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Bathroom lighting: over vanity and elsewhere

last year

I've read the guidelines for vanity lighting, but am still confused about lighting design. We are doing a major renovation on a small (10X 5ft 9in) bathroom in our second home: replacing tub/shower combo with just a shower, moving washer into bathroom, new vanity, new lighting, adding vent, new floors, replacing a window. Basically gutting down to the studs and keeping only the toilet. The washer will be on the long wall next to the shower, and the vanity next to that. Vanity will be 36 inches and over that we'll have a mirrored medicine cabinet that's 15 inches wide X 26 inches tall. We'll have ceiling lighting added (recessed) plus the light with the vent. Guidelines for lighting over the vanity suggest widths of either 75% the width of the vanity or 75% the width of the mirror. The window is at the far end, so the area where the vanity is won't have a lot of natural light. Complicating the design is that the washer (and eventually a drier stacked on top) will be next to vanity. Clearly the medicine cabinet mirror is small, so I'm inclined to go with a lighting fixture that's around 75% of the vanity width, not 75% of the mirror. I'm looking at 3-light fixtures mounted above the medicine cabinet. Those seem to be about 22-25 inches. Does that seem like enough lighting for that area? Might it be worthwhile to also have one of the recessed lights in that niche, above the washer/drier? There will be one in the shower and perhaps one-two more over the other part of the room. Photos show the bathroom and the vanity area in the old bathroom, plus a diagram of the new layout (window not shown on diagram but it's over the toilet, and diagram is not final or to exact scale). Note: This will be a primary bathroom and there's another upstairs (new master bed and bath).





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