Decorate Your Bathroom With Thrift Store Finds

Drawer Buster: Create art that doubles as storage and storage that doubles as art. Find a mini dresser and a few old black-and-white snapshots. Mount the drawers on the wall and tack a picture in each one using photo corners. Use the drawers as shelves, or hang earrings from looped pieces of wire. (See more of this fun piece we did for HGTV by clicking here.)

Give Your Bath The Spa Treatment

Turn your bathroom into a retreat with simple, chic accessories.

A spa bathroom lets you pamper yourself with little indulgences for a fraction of what you'd spend at the spa. To create your own spa bathroom, just think "relaxing" with calming candlelight, soothing scents, and big, fluffy towels. Then just add a few personal touches to create your own retreat in the middle of a bustling household.

Decorating Scents
The spa experience always starts with the aroma—when you walk through the doors, the calming scents help you transition from traffic to tranquility. Get the same effect in your own home with personal aromatherapy blends. Add aromatic essential oils to drugstore Epsom salts for a professional mineral bath that is a treat for the senses. To refresh and revitalize, try scents like tea tree and eucalyptus. Ylang ylang and neroli are perfect before bedtime. For a relaxing mini-facial for puffy eyes, use Victorian Trading Company’s Eyes Tea, filled with fennel, chamomile, and rose petals.

Lighten The Mood
A spa should make you feel good and look good! So do like the spas do and lower your lighting. Turn off the overhead and place small jar candles on the counter and candle tins around the tub. Candlelight flatters every skin tone. And in this room you see a lot of your own skin, so why not make it look its best!? Don't be afraid to mix large and small pillars with votives and tea lights, just choose a single scent to keep the aromas from clashing. Specialty candles, like Victorian Trading Company's Soybean Beauty Candle, melt into a smoothing emollient you can massage into your skin to make it velvety. Talk about soft lighting.

Keep It Simple To get a refined spa look, clear your counters by stashing less attractive products in linen-lined baskets. Then dress your counter with elegant glass jars like The Container Store's Vibe Canisters. Fill them with lovely bath products like Organic Bath Company's flower-shaped Bath Petals. They not only please the eye, the lavender vanilla scent soothes the soul. Personalize the containers with scrapbooking tags tied with twine. Then add a glass vase of blooming lavender to your countertop, nature’s own aromatherapy!

Sound Effects

When it comes to setting a spa mood, don't forget the acoustic music and soothing nature sounds. Spa music is designed to transport you to a tranquil place of inner peace, and you can have all of that for the price of a few CDs! Get a small CD player and store a selection of CDs in a tidy wooden box. Then with just the touch of a button, you can close your eyes and listen your way to inner calm.

Put Yourself On a Pedestal
The finest spas have a serene space where guests can relax while they leave the stresses of the day behind them. Create your own relaxation zone with a sleek Teak Stool from Smith & Hawken—the perfect perch for a foot soak. To make an authentic footbath, fill a large bowl with warm water and your own aromatherapy salts. Now you can give your feet a pampering pedicure without teetering on the side of the tub!

Wrap Yourself in Luxury

Nothing says "ooh la la spa" like fluffy cotton towels. When it comes to these bathroom necessities, a little splurge can make a big splash. Instead of regular bath towels, go for oversized bath sheets, like 100% Turkish Cotton LuxeSPA Allure Towels from Bed Bath & Beyond. At 40 inches by 70 inches, these ultra-soft towels are so big they'll warm you from head to toe--literally. To complete the spa effect, hang a natural cotton shower curtain from simple chrome hooks. Then add a matching bath rug, the plushest you can find. Your tootsies will thank you.

Tray Chic
What's the best reason to have a spa bathroom at home? You can soak in the tub to your heart's content whenever you want. With a wooden tub tray from IKEA, your bath essentials will always be at your fingertips. Fill your tub caddy with exfoliating oatmeal soap, a pumice stone, and a natural loofah sponge. An organized space is a relaxing space, and that's what a spa bath is all about.

Now that your bathroom has been transformed into a spa retreat, celebrate by easing yourself into a bubbling whirlpool. You don’t have to replace your standard tub with a Jacuzzi to have the ultimate in relaxation. Conair's Dual-Jet Spa Bath fits over the side of the tub and whips your water into hydrotherapy whirlpools. HoMedics Massaging Bubble Mat fills the water with thousands of bubbles. So put on that mud mask, close your eyes, and let your new spa bathroom give you the spa treatment.

