A few years back, designer Nicki Clendening of Scout Designs picked up a sheet of marbled wrapping paper at Pearl River Mart (a longtime Chinese-American department store in SoHo, long-loved by bargain-hunters) with no great ambitions for the purchase. "I bought it just because I loved it," she recalls, "but when I got home and was looking at it, it hit me that it might be something fun in the bathroom." She popped out for some wallpaper glue and stuck the sheet above a row of existing pink tile, then ran out immediately to buy the rest of their stock and order some more. A full-on spruce-up of the room ensued and is featured in Take a Bath: Interior Design for Bathrooms, a forthcoming title by Gestalten (November 2017). We caught up with Clendening to hear more about the thrifty, exacting bathroom decorating ideas that make this rental look so custom-designed.
Clendening's bathroom as featured in Take a Bath, copyright Gestalten 2017
Brittany Ambridge
Truth be told, you can use everything from fabric to magazine covers as wallpaper with some creative adhering (liquid starch! double-sided tape! staples!). After six years in the apartment, Clendening says the wrapping paper stuck up with actual wallpaper glue and flat sealant is peeling a bit—a pretty good sign that it will pull right off when she's ready (if ever!) to move.
Rather than stopping at the edges of the wall, she decided to cover the window jamb, ceiling, and molding too: "After putting the first piece up, it just made sense to go all in for maximum effect!"
"I have always hated the bathroom because of the putty-colored border tile and floor. Over the years, I've painted it many times trying to detract from [those features]," Clendening admits. But give up she did not. Sandy tones in the wrapping paper-turned-wallpaper work with the pinky trim, rather than against it, while crisp black and white accents in the rest of the decor keep the palette from looking musty.
"I am a bit shell obsessed," Clendening says, "and when I saw this nightlight in a store in Hudson, NY, I had to have it for the bathroom." Night lights can be mega useful for finding the sink at night—it's just that finding a cute one is a harder task (so we found a bunch for you).
Clockwise from top left: Decorative Single Rocker Switch Plate by Hampton Bay, $6[ homedepot.com. Black, Gold & Silver Elegance Marble Fine Paper, $8; papersource.com. Faux Taxidermy Resin Scull, $89; etsy.com. 100 Deep Side Oyster Shells from Coastal NC, $50; etsy.com.
Instead of ditching a plain metal medicine cabinet, Clendening spruced it up with even more shells. "I spend a lot of time in Charleston and had picked up bags full of these oyster shells when on a boating trip to Cape Romain," she says. The colors perfectly work with the wallpaper. A crafty friend came up with the design and hot-glued them to the mirror for her.
Rather than drilling directly into her tile wall to mount a painting—which you can do, but your landlord won't like it much—she used a peel-and-stick art hanger to place a painting right on the tile (and even on windows, when she feels like it). Genius.
Out with the pasty plastic ones you find in every apartment, in with chic upgrades. Clendening swapped out every plate in the apartment when she moved in, opting for simple black one from Home Depot in this room.
A quirky, super-affordable eBay find from years ago—the cast resin animal scull—found its way onto the wall as a finishing touch. Proof that you should probably buy those things you gravitate towards even if you're not sure what you'll do with them (yet).
Take a Bath, Copyright Gestalten 2017
