Why small bathrooms are the hardest rooms to renovate

Small bathrooms are the most expensive rooms per square foot you can renovate. That sounds wrong until you’ve done a few — every fixture is fighting for the same eight square feet, every plumbing decision cascades into the next, and every inch you give up to a stock vanity, you can’t get back.

The bathroom you’ll see in this post is a primary bathroom in a west-end Toronto home we’re working on right now. The footprint is tight, the ceiling has a bulkhead, and the existing layout pushes everything into a single column of space. We’re in the design phase — which means every decision below is one we make on paper and verify on site before any tile gets ordered or any wall comes down.

This is how we think through it.

Existing primary bathroom in a Toronto home annotated with the full renovation scope: bulkhead removal, new corner shower, custom vanity, tile replacement. — The existing primary bathroom before demo, with every scope item flagged in red.

The bathroom we’re working with

The room is roughly 5 feet wide by 9 feet long. There’s a corner shower, a small rounded vanity, and the toilet wedged between the shower and the vanity. The floor is a white marble-look tile in good condition — we’re keeping it. The shower has a built-out wall enclosure that pushes into the room, and a bulkhead overhead that hides plumbing that doesn’t actually need to be there anymore.

We documented the room twice before drawing anything. First in photos, with every scope item flagged in red — what stays, what goes, what gets replaced. Then we measured every wall, every fixture height, and every offset, and rebuilt the bathroom in CAD as it exists today.

The existing-conditions drawing is the foundation for everything else. Without it, the proposed plan is just a guess.

Decision 1 — Remove the bulkhead

The bulkhead in this bathroom isn’t structural. It was built around old plumbing and a vent that have since been moved or simplified. So it can come out.

That sounds like an easy decision, but bulkheads are sneaky. Once you open them up, you sometimes find a vent stack you can’t move, a beam you didn’t expect, or a duct that’s still active. The honest version: we plan to remove it, but we don’t promise it until we’ve opened the ceiling and seen what’s inside.

The tradeoff is real — keeping a bulkhead is cheaper. Removing one means patching and painting the ceiling, possibly relocating a small element, and adding a day or two to the schedule. But the visual gain in a small bathroom is significant. A full ceiling height in a 5-foot-wide room reads as a much bigger space.

Decision 2 — Corner pentagonal glass shower

The existing shower is a standard rectangle with a built-out wall on one side. It eats more floor than it has to.

The proposed plan replaces it with a corner pentagonal glass shower — five-sided, with the back two walls following the existing room corner and the front three made of glass. The footprint is smaller, the visual is open, and the door pivots into the room cleanly.

A pentagonal glass enclosure costs more than a standard rectangle. The glass is custom, the door is custom, and the seals at the corners take more labor. The tradeoff is floor space and daylight — both scarce in a small bathroom. In a room this tight, the glass enclosure is the difference between a bathroom that feels usable and one that feels like a hallway with a shower in it.

Proposed floor plan, sections, shower niche detail and custom vanity drawings for a small bathroom renovation in Toronto with a corner pentagonal shower. — Proposed floor plan, sections, shower niche, glass enclosure and custom vanity drawings.

Decision 3 — Site-built shower niche

The plan includes a recessed shower niche — 12 inches wide, 24 inches tall, divided into two openings. It’s built on site, framed into the wall, waterproofed, and tiled in place.

A site-built niche is the right answer here for two reasons. First, prefab niches come in fixed sizes, and the wall depth in this room doesn’t match a standard prefab cleanly. Second, a niche tiled in place reads as part of the wall — same tile, same grout lines, no metal lip. It looks intentional, not bolted on.

The tradeoff: a site-built niche needs careful waterproofing. Membrane behind the tile, sealed corners, sloped sill so water drains out and not in. If any of that is rushed, the niche becomes the leak the homeowner discovers two years later. We build them slowly and test them before close-in.

Decision 4 — Tile choice: 3×12″ walls, penny round floor

The shower walls are 3×12-inch tile in a soft white. The shower floor is gray penny round mosaic. The rest of the bathroom keeps the existing white marble-look floor tile — there’s no reason to replace something that’s still working.

3×12 tile is on trend right now, but the reason we like it in this bathroom isn’t trend. It’s scale. Large-format tile in a 5-foot-wide shower reads as flat — too few grout lines to give the eye anything to anchor. 3×12 gives you a horizontal rhythm without the busyness of subway tile, and the proportion plays well against the vertical of a corner shower.

Penny round on the shower floor is doing two jobs. The grout lines give traction — a small mosaic always grips better than a large-format floor tile. And the round shape softens an otherwise sharp room — every other line in this bathroom is straight.