Get A Breezy Island-Inspired Bath

Create your own little paradise with decorator touches inspired by the islands.

The island bath gets its inspiration from the white sand beaches and clear blue waters of the sunny tropics. To get this breezy look, combine natural basics with blue and green accents. Add seashells from your strolls on the sand and your favorite beach photo in a weathered wood frame, and your bathroom will take you back to the islands the moment you walk in the door.

Dabble In Water Colors
The island palette is a combination of tropical colors and sun-bleached neutrals. Start with a light colored room for that sun kissed, beachy look. Then add color with towels in ocean hues like turquoise and teal. An azure shower curtain and World Market's Green Bamboo Rug go well together without competing for attention. Once you establish an overall palette of blues and greens, bring in a designer touch with a punch of complementary color. A piece of red coral, a tangerine glass tray, or a sunny yellow perfume decanter will add a splash of style.

Show Off Your Seashells
Adding personal flair to your island bath is as simple as taking a sunset stroll down the beach. Decorating with seashells, sea glass, and snapshots from your trip not only enhances the décor, but also reminds you of those relaxing walks by the seashore. For a delicate jewelry display, arrange your rings and things in a scallop shell filled with sea glass. Tie a piece of twine around glass canisters and hang a seashell from each end of the knot. And place a gorgeous conch shell on the floor next to the tub as if it just washed up on the sand. You can almost hear the ocean.

Weave In Baskets
Go for wicker furnishings and hand woven baskets for storage in your island bath. Stick with a light straw color—painted white says Nantucket and dark rattan says Out of Africa. A woven flatware caddy sets just the right tone and makes a handy carryall for shampoo, shower gel, and a scrubby. And the next time you visit the Bahamas, head straight for the Straw Market and stock up on baskets. They are perfect for housing all kinds of bathroom sundries. Mini baskets make terrific catch-alls and a large bowl-shaped basket turns towel storage into a playful display. For larger items, a woven dresser is a tasteful hide-away.

Discover Underwater Treasures
Beachy accessories are so abundant, you could outfit a bathroom with seashells on everything from the soap dish to the Kleenex box cover. But the trick to creating a stylish retreat is to go easy on the matching accessories. To create a room that reminds you more of a relaxing visit to the Caymans than a display at a department store, seek out one-of-a-kind items that are more art than kitsch. One amazing shell art piece, such as a pearlescent shell-encrusted mirror designed by Heather Kendall of Elegant Shells, makes a bold and beautiful statement. A Capiz Shell Curtain from GAIAM draped over a turquoise shower sheer is another elegant seaside detail. Plus, it’s jewelry for your shower curtain!

Bask In Candlelight
Candles are wonderful by the tub and with today’s larger scale spaces you can bring in larger scale accents like Z Gallerie's Seahorse Candle Holders. The seahorses lend a little whimsy, and the weathered finish is modern and subdued. Bring in some color with aquamarine Island Flowers Pillar Candles from Illuminations, scented with mandarin, orchid, and coconut milk. The aroma alone will send you to the tropics.

Savor Citrus Scents
The scents of the islands are a blend of refreshing citrus, luscious fruits, and alluring botanicals. While vanilla, coconut, and coffee are common exports of the Caribbean, it is fragrances like orange blossom and gardenia that truly transport you to paradise. For your own island oasis, infuse the bath with tangerine-lime salts. Or treat yourself to kiwi-mango bubble bath and pink grapefruit body splash. Then celebrate your new tropical retreat with magnolia bath confetti.

Splash In The Falls
There's nothing quite as invigorating as a dip in a tropical stream. You can create that same unforgettable feeling by turning that ordinary shower into a cascading waterfall. Try the Cascadia showerhead by Waterpik, featuring an over-sized head and one hundred spray channels. Place Organize-It’s clear plastic Pebble Bath Tub Mat under your feet, and you’ll feel like you’re bathing under the falls of a secluded rainforest.


RESOURCES
Elegant Shells, www.elegantshells.com
GAIAM, www.gaiam.com
Illuminations, www.illuminations.com
Organize-It, www.organizes-it.com
Target, www.target.com
Waterpik, www.waterpik.com
World Market, www.worldmarket.com
Z Gallerie, www.zgallerie.com