Welcome to This Is Cute. We’re Jenna, Jayna, and Verena. We text all day about cute stuff so you don’t have to. If you’re interested in seeing the previous and equally unhinged editions, they’re here. Sometimes, we like to swerve left, and today is one of those times. Between Verena’s movem Jenna’s reno, Jayna’s urge to paint it black (it’ll make sense soon, we promise), AND a reader request (yes, we take requests!), we’ve been weirdly collectively focused on our … bathrooms. Sure there are summer dresses on the horizon, but who needs those when you have gold toilet brushes?! Honestly, we need both, but for now we’ll focus on the latter. So, without further ado … 14 cute ways to upgrade your bathroom!
The Need To Haves
A scene-stealing bathmat! If you have never seen Cold Picnic’s butt bathmat you probably live a very offline life, in which case, good for you!!! For everyone else, I would like to share that in addition to the Brooklyn-based brand’s cheeky Instagram-famous design, they also make beautiful geometric nature-inspired mats in the most soothing colors. And the designs are as practical as they are pretty—fluffy underfoot, washable, and complete with a deal clinching no-slip under pad, because honestly is there anything more maddening than a bathmat so slidey it might as well be a hand towel? -JG
Fog Linen wares! When I’m on the hunt for home accessories, I often make Brooklyn interiors store-cum-site Primary Essentials my first stop. I followed my standard routine when scouring for a new toilet paper roll holder mid-bathroom renovation, and was so satisfied to see that PE’s singular TP offering—a brushed brass streamlined design from Fog Linen—was, in fact, perfect. It was also my gateway into the Japanese brand’s full line of offerings, which includes everything from knobs to towel bars to checkered linens. I am hooked (lol, get it? Because they also make hooks… okay bye.) -JG
Unexpected shower curtains! I was introduced to Quiet Town Home by Jayna, and while they’re definitely known for their abstract canvas offerings, I love their colored EVA vinyl Sun Shower curtains. I suppose they’re probably meant to be used as a liner with one of the Canvas curtains, but there’s something airy and a little risque about having just a colored liner. It just feels a little lighter and more open, and I love the way it bathes the rest of the room in whatever hue you chose, especially if you’re lucky enough to have a window or natural light. -VvP
Cuter versions of not-so-cute bathroom accessories! Look, I don’t want to talk about toilet plungers and toilet bushes, BELIEVE ME. But we need them, because sometimes gross things happen in the bathroom. However! The accessories themselves don’t have to be boring/gross/whatever. Staff is a very fun brand with extremely playful plungers and toilet brushes (what a sentence!) that come in bright shades of hot pink, safety orange, grassy green, and others. Plus each product’s handle has the sweetest little smiley face on top. Adorable! For a slightly more subdued option, I like Blomus, whose products are sleek and discrete and basically the quiet luxury of toilet stuff. And then for the magpies in the chat (meeeee), you can always go with gold, bb. -JM
Soft Goods
Towels from Paris! Apologies in advance for this one but … I really, really, really love Merci’s Linen Honeycomb Towels, so much so that I actually put them in the first issue of Gossamer before I even had them in my bathroom. (Also, blame Jayna.) They come in great colors and take up very little space, because they’re very thin, which is great for small spaces (like bathrooms). If you are someone who likes a plush and fluffy towel, then these are objectively not for you. They are, however, extremely absorbent, quick drying, and objectively nice looking. If you want something with a whisper more squish and softness (and also domestically available), you could go for Hawkins. (But then you wouldn’t be able to tell people your towels are from Paris, like a real asshole.) -VvP
A classic robe! My favorite thing in the WORLD is a good bathrobe (okay maybe third favorite after, like, my family, and chocolate chip cookies). But anyway, robes! The BEST. I always slip one on post-shower, so my preferred style is long and unhooded, and made in a substantial (not flims) terry cloth, for ultimate coze and absorption factors. Given my criteria, and my obsession, it’s shocking to me that I have yet to purchase Tekla’s perfect Classic Bathrobe. Part of it is analysis paralysis (WHICH COLOR? STRIPES or SOLID?), but mostly I’m just waiting for my aforementioned bathroom renovation to be complete. The robe will be the little fuzzy exclamation point on the whole damn project. -JG
Decor
So much art! (Ideally themed.) My bathroom art gallery started by accident. I’ve always loved picking up vintage oil paintings at junk shops and stoop sales. (I’m drawn to portraits, as well as horses and ocean scenes.) One day, I picked up an oil painting of a dark-haired beauty for $40 at a pop-up garage sale in the neighborhood, mostly because she reminded me of a friend of my mother’s growing up, but also because I thought the deep green of her top would look nice in my bathroom. A few weeks later, a friend of mine told me she was getting rid of a lavender-haired oil-painted lady that I’d always loved, and did I want it? Oh boy, did I. A couple months later, I found yet another painted lady, and a few months after that, I realized I had two more painted ladies elsewhere in my apartment and promptly moved them to the bathroom. You get the picture. Anyway, my tl;dr is that a mini bathroom wall art collection is such an easy and inexpensive way to add personality to a deeply personal space that is often ultra sterilized. It’s also fun to have a very specific theme somewhere in your apartment that you can continue to add to as you see things. Fun fact: the same friend who gave me the lavender-haired lady had a bathroom in her old house that was filled from top to bottom with clown portraits. We called it the clown room, and referred to our indelicate time there as “visiting the clowns” and I miss it very much. (A lot of experts will tell you that you’re not supposed to put important and fancy art in the bathroom, because steam, etc., so please keep my “inexpensive” note in mind.)
