When we moved into this house, I knew that one of the top priorities would be to add lighting to my kiddies bathroom.  It is on the inside of the house, so there is no window, and the builder did not put enough lighting in it; there is a pretty nice corner bathtub, though.  Just as I suspected, it is a dungeon and my kids don’t use it.  So this week, we decided to brighten it up and make it a fun room that they actually want to take a bath in and use as their primary potty.  We did three things that really made a big difference to brighten it up.  This is not brain surgery, people, some of these might be quite obvious.  But the surprise is how much it changes the feel of the bathroom if you do one or all of these things.  And I was pleasantly surprised at how really inexpensive it was to accomplish such a drastic change.  What a difference it made!

1. Can lights:  Holy cow.  My handy husband installed 3 can lights in one spot and 2 in the other part of the bathroom.  Don’t get scared- this is SUPER easy to DIY!  We installed 5 can lights for less than $100, start to finish.  That included the saw attachment to his drill that cut the perfectly round circles.  We would definitely recommend using this, it made his job so much easier, and it was only 20$.  He is not an electrician either.  We didn’t add outlets or light switches.  It was so easy to do.  Now he keeps roaming the house looking for places to add can lights.  We are going to post his experience and his version of the “can light how-to” later this week.

2. Color: K, this seems obvious, but so many people are afraid of color in a bathroom.  They leave everything neutral or overall brown.  You don’t have to do a bright counter top or weird cabinets.  Just be sure to add some color to your accents in the bathroom.  You will be so surprised at how this brightens things up.  We did a navy striped shower curtain, with bright striped accent towels and yellow bath towels.  We are doing green apple and navy chevron frames with pictures of the kids in them.  We are working on the pictures, and will post them when they are done (probably this weekend.)  Should be pretty cute!

3. Light bulbs:  K, no brainer, right?  Not really.  We use the energy efficient light bulbs and they give off a much “whiter” light than some of the regular light bulbs.  You don’t totally notice the dim or yellow glow until you compare it to the whiter light.  The whiter light looks much more natural and REALLY brightens up a room.  I am amazed.  And my engineery husband even did the math with wattage and all that other stuff, and they actually DO save you money that you would notice, if you use them throughout your house.  Don’t be scared of them.  Ours are dim for about 5 minutes in the morning, before they warm up, and then they are brighter than regular bulbs for the rest of the day.  I really resisted this change at our house because of the “warm-up” stage, but they are amazing.  I can’t wait to post the before and after pictures of my bathroom.  We will do the reveal next week!