The bathroom might be one of the smallest rooms in your Philadelphia home. But odds are, it’s not only one of the rooms you spend the most time in each day but also the one room you have to share with multiple people. A bathroom might serve a practical purpose, but that doesn’t mean it needs to look boring. While some ideas can be pricey, bathroom decoration doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. If you feel like getting a little crafty, these DIY decorating ideas will add some zest to one of the most frequently used rooms in your home.

1. Embroidered Guest Towels

Guest towels serve two functions — they give people something to dry their hands on, and they add a bit of decor and color to the bathroom. Add some function and form to your bathroom decoration by embroidering a few guest towels and setting them out the next time you have people over. What you embroider on the towels is up to you: You can try your initials or a design that’s meaningful to you. If you don’t know how to embroider, you can take a quick class that will teach you the basics. Rittenhouse Needlepoint tends to offer inexpensive or even free classes on the weekend.

2. Shower Door Stencil

If you have a glass shower with a door, you can spruce it up by using a stencil on the outside. Stenciling lets you create complicated designs on the door, even if you aren’t particularly artistic. While you can find several blogs offering do-it-yourself instructions, the idea behind stenciling is simple. Press the stencil up against the shower door, then carefully apply paint to the cut-out areas, making sure that the paint doesn’t drip behind the stencil.

If you don’t have a glass shower, but use a shower curtain instead, you can try stenciling the outside of the curtain. Or, you can use your embroidery skills to stitch a large pattern or design across the curtain.

3. Hand-Braided Bath Mat

Now that you have towels and a shower ready to go, how about giving your bath mat a little TLC, too? A hand-braided bath mat not only gives you a creative outlet, it also lets you reuse any old and worn bath towels you might have lying around your home. Cut each towel into several long strips that measure no more than two inches wide. Stitch three strips together across the top, then braid the strips. As you near the end of the strip’s length, stitch another set of three onto the edge, then continue braiding. Once you’ve braided all the towel strips, wrap the braid around itself, creating a spiral. You can use glue to hold the spiral together or hand-sew it in place.

The bathroom tends to be one of the most important rooms when you’re looking to purchase a home. If your Philly bathroom has everything you want but could use a bit of a facelift, give one of these projects a try.

Image Source: Flickr/Urbane Apartments

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