Make the powder room the liveliest-looking space in your home

Despite their stuffy-sounding name, powder rooms are where designers tend to have the most fun — and so can you. This formal space offers a lower-stakes place to experiment with wild wallpaper or use a natural stone you couldn’t afford to install in an entire kitchen. “We generally subscribe to the idea that less is more, but in a powder room, more may actually be more,” says Carrie Moore, North Carolina-based interior designer and cofounder of Carrie Moore Interior Design. Here’s how to make yours sing.

Since the toilet and sink take up so much space, the walls are prime territory to make a statement. “I love a larger-scale pattern with bold colors in a small powder room,” says Wisconsin-based Emily Winters for Peabody’s Interiors. “It’s a chance to take a risk or be more outgoing with color and pattern than you might be in your main spaces.”

Charleston, S.C.-based Margaret Donaldson of MDI Luxury Design recently jazzed up her client’s powder room with wallpaper in a bright wildflower pattern. Its coral, pink and blue color scheme lends the space a lively, happy vibe, she says.

“Read” your wallpaper like a road map, pulling out a couple of its colors to use on the vanity or wall trim. Or aim for contrast by working in a new hue. “A unique paint color on the vanity creates a dramatic focal point in a small space,” says Rhode Island-based Janelle B. Photopoulos of Blakely Interior Design. For her client’s powder room vanity, she selected a saturated salmon pink, which pops against the blue and white palm frond-patterned wallpaper.

Tile is ideal for a damp environment and can make as much of a statement as wallpaper, especially if you lay it with a generous hand. Southern California-based Hanna Li of Hanna Li Interiors sings the praises of zellige, a Moroccan-style tile variety with irregularities in tone and texture. In a powder room she designed for a client, Li applied green and brown tiles to the floor and walls, creating a spa-like enclave evocative of a Turkish bath.

To enhance the old-world feel of her client’s tiled bathroom, Li included a large-scale floating marble sink. If your bathroom or budget can’t accommodate that amount of Carrara, try capping an inexpensive vanity with a new stone top or going small but bold — Photopoulos added a distinctive, albeit diminutive, sink to one client’s powder room.

One trick for making a small room appear grander: Install wainscoting that climbs two-thirds of the way up to the ceiling. Photopoulos used the technique in her client’s powder room and then painted the woodwork a glossy dark navy. For a more relaxed and nautical feel, try white or blue shiplap instead.

Try a mirror with an unusual silhouette: Santa Monica, Calif.-based Christine Markatos Lowe of Christine Markatos Design paired a round brass mirror with spheres around the frame made by Noir Trading with a fuchsia vanity and graphic blue-and-white wallpaper.

Good design and hospitality often come down to the details. Kathleen Kowalksi of Create a Colorful Life added a gold towel bar to the door-facing side of the vanity in her own powder room. “I love to swap out the hand towel to add extra color and pattern,” she says. And don’t overlook niceties like hand lotion and a scented candle. After all, a powder room shouldn’t only look good; it should smell good too.