The tradeoff: more grout means more cleaning. Penny round is harder to keep pristine than a 12×24 floor tile. We tell every client this before they sign off — and most of them sign off anyway, because the look and the traction are worth it.

Moodboard for a small bathroom renovation in Toronto: white 3x12 wall tile, gray penny round mosaic floor, oak custom vanity, white quartz counter, brass fixtures. — Finishes: white 3×12″ wall tile, gray penny round mosaic floor, oak-tone custom vanity, white quartz, brass fixtures.

Decision 5 — Custom 21-inch vanity vs. stock

The pocket left for the vanity is 25.5 inches wide and 21 inches deep. There is no stock vanity that fits that pocket. There are stock vanities that are 24 inches wide (too small, leaves a gap), 30 inches wide (won’t fit), or 18 inches deep (loses storage and counter space).

So we’re building one. 21 inches deep, 25.5 inches wide, three drawers, oak-tone wood-look melamine cabinet, white quartz countertop, brass cabinet pull, brass widespread faucet. The mirror above is a frameless oval. The light is a two-bulb brass bar.

A custom vanity costs more than a stock vanity. Not double — usually 30 to 60 percent more, depending on the materials. The tradeoff is fit. In a small bathroom, every inch is real. A stock vanity that’s two inches narrower than the wall it sits against gives you a two-inch dust trap on the side. A custom vanity sized to the wall it actually has gives you the full counter, the full drawer, and a clean edge against the trim.

Materials and finishes

The selections for this bathroom keep things calm: white walls, white quartz, white tile, oak-tone vanity wood, brass everywhere. The brass is the warmth — every fixture is brass, including the shower hood, the valve trim, the towel bar, the towel hook, the toilet paper holder, and the vanity faucet. Pulling all of them in the same finish is what makes the room feel finished instead of pieced together.

We also kept an alternate option in the moodboard: a sage green ceramic 3×12 wall tile in case the client wants more color. Both work in the room, and we’ll make the final call when we see the actual sample in the actual light of the actual bathroom — which is the only way to make tile decisions you don’t regret.

What we verify on site before ordering

Drawings are approximate until they’re verified. Before we order tile or sign off on the cabinet shop drawings, we go back to the site and measure:

The exact corner where the glass shower meets the wall — small bathrooms rarely have square corners
The drain location in the shower floor, and whether we need to relocate it for the new layout
The wall depth available for the niche, and what’s behind it: pipes, vents, studs
The clearance for the vanity drawers to fully open without hitting the toilet or the door
The trim height around the existing floor tile, since we’re tying new walls into it

Every one of those measurements has been wrong on someone else’s drawing at some point. Verifying twice on site is the difference between a tile order that fits and a tile order that goes back.

FAQs about small bathroom renovations in Toronto

How long does a small bathroom renovation take in Toronto?

A primary bathroom of this size typically takes 4 to 6 weeks of active work, plus 4 to 6 weeks of design and ordering before that. The order lead time is usually the longest part — custom vanities, specific tile, and brass fixtures can each take 4 to 8 weeks to arrive.

How much does a small bathroom renovation cost in Toronto?

It depends. We don’t quote costs in blog posts because the same room can cost very different amounts depending on tile choices, fixture brands, plumbing relocations, and what’s behind the walls when we open them. The honest answer: when we have your existing-conditions drawing and a confirmed scope, we can build a real number. Anything before that is a guess.

Do I need a permit for a small bathroom renovation?

For most cosmetic bathroom renovations in Toronto — replacing tile, fixtures, vanities, and lighting in the same locations — no permit is required. Once you start moving plumbing, relocating walls, or changing the structure, a permit usually is. A licensed contractor will tell you which side of the line your project sits on.

Should I keep the existing layout or move plumbing?

It depends on the layout. Sometimes moving plumbing two feet unlocks a much better bathroom and is worth the cost. Sometimes the existing layout is fine and the renovation is mostly finishes. The way to decide is to draw both options and compare them — not to assume one is better before you’ve drawn it.

What’s the most expensive mistake in a small bathroom renovation?

Rushing the planning. Specifically: ordering tile before final measurements, locking in a vanity size before the existing wall is verified, or skipping the existing-conditions drawing. Each of those mistakes costs more to fix on site than it does to slow down on paper.

Planning your own small bathroom renovation in Toronto?

We help homeowners in Toronto and the GTA plan small bathroom renovations the same way we planned this one — drawings first, decisions on paper, verification on site, and an honest conversation about every tradeoff before any tile gets ordered.

If you’re in the early stages, you’re welcome to look through our work at habitualhomes.ca, and reach out when you’re ready to walk through your bathroom together.