Love An Indoor Outdoor Bathroom? Try These 20+ Ideas!

Whether you’re spending hot afternoons in the outdoor shower or evenings in a soaking tub, bathrooms are infinitely more serene especially when you have easy access to the outdoors.

Bringing the natural world into your bathroom helps create a relaxing, healing space for respite from a busy life. Such breezy bathrooms offer the best of both worlds.

Looking for more ways to renovate your bathroom with wellness? Scroll below to get ideas to ensure indoor-outdoor continuity in the bathroom!

20+ Ideas To Create An Indoor-Outdoor Bathroom

If you love having a bathroom filled with daylight, a blended space provides much more natural light than windows alone can.

Here are 20+ ideas for indoor-outdoor bathrooms that you can emulate in your next project:

1. Start with an Open Home

An open home expands the outdoors with sliding, floor-to-ceiling windows, and doors that lead out to the outdoor living space. If your bathroom is located in this position, then you’re lucky to enjoy a delicious luxury that is bound to enhance your life. 

This, however, is possible if designing a new house where your architect can ensure this design. Also, if you have the budget to tear down an existing wall, you can.

Basically, you want to design a home that maximizes the enjoyment of your outdoor views.

Open spaces give bathrooms a break from the sunshine without heading indoors.

Full-height windows with minimal frames and glass barriers provide panoramic views of the lush greenery or whatever majestic surrounding you have, making this indoor-outdoor bathroom an immersive experience.

2. Or an Open-Concept Bathroom

When remodeling your bathroom, a luxurious open-concept layout creates an airy ambiance.

An open-concept bathroom creates a space with easy flow, basically, converging the bathtub, shower, and toilet.

Most of such spaces prefer a walk-in shower with a glass enclosure that features a low or nonexistent curb, giving the appearance of a bright and airy design overall.

3. A Bathtub in the Bedroom Concept

Placing a bathtub in a bedroom means that you’ll have a very cozy bathing space. More so, placing it by the window allows you to get a fantastic outdoor view.

If you’d like a bathtub to add interest and a spa feel to your bedroom, you may go for a very catchy bathtub that will make a statement. Otherwise, a sunken tub is another luxurious alternative.

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In this bathroom by Antoniolupi Design, a sunken tub is incorporated within the master bedroom design creating resort-like luxury that allows the house masters to enjoy this luxury within the comforts of their space.

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4. Build an Outdoor Shower or Bath

While indoor-outdoor bathrooms have grown in popularity, an outdoor shower is another clever way to ensure indoor-outdoor continuity in the bathroom. The surrounding greenery makes it feel almost tropical.

Whether you’re looking to breathe in the fresh air while cooling off on a hot summer afternoon, an outdoor shower or bathroom lets you take in the outdoors while enjoying the comforts of staying inside.

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It is also so convenient to have an outdoor pool shower, especially if you have a swimming pool.

It is an easy way to quickly cool down on a hot afternoon, or you can wash off before or after having a swim in the pool. You can also rinse off sand or dirt or wash off sweat.

The outdoor pool shower by Antoniolupi Design not only offers this luxury but also features an upgraded rain showerhead that is recessed into the ceiling offering such a drenching experience you’ll always look forward to.

Below is the Kangaroo Valley Outhouse, a bush bathroom that services a cabin and is nested in the hillside.

It is the perfect embodiment of an indoor-outdoor bathroom as its mirrored cube structure completely disappears during the day, reflecting the lush landscape and it is also accessed via a pathway through a dense landscape,

There are no obstructions to the view of the surrounding scenery when in the bathroom because its walls are entirely made of glass.

5. Use Nature-Inspired Colors

Lush greenery, the blue sky and ocean, rocky and sandy deserts, pebbles from the streams, bright flowers, and fiery sunsets found in nature are beautiful color inspiration especially in the bathroom. 

Cool colors like blues, grays, whites, and purples can make bathrooms feel more exotic and soothing, thereby doing wonders to create a meditative and relaxing atmosphere.

Warm, neutral and earthy tones, on the other hand, take your mind to the summer palette of beachy sand tones making your space more Zen-like, perfect even for small spaces.

Using nature-inspired colors like watery blues, earth tones and fresh greens can clearly make even small spaces become indoor-outdoor sanctuaries.

Therefore, a great and easy way to embody the outdoors without necessarily having wide-open access to the outdoors. Below are the best nature-inspired bathroom colors to use:

• You can use organic or sage green paint for cabinetry, as it pairs with wooden brown countertops for a grounding effect, while white walls and open bathroom shelves deliver an airy balance. 

Neutral walls, silver or black hardware and white marble countertops allow a deep or vibrant green to take center stage. 

Deep green shades like olive green and teal green also make great bathroom feature walls as long as they are accented with white marble countertops and bright white lighting fixtures.

