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Apartment bathrooms can be the most frustrating room in your temporary possession. Usually the last to be updated and remodeled, you can end up with harvest gold tub and cabinets in the ugliest shade of brown you've ever seen. This problem is so wide-spread that desperate apartment dwellers searching for help on this subject are surprisingly common. Unfortunately, there is not much help to find and what IS out there is often contradictory. All of this only adding to the frustrations of the poor recipient of the ugly bathroom.

If decorating the apartment bathroom must be narrowed down to one piece of advice it is this: work WITH what you have, not against it! You will hear a lot of advice telling you to bring in bright colors, not to bring in bright colors, pick a theme, to use patterns, not to use patterns, etc..., ALL of these are great advice, but ONLY if you base it on what is already in your bathroom.

The main way to work WITH the decor is color. Using colors that blend well can actually seem to make those awful cabinets disappear. We all have colors we love to be surrounded by, and it can be very easy to dig in our heels at this point: you had your heart set on blue, but it would never go with the green tub. You CAN still have blue, just alter the shade or tone a bit. Outdated bathrooms are usually warm-toned; newer bathrooms are often cool-toned. Bring different colors in the room to see what blends well in yours: your favorite yellow sweater, your red throw or the blue pillow from the sofa...the ideas will start to flow and you will have a few colors decided on in no time. Now take yourself to the store and pick out a shower curtain in one of those colors (it is usually advisable to have a solid-colored curtain, but if you would like a busy one then get it! ...just make sure that all of the colors in it will go well with the permanent pieces in the bathroom). (A side note on curtains: if you look for one a little bit larger than all the rest, you may be able to hide the tub entirely, and then the it's color won't even matter, so measure it before you go.) Then take that perfect curtain you chose around the department and pick out the rest of your accessories to go with it, remember that some of the things you already have at home may work now that you have color "theme" to ground them.

Maybe you're stuck with a warm-colored room and you don't like warm colors. Don't give up. Imagine a spa: light, warm yellows, an earthy brown rug, and your bath salts displayed next to a bed of river rocks that are holding up a glowing candle. Or just look through your favorite home decor catalog for some ideas and adapt them to your presently unfortunate room. If you would like a theme, pick one; if not, don't! This is YOUR room, YOU are the one that needs to be happy in it. The size of the room doesn't really matter here either, it is what you fill it with. If you'd like your room to be the relaxing place before bed time, make it that way with more calm colors and/or themes. If you would like it to be the place that really wakes you up in the morning, go bright and sunny. Just make sure you stick to the color palate you have chosen and you can make almost anything you can dream up work well in your bathroom.

Once you decide to work WITH the current room, your options are limitless. You will never again have to spend all that time picking out the prettiest decor and then still wanting to get out of that room as quickly as possible. The hardest room in your apartment to live with can actually be the most fun to decorate and you can be so proud of the before-and-after when you base your decor on working with the ugly to make it disappear and put your style at center stage.

Learn more about this author, Christina Orleans.
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