Very dark paint! Ok, maybe this is controversial, maybe it’s totally incorrect, maybe it’s a big fat who cares, but I think people tend to take fewer bathroom decor risks than they should. My theory is that bathrooms tend to be small-ish spaces (often without any natural light if you live in an apartment) and so there’s always a desire to make them feel bigger, airier, more open, etc. And that’s great! But I also think it’s great to run screaming in the opposite direction and make them cute little dark moody emo caves. Is it a design risk? Sure. But it’s also low stakes! If you don’t like it, you can switch it up pretty easily! I recently did exactly this: our bathroom is blah and boring and although I have a long-term plan to totally renovate it that involves tiles we can’t afford, I was so sick of how bummed out it made me every time I was in there, I settled on a shorter-term solution: paint that baby BLACK from top to tail. The end result is cozy and cool and I think gives off spa vibes much more than a stark white space ever would (when was the last time you were in a super brightly lit spa, you know??). If black isn’t your thing, pick a color that is—I also love the idea of a clay-y pink or Yves Klein blue.
Wallpaper! For the exact same reasons Jayna outlined above! Want to dip your toe into wallpaper without going whole hog? Plaster your bathroom! It’s more cost effective, extremely high impact, and great for selfies. I miss my wallpaper wall from my old apartment very, very, very much, but don’t worry, I’m going to be papering my bathroom with the exact same paper (Flat Vernacular’s Verdant) as soon as I get the rest of my act together. I can’t think of a better backdrop for my ladies. -VvP
Tiny Touches
A lamp! I know there’s nothing revolutionary about eschewing overhead lighting in general, but again, the bathroom seems to be a place where people tend to mix things up less, and often default to whatever lighting is in there. But a nice lamp with a warm bulb/shade makes everything feel so much more chic and soothing! Obviously you have to make sure you’re not creating some sort of electrical hazard by having a lamp sit very close to, say, your tub, but as long as you can do it safely, I say why not try? One of the things I remember from the first time I went to JP’s apartment (which is now our apartment) was how thoughtful his lighting was, in every room, including the bathroom. (Photographers, you know what I mean?) It’s one of those things that I think people sometimes can’t even put their finger on but it makes a space feel so much better. -JM
A chic AF candle! Just do it. It’ll make you happy every time you smell it, look at it, or light it (ONLY when there’s company over of course, we can’t waste that wick). My mom bought me this one from Loewe, which instantly glammed up my sink set up . I also love this Prada one and have long been intrigued by the ultra fance Cire Trudons (are they worth it?? someone tell me!). -JG
Fancy matches! I like to stock up on long-stemmed wooden matches in cute boxes to keep on the back of the toilet. The nice thing about fancy matches is that even the fanciest of matches are still pretty cheap, and I mostly just pick them by the packaging. This random site has good ones, like these and these, and now I’m interested in extending my painted lady theme to matches with these. Ooh, fairies and owls! Also the minty-fresh color of these camp-themed ones would go great with my shower curtain. It’s all in the teeny, tiny details. -VvP
Nice To Haves
A hinoki bath stool! A.k.a. step three in turning our bathroom into NYC’s tiniest, most exclusive spa. I am very much not a bath person (you’re sitting in your own BROTH, everybody), but I am very very much a lazy person. So sometimes I like to have a little sit in the shower. I get bored in about 2 minutes so I’m not wasting a ton of water, don’t worry. I just think it’s better to sit than stand, pretty much always and in the shower it feels like a little indulgent treat. But also, this stool! It’s made of hinoki wood and every time it gets wet it smells sooooooo good and fancy. Like I’m in a magical forest and a deer is kissing me and a little tiny gnome is burning a wee little stick of incense in his gnome home. It’s also small (they come in different sizes) so it doesn’t take up a ton of space and I can use it to store cute little things on it. -JM
A Nordic something! You know when a search for something simple results in hours and hours of dead-ended scrolling and frustrating google searches that turn up nothing but weird $9 bizzaro Temu versions of the thing you’ve been picturing in your head? JUST ME? Okay well I was hitting ecommerce walls left and right when searching for a cute step stool for my toddler’s bathroom when I had a real aha moment. If you just stick the word “Nordic” somewhere within your search phrase, then, like magic, new internet doors seem to fly open revealing fresh links and indie vendors and basically NO Temu. Sorry that was a rant, but look at all these cutes that my search for “yellow nordic toddler stool” yielded. -JG
Next up: OUR SUMMER SHOPPING LISTS!!! Have a request for a future edition? We’d love to hear it. And then shop for it.
We may earn some money if you make a purchase through one of the links above. If you liked this post from TIC, why not share it?