She spent two weeks choosing between green tile samples and a grout color. The part of the renovation that landed hardest in the Reddit comments cost less than the grout did, a small framed print, hung above the toilet, that the entire thread couldn’t stop mentioning.
Where it Started: The Before: White Tile, Oak Vanity, No Light
The original bathroom was a builder-grade time capsule of late-’90s decisions. White four-by-four wall tile, off-white floor tile with dark grout lines, a frosted-glass sliding shower door on a chrome frame, an oak vanity with brass knobs, and a flush mount ceiling globe doing all of the lighting on its own. None of it was broken. All of it had aged.
The homeowner, posting as TheActualSherryjenix, had floated the project a few months earlier on Reddit asking for ideas. The completion post landed quietly enough — a couple of before-and-after shots, a note about installing the bidet “cause why not 😂”, and a mention that the lighting upgrade (a recessed light over the shower, a Kohler ATMOS exhaust/light combo over the toilet) hadn’t even made it into the photos.
The comments did not stay quiet.
What Everyone Notices First: The Big Visual Swing
The headline material in this renovation is glossy vertical green tile, set in a stacked pattern that runs floor to ceiling on the shower walls and wraps around the small window. It’s paired with bone-colored grout (the homeowner spent two weeks choosing it), brushed brass fixtures throughout, an arched gold-framed medicine cabinet, and fluted ceramic sconces from Wayfair that look like they came from somewhere considerably more expensive.
The execution is what gives this away as professional work. One Redditor with tile experience noted that the alignment is so clean they could not find a single grout line that was off, not by a sixteenth, not by anything. That kind of precision is the difference between “we tiled the bathroom” and “this is a renovation.” A wall-to-wall niche carved into the exterior wall, framed in brass trim and stacked with the same tile pattern, anchors the shower without needing a feature wall.
The shower floor uses the same matte porcelain tile as the main bathroom floor, cut into what the homeowner called an “envelope cut” four trapezoidal pieces meeting in the center to direct water to a single drain. Curbless, continuous, no awkward transitions. The kind of choice that reads as luxury without using a single luxury material.
The Reveal: What the Top Comment on the Whole Thread Actually Was
It wasn’t about the tile. It wasn’t about the brass. It wasn’t about the niche or the curbless shower or the bone grout.
It was four words: “The Totoro picture is amazing.” Over a hundred upvotes. Top comment in the thread.
Above the toilet, mounted in a simple wood frame, sits a Studio Ghibli print. It’s the round, gray, plump forest spirit from My Neighbor Totoro, sitting under a moonlit bamboo grove, half-reflected in still water. A small wooden shelf below it holds a trailing eucalyptus plant whose vines fall down over the toilet tank. A fluted ceramic sconce lights it from above.
In design terms, what’s happening here is that a corner that should be the most clinical zone in any bathroom (the toilet wall) has been turned into the room’s emotional center. Soft warm light, organic greenery, a piece of art with character. That single composition is doing more for the bathroom’s feeling of calm than the green tile is.
Totoro in the bathroom with a Toto bidet! I love it!
Then someone else caught the joke nobody was supposed to notice: the bidet she’d just installed was a TOTO, and the art on the wall was Totoro. The kind of accidental visual rhyme that, once you see it, you can’t unsee. The homeowner’s only response when asked about it earlier in the thread: “We love a peaceful Totoro!”
Why it Works: The Difference Between a Bathroom and a Room With a Bathroom in It
There’s a quiet pattern in nearly every bathroom renovation that goes viral on Reddit. The bones look great. The materials photograph well. And then somewhere, on a shelf, above a toilet, on a small ledge by the tub, there’s one piece of character. A trailing plant. A weird candle. A framed thing that has no business being in a bathroom. That one element is usually what tips the room from “we redid the bathroom” into “this is somewhere people want to be.”
Here, the elements that ought to be the showstoppers are all very gettable. The vanity is a Pottery Barn Laguna, on clearance when the homeowner bought it. The sconces are a Wayfair listing she linked in the comments. The arched mirror is the kind anyone can order online. The tile is from a local Southern California shop in El Monte. None of these are bespoke. The renovation looks custom because the execution is tight and the styling has a point of view, not because the parts list is rare.
The reason this bathroom photographs so well isn’t the budget. It’s that one corner of the room was treated like a tiny set design instead of a utility wall. A framed print, a small shelf, a hanging plant, a warm sconce. Four items, one composition, the whole room’s tone settled.
What it Cost Her to Get Right: The Sourcing, for Anyone About to Copy This
Several commenters asked for the specifics, and the homeowner answered every one of them. The full shoppable list, pulled from her replies in the thread:
| Wall & floor tile | Tile Depot, El Monte CA, bone grout |
| Vanity | Pottery Barn Laguna 36″, clearance |
| Sconces | Alora Mood Nelly, via Wayfair |
| Bidet | TOTO |
| Exhaust / light combo | Kohler ATMOS, above the toilet |
| The art | Studio Ghibli “Totoro” print |
The thing not on this list, and the thing that nobody asked the homeowner to source (because it doesn’t quite work that way), is the decision to take the most utility-coded wall in the room and treat it like a small altar. Soft light, a real plant trailing, framed character art, a wood shelf to hold it all. None of those four pieces is expensive: a Studio Ghibli print in that size typically runs around twenty dollars from Etsy or similar shops; the wood shelf is hardware-store lumber; the eucalyptus is faux; the sconce is the Wayfair one already in the list. The choice to put them together, in this room, above the toilet, is what the entire renovation quietly hinges on.
The tile took two weeks of planning. The print cost twenty bucks. Guess which one Reddit couldn’t stop talking about.
Images and original post by u/TheActualSherryjenix. View the original thread here. Shared with credit. Tile sourced from Tile Depot (El Monte, CA); vanity is Pottery Barn Laguna; sconces are Alora Mood Nelly via Wayfair.
