanity makeover. How did the paint do on the builder grade cabinets? Did you have extra steps or special products you had to use to get the paint to adhere to the cabinets well? Thanks in advance!

    1. Hi Amy! I’ll be publishing a post later this week on the cabinet painting. Feel free to check back or sign up to the e-mail list to be added. Thanks for reading!

  2. I have really been wanting to paint my doors black and yours are beautiful. I am thinking since we are all supposed to stay indoors because of the virus, I should start now. You have motivated me.

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