Fast Fixes: Add Personality to Your Bathroom Decor with Horizontal Stripes

Credit: Courtesy Splash Home

Banish boring from your bathroom with a striped shower curtain

I’ve always loved the look of broad horizontal stripes, whether it’s a super-cool wallpaper or a painstakingly painted wall. And while I’ve been tempted to get out the painter’s tape and ruler, I hadn’t quite committed to stripes – until now.

The easy update: a striped shower curtain that gave my neutral bathroom some much-needed oomph.

Just as the colour turquoise had been put in the spotlight as Pantone’s Colour of the Year for 2010, I had finished rolling a fresh coat of paint over my bathroom’s blue walls. That’s right. I traded my cheerful skies (Benjamin Moore’s Hazy Blue) for a more somber hue: Benjamin Moore’s Cloud White (OC-130).

Trends in Bathroom Colours

Practical, yes. Boring, maybe. But it’s also right on trend, according to the National Kitchen & Bath Association (NKBA). Beiges and bones will be the most common colours used in bathrooms, followed by whites and off-whites, and then by browns.

To punch up my fresh white walls, I said see ya later to my tough-to-keep-white towels, and instead, opted for some easy-to-hide-the-dirt chocolate ones, which add some contrast to the room. And the crowning glory: the striped shower curtain.

Easy Stripes for Bathroom Decor

I had planned to keep my Asian-style white ricepaper-looking shower curtain firmly in place, until I came across the Distort shower curtain in orange (pictured above; it also comes in green) in one of my favourite haunts: Homewerx.

Those safe neutral brown and cream stripes are broken up with just enough orange to straddle that fine balance of chic versus crazy. And the bonus: The Distort brand, which is distributed by Montreal-based Splash Home, is made from eco-friendly PEVA, which means that it’s PVC free.

And yes, the striped shower curtain does make my small bathroom look a little bit fatter – and a lot less boring.