Home Interiors: Creating and Styling Our Downstairs Toilet

This may seem like a daft topic to be writing about. Who wants to read about someone else’s downstairs loo? But it is one part of our house renovation after the kitchen floor and the colour of the living room walls that I get asked about the most. So I thought that I would share with you how we have shoe horned this tiny little space into our kitchen extension, and just how we did it.

Typically these Edwardian terraced houses are not blessed with a downstairs toilet, the only toilet would have been outside or in the bathroom at the top of the stairs. One of our ambitions of our house renovation was to include a toilet under the stairs; a fairly small but challenging space, and one that is also restricted due to gas, eletric and water meters.

The old hallway, the space where the coats are is pretty much where the doorway to the downstairs toilet now.

The kitchen extension floor plan with the downstairs toilet on the right hand side.

To create our downstairs toilet we had to use space from the existing kitchen as well as some space under the stairs. The room measures internally 1560mm x 730m, with 850mm sitting within the opened up kitchen extension. I hope that makes sense? The doorway to the toilet is pretty much in the space where you see the coats hung up in the image above.

As part of our house renovation we lowered the floor at the back of the house, but our downstairs toilet actually sits at the same level as the hallway, before stepping down into the kitchen.  This is because it is accessed from the hallway and I think it also helps with drainage of the pipe into the sewer (lovely stuff to be talking about on the blog, but all very important).

Looking into the downstairs toilet from the steps leading down into the kitchen. 

Behind the toilet and behind the kitchen units we have a huge void, and this became known as the Brexit store cupboard during the build. We’ve ended up with this void as the extended section of the house couldn’t be as wide as we had planned, meaning that the kitchen wall where the units run could also not be as wide, as we wanted all the units to run in one line. A bit of a disappointment at the time, but you would never know if you didn’t know.

Positively what this has allowed is an area where all the services could run. This includes a lot of pipes from the boiler into the main house, plumbing to waste out the downstairs toilet and washing machine, and hundreds of metres of electrical cable. As well as this it also allowed us to have a recessed cupboard and a concealed toilet cistern.

Inside the downstairs toilet with the recessed cupboard door open. 

In terms of styling this was always a room where I wanted to create impact. I had seen so many wow factor loos on Instagram and Pinterest, and I knew that I wanted to do something similar. From the outset we knew that we were going to use the fancy crazy Ted Baker tiles that we had got from a neighbour over the road and the room was going to be black. We settled on it being painted in Farrow and Ball Off Black to match the colour of the kitchen units. Plus it worked well with the Ted Baker wall tiles and the Harlequin Decor 3 floor tiles from Mandarin Stone.

For sanitaryware we selected a RAK Back to Wall pan, the tiniest sink in the world, and a black tap with black click clack waste. The tiniest sink in the world is actually too small, and looking back now it could have been bigger. My advice to any one doing something similar is to select the biggest sink you can to avoid water going everywhere as soon as you turn on the tap, especially if you have little ones.

Looking into the downstairs toilet from the hallway. 

The room is then finished with the crazy Ted Baker tiles to half-height all the way round, a gold tile trim, walls painted in Farrow and Ball Off Black, and the ceiling painted in Brilliant White. The cupboard and cupboards doors were made at the same time as the kitchen doors, and are sprayed MDF colour matched to Farrow and Ball Off Black.

I am really happy with this space even though there is still a bit of styling to do. I would like to add a high level shelf with some faux plants. Plus we need the basics including a black toilet roll holder and towel rail.

I hope that you’ve found this post useful and not a pile of p** pardon the pun.

Claire x

Useful info

RAK Toilet and cistern – Victorian Plumbing

Geberit Black Flush Plate – Victorian Plumbing

Sink – Victorian Plumbing

Black tap – We Are Soak

Black Click Clack Waste – We Are Soak

Wall tiles – Ted Baker at Tiles Direct

Floor tiles – Mandarin Stone Harlequin Decor 3

Gold tile trim – Foundry Raw Straight Edge at Topps Tiles