No homeowner wants to live with a bathroom that is dark, damp, and dirty. Aside from being a huge turnoff, such a bathroom is also a safety and health risk for all inhabitants of the house and a huge loss to the value of your property. Dark and damp spaces are the perfect breeding ground for all sorts of unpleasantness, including mold, mildew, germs, and bacteria, and dirt further speeds up their growth.

Keeping your bathroom clean and well-lit is not just a matter of aesthetic preferences. It’s part of your duty as homeowner to make your home a livable space for you and your family, to prolong its life span, and to increase its value in the housing market. You can start with one of the most essential areas in every house—the bathroom.

Keeping Your Bathroom Clean

The bathroom offers amenities that homeowners frequently use every day, so it’s to be expected that the area accumulates mess much faster than other places in the house do. Keeping your bathroom in pristine condition will largely depend on how often you clean and organize.

Create a checklist of daily, weekly, and monthly tasks you need to do to maintain the cleanliness and order of your bathroom. Tasks like taking out the trash, airing out the bathroom, and wiping leftover moisture should be done daily, sometimes frequently in one day, to nip certain problems (e.g., attracting insects, the development of mold)  in the bud.

Other chores, like cleaning the toilet and scrubbing the floor, can be done weekly because they take more time. Monthly tasks include unclogging showerheads, clearing out cabinets, and replacing expired products, among others.

Having a system of organizing your stuff also helps keep your bathroom clutter-free. Everything, from the towels and laundry to the cleaning tools and supplies, should have their proper places in the bathroom. And everyone must know where every item in the bathroom belongs.

For that, you can use containers and organizers and create labels to indicate which items go in there. Be consistent with following your own system; otherwise, it won’t take long before clutter accumulates again.

Using the right cleaning supplies also matters a lot in maintaining the condition of your bathroom. Many cleaning products in the market contain harmful chemicals that are not only dangerous to your health but are also damaging to your property. Use nontoxic products to clean your home. You don’t need to look far. Your kitchen has a treasure trove of home remedies for cleaning.

One bathroom disaster, like a clogged toilet or drain, can result in a lot of mess, so installing preventive measures also plays a key role in keeping your bathroom spic-and-span. Stop hair, residue, and debris from clogging your pipes by using a drain cover. Consider installing a macerating pump to connect all your water fixtures in the bathroom to a powerful macerator pump that will break down wastewater to facilitate better drainage and prevent clogs.

Keeping Your Bathroom Well-Lit

Good lighting is not just a matter of installing a light bulb with more lumens. It’s about balancing the three types of lighting—ambient, accent, and task—in the room. An overhead lighting fixture is bound to cast shadows in the room and create dark corners, so you need accent and task lighting to illuminate the dim areas.

Typically, in a bathroom, wall sconces or wall-mounted lights placed on each side of the bathroom mirror can really help brighten up a room. Track lights also work in place of sconces. Several strategically placed recessed lights in all corners can completely dispel dark areas and give your bathroom a clean and bright glow.

A well-lit bathroom doesn’t only rely on the lighting alone. The color of your walls and floors also plays a vital role in setting the overall ambience of the room. Pale or light colors (e.g., white, eggshell blue, pink, mint green, and daisy yellow) reflect light well, so they can instantly brighten up any space and make it appear bigger and airier. On the other hand, dark colors (e.g., jet black, chocolate brown, midnight blue, and graphite, absorb light, thus making a room look dimmer and smaller.

Bathroom vanity mirrors can also reflect light. In addition they can also be be a tremendous way to add style. You can go from Traditional to Ornate or Modern. Full-length large mirrors reflect natural light and should be considered or a leaner mirror works well if you bathroom is large enough. A Cheval floor mirror or an oversized floor mirror could be quite stunning.

Nothing can beat the sun when it comes to brightening a room, so take advantage of the free lighting in the daytime by drawing your curtains and opening your windows once in a while. Natural light is not only a great lighting source, but it’s also a powerful sanitizing agent. Sunlight (direct exposure to it) can help kill germs and bacteria and lessen your risk of catching flu.

On top of making your space look Instagram-ready, sunlight also helps eliminate unpleasant odors in your bathroom. So remember to open your windows and let the sunshine in for a couple of hours in a day.

Final Thoughts

It’s natural for your home to show signs of wear and tear over time. These signs will be more apparent in some parts of your house, like the bathroom. As one of the most functional areas in the house, the bathroom sees a lot of use and abuse. Heat, humidity, water, and strong chemicals—practically everything that can erode house materials over time is present and used in the bathroom.

Proper maintenance, in the form of regular cleaning, fixing problems immediately, and replacing worn materials, can help your bathroom stay in mint condition for a long, long time. Keeping your bathroom clean and well-lit makes it a more pleasant, safe, and healthy space to be in.

Author Bio

Tiffany Ara has great experience with home improvements, and is more than willing to share her expertise with the world. From DIY projects to massive renovations, the author has numerous contribution to home DIY community. Her simple tips can help you to prepare for any home improvement project you’re planning.