When it comes to remodeling your home, bathroom remodeling tends to provide the biggest ROI (return on investment). It’s not too difficult to understand why bathroom remodeling trumps other projects either. When buyers are looking at homes, they often take the bathrooms into special account for several reasons.

More people are more conscious of the environment than ever, and how the functions of a bathroom can negatively affect the environment. People also want to save money on their utility bills.

Here are 3 cost saving bathroom remodeling tips we recommend to help improve the function of your bathroom while reducing your environmental footprint, thereby reducing your utility bills.

Use Water Efficient Fixtures

Roughly half of the water that is used in the average home comes from bathroom use. This isn’t too surprising considering all of the fixtures that use water, from the faucets to the toilet to the showerhead. Upgrading these fixtures to newer low-flow models can help reduce the amount of water used, not to mention lower your water bill. For example, old showerheads can use up to 6 gallons per minute. All newly manufactured showerheads are required to have a flow of no more than 2.5 gallons per minute. A typical faucet uses between 2 and 4 gallons per minute, but a high-efficiency aerator can help reduce the flow to less than 1 gallon per minute. You could save from 4 to 7 percent of your home’s total water use in a year! Newer model toilets are required to use no more than 1.6 gallons per flush; older toilets use between 3.5 and 5 gallons per flush.

Install Energy Efficient Lighting

Proper lighting is very important in a bathroom design. No bathroom should rely solely on their general lighting, which is usually inadequate. When undergoing a bathroom remodeling project, the lighting is one of the most important features to consider. When choosing your lighting, use energy efficient light bulbs, such as LED bulbs, over traditional incandescent bulbs. LED light bulbs may be a bit more costly, but they’ll save you money in the long run because they last much longer, use less energy and give off less heat than traditional bulbs. If you want to go the extra mile, you may want to install a larger window or even a skylight to let more natural light into the bathroom. The more natural light you have, the less artificial light you need to use.

Insulate the bathroom

There’s nothing worse than getting out of a nice hot shower during winter into a cold bathroom. Not only is this uncomfortable, but it’s also expensive. It means that your bathroom is poorly insulated and that you are losing heat, which in turn means you are wasting energy. Your heating system will have to work harder to replace that lost heat, which results in higher heating bills. The walls of your bathroom need to be properly insulated using cellulose insulation or blown-in fiberglass insulation. We also recommend using a low-permeability vapor barrier to help keep the moisture in the bathroom from rendering the insulation ineffective. Consider insulating the shower walls in addition to the area under the tub.

These are three core items to keep in mind as you consider a bathroom remodel. Doing so will reduce your environmental footprint and lower your utility bills.  Other items to consider include the materials and we’ll dive into that in later posts.

Please feel free to look at the bathroom remodels we’ve done. We’ve been building and remodeling homes for 25 years. There is an advantage to using a professional. We can help you think through the space, flow and fixture details so you get the perfect bathroom for you and your family.