Bathroom layout ideas for older Los Angeles homes

Older Los Angeles bathrooms are usually small, fixed in a single line along one wall, and built around plumbing that is now past its life. The layouts that work best either reorganize the existing footprint (moving the toilet, rethinking the tub, dealing with the window) or borrow a little space from a closet or hallway. How far you can go depends on whether the house sits on a raised foundation or a slab, and on what you find in the walls.

Bungalows, Spanish revival houses and postwar tract homes from the 1920s to the 1950s share a lot of the same bathroom problems. Here are the common ones, and the layout moves that tend to solve them. For the construction side of reworking a room like this, see our full bathroom remodeling page.

The 5 × 8 hall bath

This is the classic older-home bathroom: a tub across the short end, a toilet and a sink along one long wall, and a door on the other short end or the opposite long wall. It is tight but efficient, and it is often the only full bath in the house.

Options that stay within the footprint:

• Keep the tub, upgrade everything else. In a one-bath house, a tub is often worth keeping. A tub-shower with a good valve, a niche and tile to the ceiling can feel much better than the original.
• Replace the tub with a shower. The alcove becomes a generous shower, sometimes with a bench, and the room gains a feeling of openness with frameless glass.
• Swap to a wall-hung vanity and toilet. Showing more floor makes the room read larger. A wall-hung toilet needs an in-wall carrier and a thicker wall.
• Use a pocket door. If the door swing collides with the vanity or toilet, a pocket door frees that space. It requires a wall without plumbing or wiring on the pocket side.

Our small bathroom remodeling page covers more of the moves that make a tight room work.

Relocating the toilet

A toilet right beside the door or directly in view from the hall is a common complaint. Moving it is one of the most effective layout changes, and one of the more involved, because the toilet drain is the largest pipe in the room and needs a vent and slope to the main line.

Raised foundations

Many pre-war LA houses sit on raised foundations with a crawlspace. That makes moving drains more straightforward, because a plumber can reach the pipes from below, change the route, and tie back into the main line without breaking concrete. Joists can limit where a toilet flange can land; a drain cannot usually pass straight through a joist without structural attention.

Slab foundations

Many postwar houses sit on slabs. Moving a drain means cutting a trench in the concrete, placing the new pipe, and patching. It is common and doable, but more disruptive and usually more costly than working in a crawlspace. The farther the move, the bigger the trench.

A window in the shower

Older bathrooms often have a double-hung window above the tub. When the tub becomes a tiled shower, that wooden window sits in a wet zone. Water runs down the glass, pools on the sill and gets into the frame. Options include:

• Replacing it with a window suited to wet areas and sloping the sill so water drains back into the shower.
• Raising the sill height or reducing the window size, which changes the exterior and may need review in historic districts.
• Moving the shower to another wall and letting the window light the rest of the room.
• Using obscure or frosted glass for privacy.

Whatever you choose, the waterproofing has to wrap into the window opening. It is one of the details worth insisting on.

Borrowing space

A few extra inches or feet make a real difference. Common sources in older houses:

• A linen closet in the hall next to the bath, which can become a shower alcove or a longer vanity wall.
• The hallway, if the bathroom door can move and the hall can narrow slightly.
• A bedroom closet backing onto the bathroom, often enough to create a separate toilet room or a larger shower.
• A service porch or back entry, common in bungalows, which can sometimes become part of a larger bath.

Moving a wall means checking whether it is structural. Many interior walls in bungalows carry ceiling joists.

Adding a second bathroom

Many houses built with one bathroom now have families who need two. The likely spots are a large closet, part of a bedroom, a converted porch, or an attached garage. The feasibility turns on drain access, which is easier with a crawlspace, and on whether a new bathroom affects exit paths or bedroom counts. Adding a bathroom is almost always permitted work; our guide to bathroom remodel permits covers what to check.

Replacing old plumbing while it is exposed

Pre-war houses commonly have galvanized steel supply lines and cast-iron drains. Galvanized pipe corrodes from the inside and restricts flow. Cast iron can crack, scale inside, or rust through at the bottom. When walls and floors are open, replacing the supply lines within the bathroom and inspecting or replacing the drain section is usually far cheaper than doing it later. Ask for the old pipe to be looked at, or camera-inspected where appropriate, before deciding.

Keeping the period character

A new layout does not have to erase the house. Details that carry the period forward:

• Original window casing, door hardware or a built-in medicine cabinet, restored and reused.
• Tile chosen for the era, such as hex floors in a Craftsman or patterned tile in a Spanish revival. Our tile ideas for LA homes run through these by style.
• Pedestal or console sinks with exposed legs instead of a large cabinet.
• Painted plaster or tile wainscot instead of full-height tile everywhere.

Before settling on a layout, measure the room and the closets and hall around it, find out whether the house is on a crawlspace or a slab, and note where the existing drain line leaves the room. Those three facts decide which of the ideas above are realistic in your house.