Toilet seats in 94 colors - for your retro bathroom
Mid Mod Pam on Sep 23 2008 at 8:00 am | Filed under: bathroom
I think I have finally lost my marbles. Jumping up and down in my office, all excited to find a company that offers 94 different colors of toilet seats… and dying to share it — to stop the presses — to postpone the planned laminate story — get this NEWS on the blog!
Thanks to Sales Manager John at deabath.com, who provided a quick-as-a-flash answer to my question about where to find vintage-color toilet seats. I think John knows everything. Readers: Send me questions. Let’s test him! I’ll get a radio show. Like Click and Clack, only… about Vintage Plumbing.
So, the company that performs this wonderful service to all of mid mod America, is Bemis Inc. from Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin. Elongated, or round-bowl. Plastic - but it will do if I wanted…needed…the perfect pink toilet seat.
Here’s the url direct to order the perfect color toilet seat of your very own!: http://www.colordirectseats.com/
Argh! Pam, you didn’t mention that the seats cost $77.00!! I’m very excited about this anyway, because my lovely new pink bathroom is marred by an oak toilet seat (horrible memories of my parents’ 80s brown bathroom)! Guess I’ll just have to save up to buy one of these. Funny, because in our desert house (the one we just moved from), we have peachy-pink toilets, and one of them had a Bemis seat. It had probably been there a very long time, and was still serviceable, until my two little ones started slamming it, then the little plastic feet on the lid broke.
My blue bathroom here (new house) had an oak seat also, but my two-year-old picked out a dolphin-motif seat at Target. On clearance for $24.00, which I thought was pricey - until now!
Hey Tikimama aka Elise, yes, $77 is a lot - but when an item is small-run specialty like this, it’s gonna cost.
I recently saw a vintage toilet seat go for over $100 on ebay. It had poodles on it, as I recall.
I was very surprised by the price of these toilet seats. But, I must say they are such an improvement from the very old ones that we had & the color matches perfectly to our yellow & blue American Standard toilets. I think anyone that orders will be very happy. I was so excited to find them & have them match so well!! It really doesn’t take much to get us excited! A great find!
Nancy
Thanks, Pam, for providing this great resource for replacement non-white toilet seats. Yes, they are pricey when you consider that they are just plastic, but as Pam notes, they are made in relatively small runs, driving up the unit cost. But my issue with them is not the price. It’s the authenticity.
Toilet seats in the 1950s were not plastic. They were wood, painted, with metal hinges rather than plastic ones. Purists like myself can get pretty picky about these kinds of details. So what’s an obsessive-compulsive restorationist to do? My solution was to buy an old-fashioned toilet seat from a warehouse home improvement store and alter it. I bought a seat in the authentic 1950s style: wood, painted white, with chromed metal hinges. Dirt cheap at about $10. Then I visited the local marine boating supply store for a quart of epoxy boat paint, taking along my color-matched paint chip from the warehouse store. Matched the color, repainted the seat with durable epoxy, and voila! A color-matching, fully authentic 1950s blue wooden toilet seat with chrome metal hinges for less than the price of a non-authentic all-plastic one!
Hi PSS, you are so ingenious!
Hey Everyone - I used this system a few months ago to match my peachy-pink 50’s toilet. If you Google the color direct system, you will find vendors who sell it for around $50. I bought my system package (color swatches) off of doitbest.com. You still order the color you want through Bemis, and get a Bemis seat.
The color swatch I picked was #043, which corresponds to American Standard’s “Corallin”. The seat I received blends very well with the toilet, although it’s a little light. The seat is all plastic, but is comfortable and looks good to me.
Hi, I just came across your site through Jenn Ski and I can’t believe the resources you have. You will totally be a daily stop for me and my ranch redo. Just wanted to say thanks for all the info- especially the toilet seats!
Anna