Small Bathroom Storage: Where the Space Is in a 5 x 8 Bathroom, and What It Costs to Use It

1. The vanity, done right

The vanity is the storage, and most of them waste half of it. A door with one shelf and the trap in the middle holds a basket of cleaning stuff and some lost hair ties. The same width with two or three drawers, the top one notched around the trap, holds everything two people use daily and is faster to find things in. On a 30 or 36 in. vanity it is $150 to $400 more in a prefab and about the same in semi-custom. The custom vs. prefab page covers how drawer vanities are built around the plumbing, and the plumbing problems page covers what happens when they are not.

Depth matters too. A 21 in. deep vanity in a 5 ft wide bathroom leaves 39 in. to the tub. An 18 in. deep one leaves 42 and holds nearly as much. A 12 in. deep one with a trough-style sink leaves 48 and makes the room usable, at the cost of counter space. For a powder room, 12 to 16 in. is the right depth and the stock sizes are there now.

2. The recessed medicine cabinet

A stud wall is 3-1/2 in. deep inside, which is exactly the depth of a shampoo bottle, a pill bottle, a razor and most of what lives on a vanity top. A recessed medicine cabinet, 14 in. wide to fit between studs at 16 in. centres, 24 to 36 in. tall, with a mirror door, holds a surprising amount and sits flush with the wall. $150 to $600 for the cabinet, $150 to $300 to frame the opening and install during a renovation, and the check first is that the stud bay has nothing in it: no wiring, no vent, no plumbing, and that it is not an exterior wall (insulation and vapour barrier say no). A wider one, 30 or 36 in., needs a stud cut and a header, which is the carpenter and another $200. The surface-mount version holds the same and sticks out 5 in., which in a 5 ft room is a forehead problem.

3. The shower niche

The same stud-bay trick, in the shower wall. A tiled niche 12 to 14 in. wide, 20 to 30 in. tall, with a shelf or two, holds the shampoo that otherwise lives on the tub rim. $250 to $600 during the tiling, using a prefab waterproof niche box ($60 to $150) set into the wall and tiled over; the cost is the tile cutting and waterproofing. The rules: not on an exterior wall, not in the plumbing wall where the valve is (usually), shelf sloped a hair to drain, and the bottom of the niche above the tub rim or at a height where it does not get kicked. Build it when the shower is open; it is the single most-regretted omission when people get their bathroom back.

4. The wall over the toilet

Two feet of wall, 30 in. above the tank, that nothing uses. A surface-mounted cabinet, 24 in. wide and 8 in. deep, with doors, holds spare rolls, towels and the things the medicine cabinet does not. $100 to $400 for the cabinet and an hour to hang it into studs. The floor-standing “over-the-toilet etagere” from the big-box store holds the same, wobbles, and makes the room look like a dorm; a wall-hung cabinet or two open shelves looks like a bathroom. If there is a window there, two floating shelves either side of it.

5. The linen tower beside or on the vanity

If the vanity wall is 48 in. or longer and the vanity is 30 or 36, a tower, 12 to 18 in. wide, 84 in. tall, closed below and open or glass above, holds the towels, the hair dryer and the spare everything. $400 to $1,200 prefab or as part of a vanity order. On a 60 in. wall, a 48 in. vanity and a 12 in. tower is a better bathroom than a 60 in. vanity with the same stuff spread across its counter. A smaller version sits on the counter at one end, 12 in. wide and 30 in. tall: $150 to $400, and it takes the counter it sits on.

6. Hooks, bars, and the back of the door

Towel bars hold one towel each and take 24 in. of wall. Hooks hold one towel each and take 3 in. A row of four hooks on the back of the door, or on the 12 in. of wall beside the shower, replaces two bars and a towel ring, and the towels dry faster on hooks. $20 to $80 for a row of decent hooks, screwed into a stud or a backer. A hook strip on the door needs the door to clear the vanity when it swings, which in a 5 x 8 room is worth checking before the holes are drilled.

7. The niche in the dry wall

Same as the shower niche, in the wall beside the vanity or over the toilet, without the waterproofing. A 14 in. wide, 36 in. tall recessed shelf unit with a wood face frame, painted to match, holds what a tower holds without taking any floor. $200 to $500 by the carpenter during a renovation, with the same checks on what is in the stud bay. On an interior wall with nothing in it, this and the recessed medicine cabinet are the cheapest storage per square foot in the house.

The two that look good and hold nothing

Putting it together in a 5 x 8

Every one of these is cheap while the walls are open and two to three times the price after. The sizes and heights page has the clearances a small bathroom has to keep (21 in. in front of the vanity and the toilet, 15 in. from the toilet centre to anything), so that the storage does not eat the room it was meant to help.