Millwork Ideas for Your Master Bathroom

by Rachel Lyon, Editorial Director for The House Designers

It’s a personal retreat conveniently located in your own home—no wonder the master bathroom is one of the top places homeowners choose to splurge! You’ll probably take a lot of time carefully considering fixtures, sanitaryware, storage solutions, and various types of surfaces, but it’s the extra details to tie it all together that create a truly beautiful space. At the end of a long day, you’ll want to come home to a relaxing atmosphere, so be sure to include trimmings that can help make that happen. Here are some ideas for incorporating millwork to give your bathroom character far beyond a simple, utilitarian design.

Frame Key Points

Windows and doors around the entire house are bordered with trim for a polished look, and of course they should be given the same treatment regardless of their location. But there are other places that are typically framed, like fireplaces and cased entries, and you can dress up the main features of the bathroom in much the same way.

The shower and tub are the most natural areas to enhance with decorative millwork. If they are set back into a wall like a nook, you can take an approach like you would with a fireplace by surrounding them with pilasters and a crosshead. This creates an elegant highlight that works with what you already have and definitely breathes new life into the space. If these areas stand alone, like a tub tucked into a corner or in the center of the room, columns offer the same basic structural highlight with a bit more formal flair. In whichever case, you’ll notice the ambiance of the bathroom instantly upgraded.

Take the Chance to Personalize

Bathrooms are inarguably the most personal rooms in a house, yet they are often left behind in terms of personal touches. While some people might be content with a shower curtain that flaunts a spectacular pattern or an image that fits with the rest of the bath décor, there is no reason to stop there. Opportunity for enhancement is all around and you just have to look beyond the normal places that trim shows up. You might even find that the bathroom is especially suited to extra little embellishments.

Look into products like appliqués, wall niches, and ceiling domes, medallions, and rosettes. These decorative millwork pieces come in a wide range of styles from simple to ornate and give the space some permanence; the vibe of the entire room won’t be shifted by swapping the shower curtain. Consider putting decorative appliqués on the side of a plain drop-in tub to make it intriguing on its own, and see what you can do with your ceiling—around light fixtures or simply on the drywall—to create a point of interest. If you want to display anything, a wall niche or dentil shelf gives you a built-in place to show it off. It could be a plant, a little statue that ties into the bathroom’s theme, or whatever else you might want, to make the space feel more homey, unique, or sophisticated. While we often see beautiful personalized bathrooms online and in magazines, few ever take the steps to build one of their own, and decorative millwork can help make it happen more easily than you think.

Choose Bathroom-Resistant Products

The design of bathrooms requires extra diligence due to the nature of their function, which often leaves them filled with very hot, humid air. That heat and moisture wreaks havoc on anything permeable, causing some materials to shrink, swell, and eventually warp, and creating the perfect conditions for mold growth. Even if your home’s design is similar throughout, this is a place to invest in the products that offer practicality first and foremost. Just as you would select semi-gloss over flat paint for a bathroom, moulded millwork should be recognized for its supreme suitability in this trying environment.

Standard millwork is shaped from wood and comes with the damage concerns that a natural, porous material typically presents. Not only does it experience warping and splitting from water damage, but it’s also perfect for feeding rot and insects that you definitely don’t want in your home. Moulded millwork, on the other hand, is formed using impervious polyurethane that stands up to the challenges of the bathroom while delivering the same looks. It can be totally smooth or be cast from real wood pieces to produce natural grain patterns, so you don’t have to compromise on style no matter your goal.

Check out Fypon® for a huge selection of lightweight, easy-to-install, paintable and stainable moulded millwork pieces to create a gorgeous design for your master bathroom. You’ll find plenty of variation to suit all kinds of architecture as well as the opportunity to order truly custom pieces. Polyurethane requires next to no maintenance, so you are free to build the look you really want without compromising. Find a local dealer to get started today!