Britannia Blue in our powder room plus thoughts of adding wallpaper

For five years I lived with the turquoise bathroom I despised before we were able to tackle it late last fall.

Initially, I put off simply picking up a can of paint and swapping out the mirror and light fixture because we did plan to redo the space sooner, rather than later, so I really didn’t want to spend money on a mini makeover if I was eventually going to redo the entire room.

However, we decided to focus on the upstairs first, redoing our primary bathroom, kids’ bathroom, and converting an unused bedroom into a loft.

In retrospect, I wish I would have picked up some paint, found inexpensive lights and a mirror to make this space more my style before we redid it, as it is the bathroom guests use when they come to our home, but hindsight is always 20/20.

Here’s what the space looked like when we moved in:

Wowza, that teal color, right?! I love a good blue-green paint color, but this one was just not it!

I actually liked the beadboard treatment, I just didn’t like the color, especially when paired with the teal. The mirror was also to overpowering for the space, the light fixture was dated and the vanity had already been painted once or twice before.

Here’s where we are currently:

Shop the room: Mirror | Vanity | Faucet | Light

I’ll start with the color scheme of the room, to create flow in my downstairs, I wanted to use the same color I used for the office in the bathroom. The blue you see is Benjamin Moore Britannia Blue.

This is one of my favorite colors ever. It’s the perfect dusty blue and when I say it’s perfect, believe me, as I probably sampled 15-20 blues before I committed to this blue.

If you’re searching for the perfect navy blue, I have a whole post on the blues I typically recommend, including this stunner of a color and you can read that here.

The white walls are Benjamin Moore White Dove, which is a soft white with a greige and very faint yellow undertone. My absolute favorite soft white paint ever!

The vanity absolutely needed to be replaced. It had been painted over several times and was breaking down inside. I wanted to go with a sleek white vanity with a marble top.

I’m typically against marble because it’s just way too high maintenance for my family at this stage in the game, but in bathrooms, I have found that it’s easy to maintain. Plus, it’s so beautiful.

I’m seriously impressed with the cabinet quality and marble top from this vanity we ordered. This is our second Home Depot vanity and I have been very impressed with the quality.

We purchased this vanity from Home Depot as well for our primary bathroom and after using it for over 5 years, it still looks and functions just as well as it did when we first purchased it.

I would say I splurged on the faucet fixture for the vanity because it’s one of the best things you can do to elevate a vanity and I really love it. It’s got a timeless look to it that I know will still look current years down the line.

The mirror is my favorite item in the whole room and the scalloped detail adds a whimsy element that I was looking for to soften the tiny space. The blue color perfectly complements the paint color, too!

The lights were an amazon find that were really affordable and look much more high end than the price tag.

Let’s talk beadboard. You may have seen how we originally had beadboard in the bathroom before. It wasn’t installed correctly and was bowing in several spaces.

For right under $150 we purchased all the trim and beadboard for the whole room. Not bad. Now, to pay someone to install this would have cost about $1500-1800, so by doing the work ourselves, this was an extremely budget-friendly way to upgrade the space.

Now let’s talk about what’s still to come.

Take a look at this blank wall. Originally, I thought I’d fill the space with artwork I’ve collected from various antique stores. But now I’m really leaning toward doing wallpaper in this space. I’d love to know your thoughts below in the comments.

Here is the first set of wallpaper options:

and here are some other options:

Budget breakdown:

Vanity: $750
Light: $229
Mirror: $223
Electrician: $75
Beadboard/trim: $145
Faucet: $330
Misc (toilet paper holder, towel hook) $75

Grand total: $1875

Of course, if we do wallpaper, the budget will increase. We will be doing the wallpaper ourselves, plus we only have to wallpaper half the room, so that will save, as well.

Stay tuned for more updates on this bathroom!

–Ashley