Many apartments and condos include tiny bathrooms to maximize the size of the bedroom and living room areas for a given square footage floor plan. However, the downside to this approach is that it often results in cramped, colorless bathrooms (plus, it’s usually windowless) and thoroughly lacking in any spark of life. There’s no room to hang any artwork, and many renters are reluctant to paint. So, does that mean you are out of options for decorating your small bathroom? Not at all!

Here are some of my favorite small bathroom decorating ideas.

Add color to washed-out bathroom walls

• Tile stickers like these tile tattoos can add color and patterns to boring tile, especially if the tile isn’t particularly attractive and you want to draw attention to a chic design instead.
• Removable wall stickers are easily installed on normal drywalls. My favorite approaches are to cluster the graphics into a small area to get the effect of a painting being hung there. The quality of graphics vary widely, so keep looking if you Some wall adhesives are even reusable, so you can bring them with you to your next home.
• Fluffy, colorful towels hung on attractive rings or bars in your bathroom can make the room feel softer and more lively.

Change bathroom fixtures (keep the old ones if you’re rentting)

• Changing your shower head from a cheap, plastic head to a stainless steel or brushed nickle shower head with different massage options can transform your showering experience from something necessary to something pleasant. Installing a new showerhead doesn’t take more than five minutes, either.
• Similarly, sink faucets and knobs aren’t hard to change out, as long as you know the size of the hole and stick with that size. Extra tall faucets will enable you to fit just about anything into the sink for washing.  Just store the old fixtures under the bathroom sink until you move, and your landlord will never be the wiser.
• Ugly florescent lighting can be mitigated with a cute, bathroom-safe light instead. Most simply “clip on” to the typical recessed lighting found in bathrooms, and can be pulled out again when you move.

Use removable accessories to add color, texture, and design

• A giant candle next to the sink can provide much softer lighting for baths as well as being a piece of art in itself. Stick with beeswax or soy candles, instead of the typical, petroleum-based paraffin wax candles, to reduce indoor pollutants within the enclosed space of your bathroom.
• Get cute “necessary” appliances like toothbrush holders and soap holders. They don’t have to be boring, or even conventional! An old-fashioned Coke bottle can hold toothbrushes. Liquid soap can be stored in a fashionable dispenser, for instance, and a hands-free automatic dispenser can reduce the need to clean out the dispenser.
• Cute, thick rugs make tiles seem much less harsh and makes the bathroom a much more comfortable place to be, and protect bare feet from cold bathroom floors in the wintertime!