Decorating Around Garish Bathroom Tiles

The last 3 places I have lived have had garish bathroom tiles upon my arrival, but none worse that the home I just moved into. It was a combination of 1970’s pink with a bad vanilla swirl throughout. The bathroom tiles surround the bathtub/shower combo and are tied in “nicely” with an equally bad Formica-type countertop which matches. At the present time we do not want completely replace the tile but we also don’t wish to offend our guests or even ourselves every time the bathroom is used. So we decided to decorate around our garish bathroom tiles and here’s how we did it.

First, we tried to figure out a color that might actually go with the 1970’s pink swirl. A color combination that is very fashionable right now is watermelon pink & sage green, so we thought we’d use that to our advantage. So what we did is we took an equally bold sage green shower curtain and put it up covering most of the garish pink tile our shower is covered in. Some of the pink tile still shows through, but the green has become dominant and the pink actually looks good as an accent to the green. True, you still see the pink if you open the shower curtain, but we simply keep it closed, especially when guests are over!

After we took that step, we were encouraged that we could downplay these garish tiles even more and still make our bathroom quite fashionable. So we began to play up the sage green/pink color combination in other areas of our bathroom as well. We bought a few inexpensive hand towels that were primarily green with accents of pink, and did the same for a decorative bath mat. Now when you walk into our bath room it appears to be very green, with some simple pink accents when it was very opposite just a few weeks ago when we moved in.

But the last thing we did to really draw attention away from the garish bathroom tiles was paint. We didn’t paint the entire bathroom as we weren’t quite up for that, but we did put a simple chair rail on the wall and painted a very fashionable chocolate brown below it, keeping above it white. This way, when you walk in your eye immediately sees the green we have filled the bathroom with and the nice, brown paint below the rail. And the only place you really see the pink at all anymore is on the counter. But as mentioned above, the pink really seems like an accent, not the primary color it once was.

So let’s recap our basic strategy. First, find a color that actually goes with the garish tiles in your bathroom. Second, do the best job you can to cover your tiles with things of your new primary color but still leave accents (because you probably won’t be able to cover it completely) of the old tiles to help tie it in. Lastly, add some simple color that will continue to draw focus away from your garish bathroom tiles and emphasize your new stylish touches!