5 Weirdly Useful Bathroom Items You Can 3D Print

If you are a DIY enthusiast looking for cheap and fun ways to upgrade your home, then it's time to get yourself a 3D printer. Some filament and your imagination present virtually limitless opportunities. 3D printing things instead of buying them could save you money and open the door to things that nobody may even be selling — especially something designed specifically for your use case, and yours alone. So on the subject of upgrading your home, how about upgrading your ... bathroom? Not the first place you think of when starting a 3D printing project, but you'd be surprised what weird (and useful) items you can make for it.

We searched far and wide through Maker World for 3D printed projects that aren't just your typical bathroom organizers and toothpaste squeezers. For the most part, these projects should be pretty easy for beginners and printable on most consumer printers. These five items are weird, in the sense that they're unexpected solutions to everyday problems in the bathroom, but useful because they help you keep your bathroom more clean, organized, and give you extra storage space — and might even do their job better than similar alternatives.

There are few feelings in the world worse than being about to finish your business on the toilet and turning to find an empty cardboard roll staring back at you. Unless you have long enough arms to reach over and around into the cabinet for the extras, try the aptly named Teepee: Modular Bathroom Crisis Prevention System by The Philosopher. All this is a simple toilet paper roll dispenser that, in theory, could hold perhaps over a dozen rolls if you extended it as high as it would go.

The creator notes that you can use its alternative configuration where empty rolls can easily be removed and the next one can roll into place — though this would require printing individual rods for any roll that's in the dispenser. Otherwise, this would work more like a traditional toilet paper holder, albeit with the extra rolls simply stacked up behind it in the dispenser for when they're needed. In any case, the creator seems to be very open to anyone using and modifying the design — including a generous Creative Commons license — so if you've got those dinosaur-sized rolls, it'll only take a few minutes in CAD software to redesign. Whatever choice you go with, the huge toilet paper dispenser will be the first thing visitors notice.

A few final notes. One, this is unfortunately a project that requires a lot of filament, and the pieces must be glued together. You could, in theory, add some screw holes to attach this to the wall as a permanent installation. However, the creator says that it's light enough that double-sided tape should do. That said, this would be an excellent choice for a smaller guest bathroom with limited storage space, or a toilet-only bathroom with none.

Flagships these days often have high IP water and dust ratings, and if that wasn't enough, it's easy to find a waterproof case to keep your device dry. But if you want to bring it into the shower to listen to music and podcasts or watch YouTube, there's not really a convenient place to put it. That's where the ShowerTune by 3DMaker.Idea comes in. This 45-degree holder secures your smartphone on the top of the sliding door. The only requirement is that it be a phone with at least an IP68 rating.

The benefits speak for themselves. The phone is still in reach to change songs or turn up the volume without slippery hands losing their grip, and it likely stays well out of range of most of the shower's backsplash. Its positioning makes it easy to watch something hands-free, and as an added bonus, this design makes the most of itself by including hooks for towels on the flip side. The only downside we can see is that this probably wouldn't work with a shower using a curtain rod.

Now, it's probably perfectly safe to use the shower phone holder, but we want to add the caveat that you could get uncomfortably close to water damage. Anecdotally speaking, I know people whose iPhones have given them a liquid-detection warning after using them in a hot tub. So just to be safe, after a shower, let your phone go without charging for a couple of hours so the USB port can dry out.

Maybe it's just me, but it always seems like a proper pain in the rear trying to find a place for shampoo bottles and soap holders. Unless your shower has a little shrine for them, you're stuck installing a suction holder that loves to randomly fall off, or bending over to grab the bottles from the corner of the tub. So one of the best upgrades might not be a smart gadget for your bathroom, but one (or more) of these Modular shower trays by FiftyFifty.

It's a brilliant yet simple design that will give any shower more toiletry storage space than it knows what to do with. First, you print the tray that grips onto the sliding door rail. Then if you want more trays, you print the second option, which clips onto the first. You could probably have half a dozen of these things hanging off each other like monkeys in a barrel before running out of room.

Multiple different print options support varying glass thicknesses; there's a hook for up to 30mm thick glass for the showers that need it. If that double-hook option isn't strong enough to hold your shampoo bottles, then you can try this remixed version by Episode 3D that includes side beams for extra support.

Electric toothbrushes are simple gadgets with surprisingly complex engineering, but they haven't been able to solve one issue: saliva and toothpaste getting gummed up in their crevices. Anyone who has an electric toothbrush knows this. It's pretty disgusting, and it seems like the perfect way to turn your toothbrush into a bacterial colony. Give yourself a place to store your brushes where they can dry out with the Oral-B Brush Stand for two by bo.

It's literally just a couple of propped-up arms on a tray to hold toothbrush heads at 45 degrees so any liquid should drip off into the tray rather than staying crusted on the brush. Simple and straightforward. It's likely most brush heads from any brand — not just Oral-B — would fit here. And if they don't, the Creative Commons license means you are free to modify it for your own purposes; a couple of commenters tweaked the design to hold more toothbrush heads or to integrate it into other print projects.

The only thing the design is possibly missing is a drain hole. It would be nice if there were a little cutout at the edge to let excess water drip into the sink. Again, though, this is your 3D printer, so you are free to add that or any other modifications as you please.

A nice, hot bath is the best way to end a hard week. Water all over the floor when you get out, though, is not. As you will have guessed, a 3D-printed design is here to save the day. The Bathtub Splash Guard by DGates is a very simple printing project that should hopefully make your bathroom floor less of a slipping hazard without being an eyesore in your bathroom. It's a curved triangle that you should be able to caulk into both corners of your bathtub to catch splashes that go up the lip and spill out the sides. DGates designed it with a young child who loves to splash in mind, so it's smooth-edged and unlikely to hurt someone who accidentally hits it with a foot.

There are other splash guards that might be more suitable for you that we were unable to include in this list because of licensing reasons. Again, however, this is your printer and your wheelhouse. Anything you can imagine, you can print. Designing something to prevent water spillage while showering or bathing is a pretty simple project with a low margin for error that could teach you a lot about how you design future prints.