Hilary Farr's Clever Tiling Trick Makes A Small Bathroom Appear Much Larger

Large bathrooms are the epitome of luxury, making the space feel more like a five-star spa than a family home. While not everyone has access to that kind of square footage, that doesn't mean you have to be stuck with a cramped space. Instead, you can create the illusion of more room by utilizing clever bathroom renovation tricks that make the space appear larger and airier. One such tactic, as demonstrated by Hilary Farr on "Love It or List It," involves using the same tiles on the shower wall, floors, and bathroom floors to create a seamless look that makes the room appear larger. That's because the eye is able to flow from the bottom to the top of the room without any interruptions, giving the illusion of more area. 

The way you tile a bathroom can drastically change how small or big it appears. For instance, using large format tiles minimizes grout lines, which makes the area seem less fussy and, thus, airier. The same goes for using the same color grout as your tile. It blends in with the surrounding tile, minimizing its appearance and making the space feel more expansive. While Farr used small tiles in this particular design, she covered the walls, shower floors, side of shower base, and bathroom floors in the same design, achieving a similar outcome. The sameness of the material made the room seem less busy and, as a result, bigger. Here is a closer look into why.

In Season 12, Episode 12, Farr was tasked with transforming a 2,000-square-foot family home into a space where two teenagers could comfortably live. Anna and Andrew, the homeowners, originally bought the house when their children were little, and now they are struggling not to feel cramped in their home. As a solution, Farr transformed their unfinished basement into a teenagers' floor, complete with a living room, guest bedroom, and bathroom. However, since the bathroom was located in the basement, she didn't have the space to make it sprawling. To remedy that, she used one of her priceless bathroom design tips, which is to use the same tile throughout to make it feel expansive. When Anna saw the finished result, it seemed Farr succeeded. "It is huge!" she exclaimed in the episode.

One way to make a small bathroom appear bigger is to install the tiles all the way to the ceiling in order to force the eye to go upward, tricking it into thinking it's taller and bigger than it is. That is exactly what Farr did: Training the eye to start on the floor, transition into the shower, and then go upward to the ceiling, making it appear longer and taller. In contrast, if she used different tiles in each of those sections, the eye would register where those sections stopped and began, clocking their true sizes.

This isn't the only time Farr employed this trick. She also used it in Season 19, Episode 2, in the episode where she built her own home and showed viewers a behind-the-scenes peek into her process. Her co-host and competitor, David Visentin, was there to tour the home, allowing her to share her thought process. Her primary bathroom employed this same hack to make it appear spacious. In it, she tiled all the floors and walls in the same large format tiles that looked like white marble. 

When Visentin opened the doors to the room, he took a staggering step back and joked, "Has the country run out of marble?" Farr answered that it was simply large format porcelain tiles, a gorgeous tile trend that is sure to make a statement. Visentin's reaction showed that covering the entire space in tile made it seem large and impressive. While Farr's primary bathroom was big to begin with, wrapping the entire room in the same material helped make it appear even bigger since there weren't many breaks in the design.