Moving into a 2000s oak-themed builder’s box house was such a dream for us, and we were thrilled a few years ago to have the opportunity to modernize this house. After having a contractor work with us and our experience of so many delays and problems, we decided Ryan could do this! Himself! With a little plumbing help we set to update this room (Tip: Great idea to get a plumber to do tub faucet replacements – we almost always get help with the plumbing – we do not want a repeat of a late night pipe burst during a DIY!).
The bathroom is centrally placed in a horseshoe pattern in our upstairs, and there is no natural light. This room can tend to look dark and dreary, so I wanted to brighten it as much as I could with colors. Unfortunately even with all the work Ryan did, the bathroom still seemed so dark and dingy without any natural light. Today we got a Solartube light installed in the bathroom. What a difference!
Before and After a Solar Tube:
Here is the before:
Love those oak medicine cabinets for functionality, but not for color here. You can’t see in the dark shower area, but it’s all ivory square tile and beige wall, dated from the late 90s and early 2000s style. Here’s our after but before the Solartube:
And now the Solar Tube natural lighting:
Prior to adding a Solartube, we decided to update the wall color for white brightness in the main part of the bathroom. We used Chantilly Lace for the walls here, which is much whiter than the White Dove we used for the trim and doors.
After a few years of living in this darkness, I came across solar tubes. Solar tubes are small round alternatives to sky lights, that require tubing in your ceiling to pull natural light from outside into your room. These types of “lights” use tubes installed in the ceiling space to the roof (and through an attic if you have one), and are capped off on the interior room with what looks like a can light. It took our installer about 2 hours to do this work. Sky lights can be several thousand per light to install, require some framing work and pose risks for leaks. The solar tube we installed is about 10 inches wide, and required little work to cut holes through the ceiling and roof and connect with a reflective tube for much less than a sky light. There’s still the risk of leaks, but I with fingers and toes crossed we hope that doesn’t happen to us in the soggy Pacific Northwest.
Here is one brand of lights you can find. Tubular Skylights – Solatube All in, this one light will produce natural light for years, save electricity, was simple and fast to install and overall inexpensive for the change. Highly recommend!
Back to our Featured Articles and Home Page
