I'm remodeling a bath with a 1900 farm house sort of feel. I have a 48" vanity and want to put a period looking rectangular medicine cabinet above it with a single wall sconce on either side. Having trouble finding a medicine cabinet in the style I want wider than 20". I'm having a hard time visualizing how a 20" mirrored cabinet with the sconces set about 30" apart would look centered over the 48" vanity. Would this look out of proportion? Any ideas or suggestions?
Thanks!!

 

Just an idea you could use two sconces on each side. And hang a rosette with couple of light weight chains going to the scones. That way it will make a complete picture look around the mirrow and add width over your vanity.

Dont over power the mirrow with to large of scones on each side.

Maybe look for the rusty look, like horse shoes something in the barn look.

or put the scones on some older stain wood that would balance it out also

or small rusty shelf with scones in the center of the shelf.

sounds like a lot of fun to me.

sometimes it's what you put above the mirrow that really finishes off.

or use shutter on each side with scones mount in there. well have fun , this is just some quick ideas

 

for a farm house sort of feel, i think keeping it simple is key. one light on each side would be more in line with the look you're going for. i'm not sure rosettes & chains look farmhousey...?

can you further describe the vanity & light fixtures? what's the vanity top surface? do the lights have shades or something?

would a pedestal sink have been better?

what about using 2 medicine cabinets? a his & hers?

will the walls be painted or papered? maybe if the walls are "busy" with a pattern, it'll make a difference.....

 

Thanks for the ideas! Guess I should have given a more detailed description of the look I'm after...here goes....
It's a big corner room, 17' x 11', but it will be broken up some what by partitioning walls for a small laundry area, closets, shower, etc.. Rather complicated floor plan but basically the vanity will be directly across from the front of the shower so I wanted to avoid having a huge mirror there...don't really want to see myself taking a shower. lol There is a single window, set about 2' off the floor, that will be just to the left of the vanity and the other end of the vanity will be against a partition wall that's about the same length as the depth of the vanity.
The vanity is just a standard unit that I got at Lowe's. 48" x 21" with a centered single door and 2 drawers on either side. Haven't completely settled on a countertop yet but I'm leaning toward white ceramic tile with an oak edge. Single sink centered in the cabinet. I'm planning to do a little creative "distressing" to the vanity before I install it.
The floor is red oak hardwood. There will be beaded board 48" up on the walls with a chair rail around the top. I have no idea what I'm going to do with the upper half of the walls. The room has 9' ceilings which I may decide to use bead board on as well.
Frankly, I've been so busy with finding a floorplan that was workable for the space and then doing the actual demolition on the old bath that I just haven't given much thought to the decorating end of things beyond knowing that I want the bath to have the feeling of the period in which the house was built, 1907, and to reflect that it is a farmhouse. YIKES! What have I gotten myself into?
I'm doing all the work myself, with a little help from my husband when I can get it, and it's the only bath in the house so I'm having to do it in stages. I'm only thinking about the vanity area right now because I need to rough in the wiring for the lights in that wall. I have to decide now how far apart to place the boxes for the wall sconces so that brought up the size of the medicine cabinet.
I'm certainly open to any and all suggestions ya'll feel like giving me!

 

i love beadboard!!!! before you go 48" up with that beadboard, think about how that's going to hit your medicine cabinet. will it whack it right in the middle, or somewhere funky? maybe you'll want to tweak that measurement so the medicine cabinet clears it completely or hits the side of it attractively. (you wouldn't want the beadboard to hit the cabinet just an inch or so at the bottom....)

i think probably the single medicine cabinet with a sonce on each side will, as a complete "arrangement" or "grouping" unto itself, will be fine above the 48" vanity. figure the cabinet is 21", the space inbetween it & the sconces is probably 6", plus the sconce itself, around 6"? , makes the whole arrangement about 45" wide, which is about perfect.

so you haven't found the sconces yet?

