How to Go Green in Your Bathroom

Going green in your bathroom doesn’t mean licking it with emerald or olive color paints, it means making it more energy efficient. By doing so, you can save a heap of cash on your outgoing utility bills, waste far less energy, and you’d reduce your carbon footprint. All in all, it’s a win on all accounts!

Check out the following information if you feel as if you are ready to give your bathroom a green makeover.

Save heat in your bathroom

The first thing you need to do in your bathroom-based energy saving venture is to save heat in the room. It is the space in your home that is most susceptible and sensitive to the cold, which means you can’t get away with not heating it. You can, however, find ways to make the way you keep your bathroom warm and comfortable far more energy efficient.

To begin with, you should make sure your bathroom is well-sealed, especially around its windows. By doing this, you will stop heat from escaping the room and ultimately being wasted. Even when they are sealed tight, however, your windows are still culpable when it comes to letting out and wasting crucial pieces of energy. For this reason, you should have specific windows fitted that are proven to be energy efficient, such as those provided by this company.

Something else that you should do alongside sealing your bathroom is insulating it. You should insulate the pipes, the shower walls and even beneath your bath’s plughole. By not doing so, a lot of your energy would go, if you could excuse the pun, down the drain. Also, you should considering switching to a hot water system that is Energy Star-rated — by installing this system close to your water supply, you will find yourself losing less heat through your pipes.

Install high-efficiency showerheads and faucets

Bathrooms are normally so wasteful when it comes to energy because of the amount of water that they allow to go to waste. To ensure you are not allowing this to become a problem for you or your bathroom, you should install showerheads that are proven to be highly efficient. Typically, normal showerheads come ready made with 2.5 gallons per minute flow rates. Highly efficient heads, however, cut this amount in half through the way they maintain their pressure without having to sacrifice the flow and speed of their water.

While you’re at it, you should have high-efficiency facets fitted, too. More to the point, you should have faucet aerators installed because they reduce water wastage like nothing else. You still shouldn’t forget to check your faucets, be them highly efficient or not, for drips and leaks, however, as these sorts of problems can waste gallons of water if they are not fixed.

Go low-flow with your toilet choice

Chances are, your toilet has a dual-flush option, which means you can choose the intensity of each flush that you make in order to use water accordingly. If your toilet doesn’t come fitted with this feature, then it’s time you swapped your old one out and brought in a newer model. By going low-flow, you stand to stop yourself flushing your water away for no reason. Again, just don’t forget to check for leaks and drips occurring in and around your toilet, as, when left unattended, this can waste gallons upon gallons of water.

Switch to LED lighting

More often than not, bathrooms are the places in the home in which the lights are brightest. This means that they are big wasters of light energy, and you need to do something about that if you truly want to go green in yours.

To do this, you should take out your old CFL light bulbs, and you should have LEDs fitted instead. These sorts of bulbs have a much longer lifespan than their incandescent cousins, and they are proven to use considerably less energy.

Change the way you act in your bathroom

Going green in your bathroom isn’t just about making physical changes to the room, it’s also about chaining the way you act when you’re in there. If you truly want to do your bit when it comes to helping the environment, then you have to resolve to waste as little water as you can, when you can. This means doing things like turning the tap off while you are brushing your teeth, not spending so long in the shower or resolving to have a colder shower from time to time, and not flushing your toilet without good reason.

Something else that you should resolve to do while you’re in your bathroom is to unplug hot tools, such as hair dryers and straighteners, when they’re not being used. This type of equipment is forced to use a lot of electric energy in order to heat up, and you shouldn’t be allowing the tools that you use to use any more than they need to be — unplug them completely to make sure they aren’t using what is known as vampire energy. Also, make sure to use your bathroom extractor fan extremely sparingly, as not doing so constitutes as a massive source of energy consumption.

Your bathroom is a massive contributor to your home’s energy wastage. For this reason, you have to be making changes in it, both for your sake and for the sake of the environment. You should change the way you heat your bathroom, and do all you can to stop that escaping it for no reason. What’s more, you should have highly efficient showerheads and faucets, as well as a low-flow toilet, fitted in order to halt your water wastage. You should swap your old light bulbs out and bring in LEDs to replace them, and lastly, you should resolve to make some behavioral changes to ensure you, yourself, are not wasting anything for no reason.

When you do all of this, you’ll reduce your home’s carbon footprint, and you’ll reduce your monthly outgoings while you’re at it.