When you watch reality renovation shows you hear time and time again how important the bathroom is to the sense of the entire house. How it sets the tone for how luxe your space is and how an outdated bathroom can bring that vibe down.

But let’s be honest, bathrooms are expensive as hell and having someone come in and pull all that out to redo tiles, plumbing and shower cubicles is such a punish on your life – I mean, who wants to be without the ability to clean your entire self for any period of time? And as far as the bank balance is concerned, sometimes a full reno isn’t in the budget for this year, this decade…or even this lifetime.

That doesn’t mean you can’t make some simple, affordable changes that will give you some immediate and stunning results.

Let’s break it down into the four areas of your bathroom.

The bath

If there’s one thing that loves a steamy environment like the bath area it’s a plant. Not only does it bring a pop of colour into the space, it also provides a natural air purifier, it can bring warmth and texture into a room that can often be all white tiles and straight lines and if you choose wisely, like a beautiful waxy-leaved zanzibar, a zygocactus or peace lily, it’s also a very low-maintenance guest.

If you don’t have a lot of surface area near the bath to put a plant, you can always bring in a nice short stool or side table tucked up to the side of the tub, also a good spot to put your book if you’re a bath reader and it’ll look great with a beautiful bottle of body wash or a nice little stack of soaps ( Tilley Orange Blossom or Black Boy Rose are my absolute faves).

Turning our attention to the bath itself, the one thing that can make a major difference to this space is how your water enters the tub. There is such a beautiful range of bath spouts and taps out now and they’re so much nicer than the stubby little curved one a lot of our houses started off with.

Mondella, which you’ll find at your local Bunnings Warehouse, has a selection of waterfall spouts which range from $39 to $77.70 that makes running the bath feel like a tropical island experience. It comes in two colours: chrome or a sexy matte black. The water doesn’t just ‘flow’ from the tap – it courses down the inverted curve to ‘cascade’ into the tub. Super luxe.

If you prefer a super modern look, there are also spouts that come straight out of the wall at a right angle in clean, sleek straight lines for a bit of square flair like this one for $37.

The Rococo Chrome Bath Spout ($37).

The best part about changing the bath spout is it’s generally a pretty easy job and doesn’t require major plumbing knowledge but if you’re changing the taps to match then you may need to call in a professional.

And if your budget extends to installing a new bathtub (I know, this isn't the simplest change but it's worth mentioning), Mondella has inset options from $300, and freestanding options (like in the feature image) from $975. It's good value considering a stylish freestanding bathtub would usually be well over $1000.

The shower

Change out that shower head! Nothing makes a shower cubicle more luxe than removing that tiny old three-stream monster that’s been pretending to wash you from up high. Right now, the shower head is having its '80s hair moment - the bigger the better.

With shower heads like Mondella's Resonance Rain Shower Head ($104), water falls down like rain rather than sent at you like an army of tiny stinging needles.