Unique Medicine Cabinets
Buy the best unique medicine cabinets selected and recommended by interior designers. By Chloe Hughes.
Does your bathroom need a unique touch that will give it an eclectic personality? Add a unique medicine cabinet. The peculiar cabinets to hold your smaller bathroom items are fun and interesting. And they come in many styles you might not have previously considered as part of your bathroom decor. See all our options when you view this collection.
Unique Medicine Cabinets
Buying Guide
Chloe Hughes
Interior Design Expert
Chloe is a highly-regarded expert in all things vintage and antique. She’s excited to share her vast knowledge with readers and clients wishing to infuse their homes with a mixture of old-time warmth and modern comfort. In addition to her design work, Chloe regularly volunteers at her local community center, teaching DIY projects to adults and kids.
Medicine cabinets have been parts of homes for a very long time, and for a good reason: they make for the best solution when it comes to organizing not just medicines but bathroom items as well. However, you will be able to add some style and enhance the beauty of your bathroom just by choosing unique medicine cabinets instead of generic ones.
One way of finding the best unique medicine cabinet for your bathroom is by determining the right cabinet style for you.
- The No-Nonsense Style - This style for medicine cabinets provides homeowners their most economical and basic options. A cabinet that’s “no-nonsense” can be recessed or wall-mounted. It only has one mirror and it’s an edge-less one with a door that doesn’t need any handle.
- Classic Style - The classic style has a framed mirror door that’s painted black or white. It can also make use of a wooden frame. A picture frame door, arched-top door, and oval-shaped door are the common door options for this medicine cabinet style. Classic-styled medicine cabinets can also have crown molding at the top.
- Contemporary Style - A medicine cabinet that’s contemporary in style relies on a unique silhouette. It can be made of either metal or wood (maple or beech). As for the mirror door, it can be frameless or a picture frame type.
- Modern or European - A modern medicine cabinet can be used as a bathroom’s focal point. It's an artwork that you can install on your wall and it has unusual features like doors that have round circles at the middle of the unit or sliding glass doors. This style makes fun cabinets that you can use in upgrading your bathrooms.
The frames of medicine cabinets can vary in terms of size, style, and material. There are unique units which have a corner cabinet plus “his and hers” cabinets at the sides. There are even those with refrigerated compartments for cosmetics and medicines that are best chilled constantly.
Frameless cabinets are your options as well. The doors are the mirrors which can swing open. These cabinets have shelving and drawers that flank the frame. Higher-end cabinets have integrated outlets, as well as lighting fixtures that are added into the units.
What's important is you ensure the unit you've chosen fits your bathroom's available wall space. Get your bathroom wall's dimensions accurately, so you can ensure the proper fit.
Surface-mounted cabinets often have dimensions of 15 x 30 inches. If you have a large wall area that needs filling, you can opt for the cabinet that's 22 x 29 inches in size.
As a first time buyer of a unique medicine cabinet, it can be hard to know which one really is good for you and your space. Just remember the tips we've given you to make the buying process more enjoyable.
The most important consideration when you’re choosing a new medicine cabinet is the space where it needs to fit. The cabinet should span the size of your bathroom vanity or be slightly narrower.
As to height, avoid any nearby lighting, and check the height of your vanity and the faucets. This is especially true for medicine cabinets that are mounted directly onto the wall, as they will jut out a few inches and shouldn’t interfere with the faucets.
It used to be that medicine cabinets only came in one size, and designers didn’t think about them as crucial elements to a bathroom’s décor. Nowadays, medicine cabinets come in all shapes and sizes.
If you’re opting for one that isn’t the traditional rectangular shape, make sure that, at its widest, it is not wider than the vanity below it and that it doesn’t bump into any light switches or fixtures on the walls nearby.
Medicine cabinets of the past were all mounted onto the walls of the bathrooms, with no exceptions. These days, however, you have the choice of a recessed medicine cabinet if your wall can accommodate it.
- Recessed Mounts
Recessed mounted cabinets are flush with the wall and don’t stick out at all, even though they still have a shelved cabinet feature behind the mirror. The mirror’s frame hides the cabinet’s hinges, so no one will even know that there’s storage space behind it unless they pry.
There are a few drawbacks to a recessed mounted cabinet, though. They do not afford a lot of storage space behind the mirror. The depth of the cabinet depends on the space between the walls of your bathroom and the other side. The amount of storage you have with a recessed mounted cabinet depends entirely on that space.
Installation for these types of medicine cabinets isn’t as simple as a wall mount.
- Wall Mounts
Wall mounts are stuck to the wall with strong adhesive or screwed directly into the wall. These types of cabinets have excellent storage space as they are not curtailed by spatial restrictions, except for one. For a wall-mounted medicine cabinet, you need to make sure that it doesn’t jut out from the wall too dramatically. If it sticks out too much, it can be a hazard to your head.
If you have a small bathroom, you may want to consider a recessed mount over a wall mount as the latter may take up too much space in a finite amount.
The material and finish of your cabinet depends on your personal preferences. Are you looking for a mostly functional cabinet, or are you jazzing up an otherwise dull bathroom?
- If you chose a medicine cabinet with a mirror on the front, you have limited options in terms of materials. Remember that it is mainly the sides of the medicine cabinet and the frame, if you have one, that will display the material you chose.
- A weathered or lighter colored wood for a frame or the slatted front of a cabinet gives off a beachy feeling.
- Darker woods or metal finished, especially with exposed industrial elements, emits a modern vibe.
Similarly to the types of installations, medicine cabinets now come with a range of other features.
For the mirror that is the centerpiece of your medicine cabinet, you can opt for a frameless version, beveled edges that slope around the frame, or a flat finish that has no frills.
You can also choose a medicine cabinet that is mirrored on the inside as well as on the front. Mirrors on the inside are a great way to see the products in your cabinet clearly, and it makes the inside of the cabinet look bigger.
But you don’t have to have a mirror on your cabinet. If your bathroom already has an ample amount of reflective surfaces, you can opt for a slatted or wood front to your cabinet.
- Make sure you’re not cutting into any pipes or wiring in the wall behind the cabinet if you’re installing a recessed one.
- Take into account how much storage space you have in the cabinet you plan on installing and how much storage you have in the bathroom as a whole.
- When you’re calculating the weight that will be hanging on your bathroom wall, also compute the load of all the items that will be inside the cabinet.