While poorly designed rooms in a house are inconvenient, bad bathroom designs can make a home unlivable. Sometimes we get caught up in making our bathrooms look beautiful that we forget they are function-first facilities. At other times, we cram as many functions into space as possible but accessing them has become impossible.

These are real examples of the worst bathrooms and bath interior designs found on the internet. But we’ll also talk about what could have been done to fix this (if we can fix it):

Where style has no common sense in interior design

photo: Laurel Home

This combination master suite combines the bedroom and bathroom into one seamless room. And that is probably the biggest mistake in this space.

First of all, the toilet. The exposed toilet behind a wall of glass doesn’t give any sense of privacy. No one needs to see this, especially a place where there appears to be no door to this bedroom.

Secondly, the combined bed and bathtub may be space-saving, but headache-inducing. Having the tub as a makeshift headboard is awkward. However, the water damping your bedroom comforter and sheets is a problem this setup. This problem isn’t one that most bedrooms have to deal with!

Third, the hardwood floor is not the most practical when exposed to water and can warp or rot with moisture.

It makes no sense to put a bed in a bathroom. However, removing the bed and expanding the tub could make this one of the most epic bathrooms in any house!

The most excessive exposed plumbing in a picture

photo: Decoist

While the industrial look is in trend, there’s a difference between glints of metal and becoming Super Mario World.  There is so much pipe in this layout that it looks messy. Putting the water tank several feet in the air seems inconvenient to fix if there’s a problem. The extra plumbing is covering part of the wallpaper, and these two patterns conflict in this picture.

A dark bathroom can always be attractive, but dark fixtures, dark walls, and not enough lighting spells disaster. Spills and liquids will be harder to see on the floor or counters.

Removing 80% of the excess plumbing would go a long way to clean up this look. With the white marble counter and the toilet more prominent to balance the dark areas, that’s a good start. 

The other concern is that this bathroom looks like it has no storage whatsoever and this bathroom looks pretty small. Having a cabinet vanity would mean having places to put person accessories, toilet tissue, and cleaning supplies.

Tiny tiles in a tiny bathroom

photo: Carpetright

How do you make a tiny bathroom feel uncomfortably minuscule? This.

 For a while, tiny mosaic tiles had been trending in bathrooms because of the unique, opulent look. That was until people realized that mosaic tiles this size is a pain to install due to the details. It’s also more grout lines that can mildew and we need to clean. With the floor also lined in tiny tiles, the bathroom loses depth and looks like pixels on a computer screen. And the use of all these small details makes this room look even smaller.

How do you fix this? At least remove the tile from the floor and give it contrast from the rest of the bathroom. If possible, remove the tiny tiles from the bathroom entirely and use a lighter colored bigger tile to look spacious. Small bathrooms using larger pieces with simple patterns or solid colored tile make the bathroom brighter and not cramped.

Making room for the commode

photo: Live About

We know how much more critical the toilet is than the door in a bathroom. You can’t cut a toilet to make the door fit, so the solution is to cut out the door. The peekaboo notch in the door is a bonus design choice that makes your bathroom interior… memorable.

There are a couple of solutions to prevent this unfortunate mishap in bathroom design:

The first is to relocate the toilet, which is the more apparent but costlier solution. This requires moving the waste pipe and undoing the tile to position the commode to let the door swing freely.

However, the other solution is to change the type of door and how it opens. Using a sliding door reworks the door path and allows access without other people looking into your private matters.

But before doing either of those things if you can’t get to the remodel? Replace the door.

The water misses its mark

photo: Pablo Valdicia

There are different ways to do a waterfall faucet. This is not one of them.

The faucet is positioned too far back for the spout of water to enter the basin. This creates a lot of unnecessary splash and to be frank, looks like an idiot built your sink.

The solution is to install the right faucet into your bathroom vanity countertop. While it looks like this counter needs a single hole faucet, the longer extension over the basin was key. Selecting a faucet where the length clears the gap is a necessity so the water pours into the basin properly.

