Start with the smell. Sorry, I know, not where a decor article is supposed to start, but that smell is honestly the first thing that comes back to me.
My cousin Ayesha’s bathroom. Rented flat, Islamabad, second floor. One window — and calling it a window is generous, it was a slot, basically, a slot somebody put glass in.
The room smelled damp. Not dirty-damp. Old-towel-left-in-a-bag damp.
Walls this yellow-cream colour that I suppose was white once, 2012 maybe, and the grout between the tiles gone dark. Grout. I learnt that word that week and then couldn’t stop saying it wrong for two days, which Ayesha did not find as funny as I did.
She said something that stuck. “I stand here brushing my teeth and I feel tired before the day’s even started.” Right. So.
These bathroom decorating ideas — this is just what we did, the two of us, over three weekends, in that exact room. Total came to about Rs 14,500. There’s also Rs 900 we basically threw away on the wrong paint, I’ll get to that, don’t let me forget.
And no tiles were changed. None. The landlord, Mr. Rashid, said no in a voice that ended the discussion, and then he came round twice to check we hadn’t. Twice!
Way 1: Paint the top half white and stop arguing about the tiles
We fought about colour. An actual fight, standing in a paint shop, both of us tired. She wanted sage green — she’d seen it somewhere, a reel probably. I wanted white, because I’m boring, I know.
The shopkeeper (seventy if he was a day, patience of a saint) kept sliding little colour cards across the counter and we kept picking them up and putting them down. Somehow — I still don’t fully know how — we walked out with a tin marked “off white” that went on the wall pink. Pink. In a damp bathroom.
It looked like bubblegum had a sad accident in there. Rs 900. That tin is in her store room right now. She swears she’ll use it for something.
She will not. We both know she will not.
Back we went. Proper bright white this time, one tin, Rs 1,150. Small roller, Rs 350. And we only painted the top half of the walls, the bit above the tiles, plus the ceiling — ceiling was the worst of it, I had paint in my hair for two days and she had it down her sleeve, so call that even.
Here’s the thing I didn’t expect, and I’m not doing the TV-ad voice, I mean it: the room looked twice the size. I’m serious. Light started bouncing instead of just dying in the corners. And the old tiles — the ones we’d been cursing all week — suddenly looked almost classic.
Almost. The grout was still there being grout. I scrubbed it once, baking soda, old toothbrush, a full hour on my knees, back killing me, and it helped… a little.
A little-little. Anyone who tells you grout scrubbing is a miracle is selling something.
That’s the real shape of bathroom decoration ideas in a rented flat, I’ve decided. You can’t touch the tiles, fine — so you fix everything around the tiles until your eye stops landing on the bad part.
Way 2: One wooden shelf, and only the pretty things live on it
Stuff. Everywhere. Bottles on the floor, bottles balanced on the cistern, one bottle living on the window ledge that fell in twice — once into the toilet, which became an Incident, shampoo, fishing it out, bin, whole morning gone, I don’t want to talk about it.
So: one shelf. Small wooden one, Rs 2,200, a carpenter near F-10 made it, pine, nothing fancy, edges a bit rough honestly. My brother-in-law Imran put it up and drilled straight into something hollow first go — not a pipe, thank God, just a hollow thunk — so the shelf sits maybe half an inch crooked.
Half an inch. We left it. More holes meant Mr. Rashid counting holes, and he counts, I’m convinced he counts.
The rule, and the rule is the whole trick: only pretty things live on that shelf. One rolled white towel. One small plant. A glass jar with cotton pads.
A candle we never, ever light, because a candle next to a shower curtain in a room that size is a fire-safety video waiting to happen. Everything else — the ten bottles, the medicines, the hair oil that leaks, hair oil always leaks, why does hair oil always leak — basket, under the sink, out of sight.
Now that shelf is the first thing you see when you walk in, and it does look like a spa photo. Or near enough for Rs 2,200 and a crooked drill job.
A week later Ayesha told me she’d started putting her towel on the shelf instead of the door hook because the shelf “looked too nice to mess up.” The shelf was meant to serve her. Somehow it’s the other way round. Whatever works, I suppose.
Way 3: White towels, all of them, and a basket that hides the mess
This sounds stupid. I said it sounded stupid. Four plain white towels, Rs 650 each, Rs 2,600 the lot, and I stood in the shop going “Rs 2,600? For towels?” and Ayesha just kept saying “look, just look.”
She was right. She’s right annoyingly often, that girl.
Before: one blue towel, one striped, one with — I don’t even know, some old cartoon on it, nobody could tell me whose it was. The bathroom looked like a laundry pile even on the days it was clean.
