Refresh a half bath in four steps

(Courtesy photo)

A downstairs half bathroom, often called the powder room, is an excellent room to tackle when you want to spruce up your home without spending a lot of time or money. It is also probably the one room your guests spend more time in than you do, meaning it's easy to overlook, but its appearance has quite an impact on how visitors experience your home.

When we moved into our house, the half bath had ostensibly been recently remodeled (unlike the rest of the 1960s structure). For a long time, we let it be. But then, as often happens when you remodel the rest of your house, it started to look tired and outdated, so we set about giving it an inexpensive refresh with these four simple steps:

1. A lick of paint: A new paint job is the most straightforward way of updating any room. The theme of our half bath had been a "classic" green and gold. For a more modern look, I chose a red, silver and gray color palette. A coat of Sherwin Williams' French Grey ($40 a gallon) brought the room into the 21st century in one afternoon. Gray is a very hot color right now, especially in bathrooms, and I can see why: It's bright and airy in daylight, but adds some drama and style when lit up in the evening.

2. Refresh the fixtures: We removed all the old faux bronze fixtures and replaced them with chrome-and-white ones. It's important to pick your faucet first, since it's a focal point.

3. Look at your lighting: Lighting is a crucial part of any refresh, especially in the small confines of a half bath, where lighting can be tricky. We kept the lights positioned on either side of the mirror, which got its own update from a coat of red spray paint to take it from traditional to contemporary in minutes. This positioning helps diffuse the light and avoids those ugly shadows you get from direct down lighting. Light fixtures can be pricey, so we shopped around until we found these Progress Lighting Lynzie single fixtures for $40 each.

4. Replace the toilet seat: Of course, a whole new toilet will really refresh a bathroom, but when you're on a budget, switching out a toilet seat makes a surprisingly big difference. We spent $14 on a Glacier Bay wooden toilet seat with chrome hinges, which really pulls the whole room together.

In total, the refresher came in at just under $220.

(Courtesy photo)

The half bath is much more of a focal point than you might think, and by investing a small amount of time and money it's easy to transform it into something special.

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Refresh a half bath in four steps