In a small bathroom, Thomas often relies on finishes that reflect light, “where you can’t see the literal place it starts and where it ends.” One of his go-to materials for this purpose is frosted mirror. He has used it in tile form on walls and ceilings, and also installed entire sheets of it on the wall behind the vanity, as you would with a marble slab. “Frosted mirror has this glow, but it doesn’t have the reflection where you can see where the room starts and where it ends, like you would with a [normal] mirror.” Metallics can have a similar effect, as do shimmery mosaic tiles, Thomas says.
Designer Julia Miller, of the firm Yond Interiors, deployed a similar strategy with a 75-square-foot bathroom in Minneapolis, swapping a traditional built-in tub/shower combo for one with a glass wall. “We made one side a whole glass panel that faces the window, so that helped immensely,” she says. Choosing a glossy tile did, too. “[It] had a reflective quality,” she says. “The light still kind of moved throughout the space as opposed to just kind of stopping dead on a matte tile.”
For a more whimsical way to fake depth, Miller recommends wallpaper, which “can really give a lot of good illusions for both expanding and contracting space.” To achieve the former, she suggests an allover pattern such as a floral print, or something scenic such as a mural depicting rolling farmland. “Anything that’s a little bit busy or doesn’t have a repeat that your eye can see,” she says, since such options trick the mind into perceiving depth and encourage the eye to move.
