Charlotte's Bathroom

Next stop on the tour of Chez Hofmann? Charlotte’s sassy retro bathroom.

I will fully admit one giant flaw in my interior-decorating abilities: I cannot (and do not) commit to a single “theme” or design concept throughout my house. Every room is completely different.

This bathroom? Case in point.

But I have so much fun doing every room differently, so who cares? I mean, Charlotte may someday want her bedroom painted in army camouflage or vampire black, and who am I to argue? Her space, her design.

In the meantime, I decorated this somewhat retro bathroom for her. And I heart it. Designing this room was easy-peasy compared to the master bath. (And waaaaaay cheaper, thank goodness.) I knew I wanted a checker-board floor, which merely involved switching out half of the “standard” white tiles with black ones. Easy. When we were doing one of our walk-throughs at the end of construction and Miss Charlotte was a couple weeks old, the project manager asked, “So you did you think you were going to have a boy?”

“Um, no,” I said. “We’re we knew we were having a girl.” “Oh,” he said. “Whenever folks do the checker-board floor, they always do a racecar theme.”

Ick. Like, NASCAR?

“I was thinking more hot pink,” I replied.

For some extra decorative flair, I added the glass tile border around the shower to sort of echo the checker-board look. The cabinetry and granite were upgraded to the white cabinets and black granite (like the master bath), and instead of brushed nickel hardware (again, like the master bath), we went with bright, shiny chrome. The café-height plantation shutter provides some privacy while allowing natural light.

You may notice the lack of shower curtain. That’s because all of Charlotte’s baths take place in this tub, and the last thing I need is a shower curtain getting in my way. (I have one ready to hang, but I just didn’t want it in my way. Baby baths are cumbersome enough!)

I decided to accent with hot pink—after all, Charlotte is a girl and this is HER bathroom until her little brother or sister comes along and makes that double sink worth it. And if #2 (no, folks, not yet) is a HE rather than a SHE, I’ll be forced to change the color scheme. Perhaps kiwi green. At any rate, the black-and-white is gender neutral. You can do soooooo much with it. All the hot pink rugs are from Target, and I loved that I could buy circle rugs instead of boring old rectangles (which you can't really see from the photo). I think they totally reflect the sassy, slightly whimsical feel of the room. The chrome-colored soap dispensers were a major bargain score from the Pottery Barn outlet.

And, finally, my very favorite piece of décor? The wall art. I searched and searched for some cool-looking black-and-white print that wasn’t totally out of place in a bathroom and also not totally cheesy or excessively “artsy.” Nada. Couldn’t find a thing I liked. Then it dawned on me: This was Charlotte’s BATHroom. Why not frame black-and-white photos of her super fun bath times? I took the photos, converted them to black-and-white, and then Costco printed them for something like $3 for all three prints. I found matted picture frames at Michael’s for $12 each, so for less than $40, I get to see my goofy baby girl in triplicate every time I enter this room! I just love it. It’s so . . . . well, it’s so Charlotte.