Tip…

Introduce pale, mid-tone, and saturated oranges that combine with complementary greens to fashion high-impact tropical bathroom designs. Perfect shades–including shrimp, papaya, tangerine, coral, and blood orange—add refreshing zing.

• Shades of brown ranging from almond to chestnut are also perfect for bathroom furniture, plus, they make a great cozy and moody bathroom. Exactly what you’d like for a Zen bathroom!

To hack this brown color palette in your bathroom, decorate with multiple browns in the same temperature, but with different undertones, creates a soothing layered look. 

Accent the space with golden hardware as they lighten up a color scheme otherwise defined by browns and taupes. Black fixtures and hardware also do well in creating a moody bathroom.

Now, use a tasteful addition of daylight and artificial lighting to accentuate our space. Here’s a complete guide to properly lighting a dark, moody bathroom.

Remember to start with warm white walls that provide a clean balance to the room’s earth tones.

• Watery blue color schemes are also perfect for creating ocean-inspired bathrooms as they mimic the soothing shades of ocean waves or the clear blue summer sky.

Sea and sky colors meld beautifully in this bathroom space while white countertops, patterned tiled walls, and golden accessories keep the look buoyant and breezy.

6. Use Natural Materials

Natural elements, such as stone paving inside the bathroom, gravel, and pebbles beneath the bathtub, marble countertops, concrete finishes, and wooden vanities offer an additional sense of indoor-outdoor continuity.

Materials such as different types of wood and stone encompass many different beautiful tones and textures for the bathroom.

Use wood for bathroom furniture. Maple is particularly great for bathroom vanities and cabinets, with dark tones making it a focal point in a bathroom.

And if you are looking for a more neutrally colored wood, birch is great lighter with high durability, thus, bathroom-perfect!

Teak is another great type of wood for bathroom use, mainly used in shower areas due to its natural resistance to moisture and fungus while Douglas Fir is a great wood to use in bathroom flooring.

To bring personality and durability to your bathroom design, use stone.

Granite is suitable for durable bathroom countertops while the elegant marble is perfect for luxurious countertops, walls, accessories and even shower spaces.

You can also seamlessly integrate with the surrounding landscape by using rock and stone pathways that continue to the inside of an outdoor bathroom. 

7. Bring in More Greenery

Not only does bringing in more houselants in the bathroom help purify the air and make your space look gorgeous, but it will leave you feeling like you’re relaxing on a tropical island.

The key, however, is to use indoor or rainforest plants that are used to low light levels and high humidity like Bromeliads, the snake plant, ferns, bamboo, and air plants; and avoid using dry favouring plants such as cacti and succulents in your bathroom.

Ivy and Pothos vines are also perfect for a creating a lush atmosphere in the bathroom, placed around the sink, around the bathtub or hanging from a shelf.

If you like flowers, peace lily and Begonias will add a pop of color to your space.

Apart from layering different sized plants up on the floor in standing pots, you can stack them up on shelves interspersed with hanging plants to make a living feature wall.

Turning your bathroom into an urban jungle is a creative way to make your space more relaxing. It’s like bringing the natural world indoors!  

To create a bathroom jungle, use green houseplants (preferably those with few flowers but lots of green leaves) and combine an odd number of both large-leaved houseplants and smaller plants to create a more jumbled look, so typical of a real jungle!

For a whimsical effect, place a tall houseplant next to a much smaller one on a little wooden stool and hang a trailing plant from the bathroom ceiling next to that.

To perfect the urban jungle look, only use items made of natural materials such as terracotta pots, wood, wicker and bamboo in natural colors limited to greens, earth tones, white and grey.

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8. Let in More Natural Light

Amplifying natural light is another great way to renovate your bathroom with biophilic design.

Whether it’s enlarging windows or adding skylights, more access to natural light in the bathroom can completely transform your space making it more inspiring and liveable.

It is also a proven scientific method for improving mood, boosting an overall sense f well-being and balancing circadian rhythm.

More so, light-flooded rooms offer plenty of freedom to move around thanks to their uncluttered design. 

In these resorts below, the bathroom spaces are surrounded by wooden slats, with acrylic louvers between which can be closed to provide privacy.

The first bathroom is designed with wooden slat walls while the second one uses wooden slat roofs. Both allow for a tasteful addition of daylight into the spaces.

9. Use Glass

Glass offers a unique visual appeal to your bathroom making it brighter, airier and allowing natural light to bounce around the room seamlessly.

Because glass reflects light, it makes your space appear brighter and oftentimes, larger.

Introduce glass to your bathroom by using glass shower doors and glass shower cubicles that bring in a sense of modern minimalism to every bathroom.

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Conclusion

For homeowners who wish to start off every morning or close off a long day close to nature, designing and building a modern bathroom that ensures indoor-outdoor continuity is an excellent way of achieving that goal.

By leveraging your home’s layout, landscape, and natural materials, it is possible to create a bathroom that truly blurs the boundaries between indoors and out.