This is not what we mean by “bath tissue”

photo: Live About

Unless we have exceptionally long arms, this is the most inconvenient placement for toilet paper ever. While we try to squeeze all the amenities into a bathroom, they must make sense in relation to each other. The bathroom is a “function first” room, and this doesn’t make any sense. 

We don’t need to use misplaced toilet roll dispenser just because it is there. There are a couple of practical solutions we can enact. We can install a toilet roll dispenser next to the toilet on the opposite wall or side of the vanity. If we cannot do that, then we can purchase a freestanding toilet paper holder. As for the slot where the toilet paper is? Change it to a nook in the bath tile that holds bars of soap or small bathing supplies. That is probably the original purpose of that space in the first place.

Some decorative choices are less pleasant than others

photo: Live About

This is not the pattern I want to see in a bathroom, let alone a public restroom. We will not go into detail into what this looks like, but it invokes something unpleasant due to context.

Specific patterns and décor will be affected by the setting and placement. For example, some people don’t like pictures with eyes placed opposite the toilet because they don’t like being watched. However, the best rule of thumb in any bathroom: avoid décor that can be mistaken for dirty stains. Especially on the countertops and the floors and any surface that should remain clean.

It’s not the pink tile that’s the problem

photo: Live About

This layout makes me very uncomfortable because the builder tried to squeeze everything into a narrow space. Placing the toilet sideways ANYWHERE so that you can jump it to get to the shower is incredibly poor design.
One way to salvage this bathroom is to remove the commode which leaves only the shower. The other way is so repositioning the toilet to where the shower is. Changing the shower drain into a waste drain, resulting in a long narrow hall to the toilet makes more sense.

Toilet for Hunchbacks

photo: Daily Mail

My neck hurts just looking at this toilet. I understand trying to squeeze every ounce of space into a bathroom if it’s cozy. But I draw the line contorting your body to take a seat for an essential function.

That counter doesn’t need to be there. Removing it will also open up the space so that part of the bathroom doesn’t look so crowded. Also placing the counter edge against the glass shower tile looks odd with widely different materials next to each other.

If you cannot move the toilet, the other suggestion is cutting the countertop. If you lift up the lid, we can guess it will bump into that existing extraneous surface. We wouldn’t need to remove the wall cabinet above the toilet and would end up using more of that storage. 

Going all-in on one trend

photo: Pixelbay

While it is fun to have trendy bathroom pieces, make sure it fits with the rest of the space. Otherwise, it unintentionally makes the rest of the room look plain, even dated.

The recommendation would be not to get this bright red bathtub at all. However, we can fix this by adding warm colors to the bathroom. Changing the art, shower, and towel helps, but painting the walls warmer would pull the tub into the design better.

The bathtub’s askew position and the exposed metal plumbing that doesn’t match any metal trim does not help either. Moving this tub to the wall would clean up the look of the extra plumbing.

Everything that could be wrong in one bathroom

photo: Housely

Most likely, this was probably a stylish bathroom 50 years ago. This should never come back.

First of all, there’s carpet in the bathroom. Carpet NEVER belongs in a bathroom. Between water spilling everywhere and using the toilet, I hate to think about how soiled the carpet fibers were here. The carpeted steps near the tub seem odd; unless someone has trouble entering a tub, steps do not belong there.

Then you have the tile that is everywhere in this bathroom, and I HOPE it is tile and not wallpaper. Again, with the same pattern everywhere, this room has no depth. Everything matches so much in this room that it becomes both busy and dull at the same time.

 The pea-green color of the ceramics is dated, which shows why we should avoid trending colors in our appliances.

Aside from burning down the whole bathroom and starting over, at least get rid of the carpet. Because wall-to-wall CARPETS do NOT belong in the BATHROOM.

What other lousy bathroom designs have you encountered on the internet? Comment below with bathroom designs that belong on this list!

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