Bathroom Update and Photowall Review

I’ve finally managed to give our lower level bathroom and update, which includes a lovely print from Photowall!

We’ve lived in our new home for just more than two years now, and the small half bath in our lower level has remained pretty stark and empty. It just hasn’t been a priority while we’ve been focused on designing, decorating and organizing all of the other spaces in our home.

But when Photowall contacted me recently and asked if I’d be interested in doing a product review, our neglected small bathroom got moved up on the “to-do” list!

Photowall

Photowall is a Swedish company with a passion for design and quality. They specialize in canvas prints, framed prints, and wallpapers/murals. All are environmentally friendly, and fire and fade resistent. The ink they print with contains no solvents or hazardous chemicals, and is biodegradable.

All of their prints and wallpapers are custom-made to your specifications,, so they can be customized to fit your needs. You can choose from literally thousands of prints available on their website, or submit your own photo and have it turned into a print or wall mural!

Photowall has so many choices it is seriously mindboggling. No matter your taste or design style, they have something for you. I found so many prints that I loved, and began narrowing them down by creating a “favorites” list on their website.

My Small, Half Bath

The “dilemma” I have is that because our house has so many big windows, we don’t have a lot of available wall space. and what space we do have is mostly already filled. The one area in our home that was desperately in need of some love, was the untouched lower-level bathroom.

The upstairs of our home has been decorated in my vintage-inspired, modern farmhouse style. The lower level is more my husband’s domain. The home gym, bar, pool table, dart board, poker table and theater area are all down there. He collects sports memorabilia, so the lower-level is decorated in a sort of “sports bar” theme with many pieces from his collection displayed.

There’s a full bath connecting to the bedrooms down there that the kids stay in, but this little half bath is adjacent to the gaming/bar/family room area, so its decor needed to tie in with the sports bar vibe.

As I was browsing through all the Photowall options, I noticed many Chicago (and other cities around the world) options–city silhouettes, iconic buildings… and this black and white Chicago city street map, which I eventually chose as “the one”.

My husband grew up in Chicago, so a great deal of his sports collection centers around the Bears and the Bulls. Since the wall on which this canvas hangs is easily visible from the larger family-room area, it needed to tie in with the rest of the decor.

The Chicago theme was a good fit, the black and white would work with the various team colors from the family room area, it was a vertical print, which worked best in this small space, and I could customize the size to the right scale for the wall. These were all factors that led me to choose this particular print.

Ordering, Delivery, Assembly

Making up my mind about a print to order was the hardest part. The ordering process was simple, and you can customize the size of your canvas to fit your space. I wanted my canas to fill this empty wall, so I ordered a fairly large size– 31.5″ x 39.37″.

Shipping is always free with Photowall, and my canvas arrived several days ahead of the date promised!

The canvas required a tiny bit of assembly. It arrived in a long narrow box, with the four pieces for the ash wood frame, and the rolled canvas.

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Using the video provided on the Photwall website, I had my canvas assembled in a matter of minutes, with no tools required!

Photowall Discount Code

These are two more of my favorites.

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For the next month, you can receive a 25% discount off your own Photowall order by using my discount code: thehouseonsilverado25.

Adding a Rug to Complement the Canvas

Just getting this large canvas up on the wall with its interesting pattern and texture instantly gave this small, empty room some life. I waited until I had it hung to decide what kind of rug would complement it.

Amazon was my go-to, as usual, for rugs. Nearly all of the rugs in my home came from Amazon.

Using the canvas as my starting point, I ordered up several rugs to try out. The “free-returns” policy on many Amazon products is one of my favorite things. It allowed me to have several shipped to me, so I could see how they actually worked in my space, and then easily ship them back with no return-shipping fees.

Here are the 4 rugs I ordered to see how they worked with my new Photowall canvas. Since the canvas contains blacks, whites, and shades of gray, I looked for rugs with that color scheme.

I chose a round rug for this room to soften some of the vertical lines. The mirror above the sink is round too, so these two round elements work together to contrast the vertical pattern in the both the canvas street print and the market basket stand. In such a small room, too much of a similar pattern can be busy and overwhelming.

The two black & white rugs pictured are 2 different sizes– a 3′ diameter and 4′ diameter. I immediately ruled out the 3′ one as being too small and not the right scale for the space.

That left me with these 3 to choose from:

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First, let me say that the lighting is really tricky here. All the walls in my entire house are Sherwin Williams Collonade Gray. I’ve never seen it have a blue tint in person, but it does sometimes in photographs. It really is a true gray, so the grays in the canvas and the grays in the rug needed to play nice with the grays in the wall and tile color. This room is all neutrals.

I placed each rug in the bathroom and stepped back to look, then went through the whole roundup again, still unsure.

Here’s a tip: looking at a room or design element in a photograph is often helpful in making a decision. It allows you to “step back” and look at it from a different perspective. When I took these three photos and lined them up this way, it was easy to see that rug #1 was the clear winner. The white in the rug ties in with the white fixtures and trim in the bathroom, and adds a brightness to the whole space.

Plus, it’s the only rug in the bunch that is machine-washable. When I sent the pics to my daughter, who has great taste and a lovely home, she placed the rugs in the same order as I did, and also added, “machine- washable wins”. So after that, it was a done deal, and rug #1 was the sole survivor.

Finishing Touches

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If you’re looking for some absolutely stunning wall art, I hope you’ll give Photowall a look. Although I did receive my canvas at no charge in exchange for my review, I would recommend them without hestiation. And if you do order, don’t forget to use the discount code for 25% off!

Plus, I’m just so happy to have this little bathroom checked off my project list! 😂

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Resources:

Here is the link to Rug #1, the one I ended up keeping. It’s machine washable, really soft to walk on, and has a lovely boho pattern.

Here is Rug #2. I didn’t keep this one, but I honestly really loved it. It’s hand-woven, and has a country cottage appeal to it. It’s just a really pretty rug, and if I had a place to put it, I probably would have kept it and used it someplace else.

Rug #3 is this black and silver vintage medallion rug by Safavieh. It’s a really lovely rug too, just a bit too dark for my space, but honestly, you can’t go wrong with any of these rugs.

3-Tier Market Basket Stand

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post that contains affiliate links. I received product(s) in exchange for my honest and unbiased thoughts. All thoughts and opinions stated are my own and are in no way influenced by my partnership with mentioned brands.