Small bathroom renovation ideas for city flats

Start with the soil pipe, not the mood board

Most bathrooms in Edinburgh tenement flats were never designed as bathrooms at all. Many began life as a box room, a cupboard off the kitchen or a slice of a hallway, which is why they are often narrow, internal and awkward. Before you fall for a picture of a freestanding tub, find out what the drainage will let you do.

The soil pipe is the fixed point everything else revolves around. In the vast majority of city flats the WC connects to a vertical stack, and the branch runs a short, straight distance to it. Move the pan a metre along the wall and you are into lifting floors, cutting joists or fitting a macerator — noisy, power-hungry and one more thing to go wrong. Working within the existing footprint instead keeps plumbing costs modest and the project realistic.

• Measure from the wall to the centre of the soil pipe, and note which way the branch runs.
• Check whether the floor is concrete or timber. Many converted tenements have solid floors, which makes re-routing genuinely difficult.
• Keep the basin and bath wastes where they are if you can. Reusing an existing run is far cheaper than creating a new one.
• If the layout truly cannot work, look at swapping the room's function rather than fighting the pipes.

Choose a compact suite that earns its space

A typical Edinburgh flat bathroom is around 1.7m by 2.1m, and a standard 1700mm bath will swallow that whole width. Look at 1500mm or 1600mm baths instead, and check whether a shower bath with a hinged screen suits how you actually use the room. If there is a second bathroom elsewhere in the flat, a generous 900mm walk-in shower with a low-profile tray will feel far more luxurious than a cramped bath you never fill.

For the WC, a short-projection pan of around 600mm makes a noticeable difference to the amount of floor you can see. Basins of 450mm to 500mm wide, with a shallow 300mm-deep vanity unit, are comfortable to use without dominating the room. Corner basins save space on paper, but the usable bowl is small and the pipework behind them can be fiddly — only choose one if the geometry really demands it.

Wall-hung fittings and the service void

Here is the trick that transforms small bathrooms. Build a shallow boxing, roughly 200mm deep, along one wall and run it full height. Inside goes the concealed cistern, the pipework and any awkward joints. On the front goes a wall-hung WC and, above it, a wall-hung basin or a slim vanity. On top you gain a ledge for bottles, candles or a folded towel.

Two things matter. First, a wall-hung frame has to be fixed back to something structural, not just plasterboard. In a tenement, anchor the frame to the floor and to the return walls; a lightweight stud partition on its own will not carry the load. Second, plan the boxing before you buy a single tile — it is the element that makes everything else look deliberate. It also gives you somewhere to bury a recessed shelf niche beside the shower.

Tiling that makes the room feel larger

Large-format tiles mean fewer grout lines, and fewer grout lines mean fewer visual interruptions. A light, matt or satin-finished porcelain in 600 x 300mm, laid in a vertical stack or a simple brick bond, will make a narrow room read as taller and calmer than a busy pattern ever will.

You do not have to tile everything. Tiling the shower enclosure floor to ceiling and painting the remaining walls in a durable, moisture-tolerant finish is a cost-effective approach that keeps the room feeling airy. Where you do tile, use a proper backer board in wet zones rather than tiling straight onto old plaster. Worth remembering too: Edinburgh's water is soft, so limescale is less of a battle here than in other parts of the UK, but soap scum still shows badly on very dark tiles. Mid-tones and lights are more forgiving.

For the floor, porcelain or a good quality luxury vinyl tile in a mid-tone will stand up to daily use. Avoid small mosaic sheets unless you genuinely enjoy cleaning grout.

Light, air and the internal-bathroom problem

Plenty of Lothians flats have a bathroom with no window at all. That makes ventilation a building requirement, not a nice-to-have, and it makes lighting the difference between a room that feels like a sanctuary and one that feels like a cupboard.

• Run the duct to the nearest external wall. If that means a long run through a ceiling void, specify a high-performance inline fan rather than a cheap wall-mounted unit that will struggle.
• Choose a fan with a humidistat and an overrun timer so it keeps working after the shower is off.
• Layer the lighting: a dimmable ceiling light, a dedicated light at the mirror, and IP-rated fittings inside the shower zone.
• Position any heated towel rail so it does not sit directly beside the shower screen, where it will simply stay damp.

Storage, doors and living with the work

In a small bathroom, storage should be shallow and wall-mounted. Deep cabinets are hard to open and waste floor space you cannot spare. A recessed niche in the boxing, a mirrored wall cabinet and a slim shelf above the WC will hold more than a bulky unit ever would. If your bathroom door swings inwards and eats a square metre of usable floor, consider rehanging it to swing out or fitting a sliding door — it is one of the cheapest space gains available.

Finally, a word on working in a block. Dust sheets in the common stair, a polite note to neighbours and a clear understanding of permitted working hours will keep everyone on side. If you are in a listed building in the New Town or Old Town, check whether consent is needed before you alter anything visible. And protect your own flat: isolate the water supply properly, and plan how waste is going to leave the building without blocking the stair.

Do those things well and a two-square-metre bathroom can feel considered, generous and genuinely pleasant to use — no relocation of pipework required.