Bathroom Color

Where to Start

Your bathroom countertop is a good place to find inspiration for the rest of your bathroom's color scheme.

Finding a jumping off point for a color scheme can be a difficult task: should you pick a flooring material first, or start with cabinets, or maybe paint the walls and let everything else fall into place?

Denise Turner, a certified interior designer, color consultant and founder of Color Turners, suggests starting with the countertops.

“What I do, and what other designers do, is look for an inspiration, and a lot of times that comes from the counter surface,” says Turner. “Especially if you’re looking at some of the granites or even the man-made quartz surfaces; those will dictate the direction you’ll go in.”

Not everyone will want to use the counter as a starting point for making color decisions, but it is helpful to have a focal point to work off of.

As for the paint color, Turner recommends leaving it until the end. “Typically you want to go with the paint last, because you have more paint colors to choose from. There are zillions of paint colors. It’s also the least expensive item to fix if you need to.”

When choosing a paint, Turner looks to the skin tone of her clients to help her decide what will work best. She finds hues, tones or shades of a particular color that can highlight certain skin tones, making it easier to groom or apply makeup.

“What I do, especially in the bathroom, is color match (find a paint color that highlights the user’s skin tone) the room to the woman’s skin,” she says. “And the reason I do that is because she will be putting on makeup and cosmetics in the light of that room.”