Before & After: Four Tiny Swaps Gave This Baltimore Bathroom a Total Personality Transplant

PublishedJan 28, 2026 1:10 AM EST

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Designer Robin Heller, one-half of the Baltimore-based firm Surrounded by Color, had been living with her "very shiny and marble-y" primary bathroom for five years when inspiration finally smacked her upside the head. She was shopping in Kyoto, Japan, with her husband when they stumbled upon a store that, as Heller puts it, "was so specifically four colors it felt like a personality test." The palette? Concrete gray paired with shades of green—emerald, neon, teal. "It knocked me over the head. I was obsessed," says Heller. So much so that her business partner Jen Levy can still recall the moment: "I remember you coming back from that trip and being like, I'm ready to do my bathroom."

Heller and her husband had inherited the recently renovated bathroom when they purchased their 1950s ranch-style home sight unseen in a cross-country leap from California to Maryland. It was functional and thoughtfully designed with high-quality materials, so it quickly sank to the bottom of the to-do list—and stayed there for years like a sponge left on the counter. The right elements were there, but the soul of the space left Heller wanting: "I really felt a lack of color and excitement, and I kind of need to feel that everywhere." Here's how she injected just that into the 135-square-foot space.

"We tell our clients this all the time, but living with the house you bought for a while is actually really nice," says Heller, presumably while her clients try not to roll their eyes. In her own experience, she came to appreciate the separate vanities, marble counters, wall mirrors, shower tile, and overall layout of her bathroom over time. "If I had done it when we moved in, maybe I would've torn it out and started over," she adds. Instead of a full gut job, the remodel became about keeping all the elements in great condition "and infusing color without disrupting those things," she suggests—a concept that sounds simple until you're standing in a tile showroom at 2 PM on a Saturday.

Heller was on the fence about changing the faucets and overhead light fixture, but Levy convinced her to wait and see how she felt after all the other changes were complete. Spoiler alert: both made the cut. What felt old and potentially not quite right suddenly seemed special—kind of like how your favorite vintage sweater looks terrible until you pair it with the right jeans.

"White is the most important color. I'll say it a million times over," says Levy, who was responsible for updating the wall color from a gray-ish hue that matched the vanity to Benjamin Moore's Swiss Coffee. The effect was an instant brightening, altering how existing colors worked together in the room. Sometimes changing the most obvious (and least expensive) surface can be the most impactful—a sentence that has never once been true about a haircut, but we digress.

Removing the 8-inch pulls on the vanities and adding oversized ball knobs from Hawkins New York in their place created an unexpectedly sculptural and playful moment. "They're huge and I love them," says Heller with a laugh. Using the same pre-drilled holes wasn't just a choice of convenience—the exaggerated distance adds a modern touch to the otherwise plain cabinetry, proving that sometimes laziness and good taste are the same thing.

Heller's love affair with a red travertine mosaic tile from Clé started before her trip to Japan, so even though it didn't fit into her cool-toned, Kyoto-inspired color palette, she bought it anyway—despite the splurge-worthy price and the 18-week lead time. Turns out, when paired with shades of green, the tile brought the room back to nature, mirroring the shades of the yard you see through the window. Sometimes the heart wants what the heart wants, and the heart wants expensive red tile.

To work in the hues Heller had spotted in Japan, the designers called up their local millworker to source reclaimed Douglas fir panels for the toilet room and tub walls, which they stained and sealed in a rich emerald green and mint linseed oil, respectively. Forest green Tekla towels, a teal Frama stool, and art from friend Colleen Herman complete the palette—because what's the point of a color scheme if you can't accessorize it within an inch of its life?

One item that was clearly not working in the previous bathroom? The Roman shade window treatment. Because the window faces the driveway, the designer almost always left it down, blocking the natural light like a grumpy roommate. Heller's quick, time-tested fix: a café curtain. "It truly changed the entire experience in that bathroom. Just that one thing," she says—a sentence that will forever haunt anyone who's spent thousands on a renovation.

She leaned on a friend to craft the curtain in Voutsa fabric, weaving in a splash of neon because subtlety is for people who don't work at a firm called Surrounded by Color. Look closely and you'll see two more custom touches: the rod is made from the same emerald-stained wood on the walls of the toilet room, and the same Voutsa fabric was used to make a cushion for the stool. Coordinated? Extremely. Extra? Absolutely.

Heller doesn't regret waiting five years to renovate. Instead, she's grateful that inspiration struck at the right place, right time—unlike most of us who wait for inspiration and instead get a leaky faucet.

Alyssa cut her teeth at Domino as a digital editor before becoming our first social media whisperer. She helped build Renovator's Notebook, then went on to Semihandmade and West Elm. Now she helps designers and furniture brands tell their stories. Bold color, vintage finds, and sustainable living are her love language.

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