 

Thanks Annette! You've really got me to thinking about the whole room. You are right, a wall hung or pedestal sink would be much more in keeping with the period look I want so I'm rethinking the whole vanity idea. Guess I'm going to load the vanity & sink I bought and return them....might as well look at some different sinks while I'm there.

One of the main things I needed out of the new bath was storage. This house has few closets & the ones it has are tiny so I think I just let the "maximum storage" idea run away with my common sense. I was even planning on decking in my clawfoot tub so that I'd have more room to build closets!

Back to the drawing board on this one! The good news is that it's not to late to make some radical changes to the layout of the room. The new shower is already in place and it would be a major pain to relocate the toilet but beyond that I can still change the layout.

I'm thinking that if I were to go with a pedestal sink on the 34" end wall of the shower rather than across from it that I'd have 52" of wall space, where the vanity was supposed to go, to bring an antique dressing table into the room instead. If I can find a way to squeeze a small freestanding bath cabinet next to the sink then I won't have lost much storage space.

Now for the tub....a little tougher situation since making it freestanding will require more floorspace then decking it in. I really wish I could give ya'll a floorplan so you could help me with this one because the placement of the tub will likely make or break the look of the room...hmmm....I'll have to give this some serious thought.

No, I haven't picked out any of the lighting fixtures for the room yet. The faucets are chrome so I guess I should stick with that finish for the lights but I'm really leaning towards using something else for the lights, towel bars, etc. Would it be awful to have everything else be something like wrought iron or aged brass?

I LOVE beaded board too....I just HATE installing it! lol The 48" height is pretty much mandatory because of the condition of the walls in the part of the room that was the original bath, I've knocked out a wall into a corner bedroom to enlarge the space. There was tile up to 48" on the walls and there is plaster above that. I could try to make the wainscotting shorter but then I'd have to try to make a strip of sheetrock look like the original plaster above it and I'm not at all sure that it would work. If need be, I can do a cutout, with molding, in the beadboard for the medicing cabinet...I think...

Anyway, thanks so much for all your help! I really feel like I was way off track and ya'll pulled me back on!

 

first off, i'm glad you feel that i've helped you, but i'm wondering if i've just confused you!!! don't load up that vanity for return just yet - if you're in that much need of storage, then maybe a pedestal sink isn't the answer for you. if you could paint it & distress it in such as way as to make it look antique, then it might very well be the best choice for your needs. you might even need to change out the hardware on it, but don't dismiss it too quickly. or.......you could keep everything where you've currently got it arranged and instead of the vanity, use that dressing table you mentioned for a vanity. i've seen where people use regular dressers and cut a hole in the top for a sink (and the back for the pipes). that might be an option for you, too.

all i know is, a standard vanity from the hardware store, even with a little distressing, with a tile top & oak edging, won't give you the look you want. it could work, but it'll take a lot of artistry & distressing to pull it off.

another idea is to do the regular vanity, but hide it behind a fabric skirt that's velcro'ed around the top. that would certainly give you the old farmhouse look and hide the ho-hum vanity cabinet.

i personally don't like mixing finishes, if possible. i think the chrome would be a good finish for your bathroom. i wouldn't do brass or antique brass. white would be a good choice, also, as in a porcelain/ceramic look. my 3rd choice would be the wrought iron finish.

regarding the beadboard height, try to get an estimate of where the medicine cabinet will go. where, in relation to that, is the 48" mark? i'm just saying that you want to make sure that hits the side of the cabinet squarely, and not just barely, you know? if anything, raise the 48" to accommodate that. the higher the beadboard, the better - in old homes. especially if you've got higher (9 foot) ceilings. in a bathroom, don't think of it so much as a "chair rail" situation (because it's not a room typically with chairs in it), but more of a sturdier wall surface, than the original plaster. so you might even think about going 5' up with it, and leave 4' of wall above. that would be a good proportion, and would accentuate the tall ceilings.
then the "chair rail" becomes more of a "ledge".