Now it’s all white, folded the same way, shelf and rail both, and the room just… settles. I don’t know why white does that. There’s nothing for your eyes to snag on, I think. Your eyes rest. Anyway.
Basket. Woven, Rs 800, Sunday bazaar. First one we bought was too small, sat there overflowing, looked worse than the mess it was hiding, so back it went — shopkeeper was decent about it — and the bigger one swallows everything, hair dryer included, and that hair dryer has a cord with its own plans in life, so that’s saying something.
When guests come now, Ayesha doesn’t tidy. She closes the lid. Which is tidying, if you squint. White towels for the eyes, basket for the truth — that’s the rule stuck inside the cabinet door now.
Way 4: Fix the light, and add a mirror that actually shows your face
The old bulb. Saddest yellow you’ve ever seen, like it had given up on the job years ago. You looked in the mirror and you looked ill. On a good day you looked ill.
Ayesha had quietly stopped checking her face in there at all — bedroom mirror instead — which tells you the whole story, really.
Bright white LED, Rs 450. Then the mirror, because the old one was small and going spotty round the edges: a round one, Rs 1,800, hung a bit higher than I’d have put it, Imran on the ladder, me holding it with my arms dying.
Ayesha looked in it and said, “Oh. I can actually see.” Small sentence. Not a small thing at 7 in the morning, trust me.
Confession: I bought a warm bulb first. Warm equals spa, I thought. Warm, in that little room, just meant yellow again, meant looking ill again. Took it back, shop swapped it without a fuss, and the white light on the white walls with the white towels — it stacked. It all stacked.
Round mirror helps too, don’t ask me why, square feels office, round feels home. It catches what little light the slot-window gives out and bounces it at the plant, which — no. Plant’s next. I keep jumping ahead. Sorry.
Way 5: One plant, and do not buy five
Ayesha wanted five plants. Five. In a bathroom with a slot for a window, five plants is not decor, it’s a guilt farm — things dying at different speeds while you watch. I said one. She said three.
We compromised on one and then I caved, obviously I caved, and we came home with two: a snake plant, Rs 600, and a little pothos, Rs 400. The pothos died in three weeks. Too much water, too little light, both, neither — we still argue about it over chai, nicely, but we argue.
She says I watered it like a vegetable patch. She’s probably right. Don’t tell her I said that.
The snake plant? Thriving. Ignores us completely, which is the secret, I think. It sits on the shelf next to the rolled towel, one green alive thing in a room that used to smell of damp, and the whole feeling of the place shifts around it.
It’s not decoration, exactly. It’s proof something can grow in there. After the damp smell, that felt like a small win, and small wins were the whole project.
So if you take one of these bathroom decorating ideas and ignore the rest, take this one: one plant. A tough one. Snake plant, pothos if your window’s better than ours, Rs 400 to Rs 600. Put it where you’ll see it every morning. Do not buy five.
The nursery will make five look like a wonderful idea. The nursery has a glass roof. Your bathroom does not.
Way 6: A small rug, a scent, and the five-minute tidy that keeps it spa-like
Last one, and there’s only really one purchase in it. Small cotton rug, Rs 950, white, thin grey border, in front of the sink. The floor tiles are cold — winter cold, the kind that goes through you — and stepping out of a shower onto that at 6 a.m. is a shock, and a shock is the opposite of spa-like, whatever spa-like means.
The rug also covers a chipped tile. I’m not pretending that wasn’t half the reason. It was at least half the reason. Ayesha’s eye went to that chip every single day. Now it doesn’t. Rs 950, no landlord permission needed, done.
Scent: one reed diffuser, Rs 700, lavender, kept weak on purpose, just there when the door opens. Truth is the damp smell mostly left on its own — paint, light, and us finally leaving the door open after showers, which costs nothing and did more than any product.
The diffuser just tidies up the edges of the smell, if that makes sense.
But here’s the honest ending, and I’d be cheating you without it. None of this stays nice by itself. Ayesha does five minutes now, every night — bottles back in the basket, rug shaken out, towel hung straight, done. Five minutes.
When she skips three days, and she has, it slides back to damp and messy so fast it’s like the whole three weekends never happened. I wrote the rule on a sticky note, it’s inside the cabinet where only she sees it: the room doesn’t stay fresh because you bought the right things. It stays fresh because you put the wrong things away.
Try one way this weekend. Just one. The paint, or the towels, or the plant — the plant’s the cheapest, start there if money’s tight, it usually is.
Ayesha still brushes her teeth in that little room. She just doesn’t feel tired before the day starts any more. For Rs 14,500 and one crooked shelf, I’ll take that trade every single time.