Faucet Styles for Your Bathroom Sink

By the time you’ve designed your bathroom vanity with its stylish cabinets, complimentary countertop and eye-catching sink, you probably don’t feel like putting a lot of thought into choosing a faucet for the sink. “A faucet is a faucet,” you may think, but there’s more to it than that and what type of sink you chose will often help make the decision for you.

4 Types of Faucets

When talking about bathroom sinks, there are four types of faucets that are most often used. You can get all sorts of finishes and designs within each type of faucet, but for simplicity’s sake the four main types are:

• 8-Inch (Widespread) – if your sink has holes cut for a faucet you measure from the center of the left outermost hole to the center of the right outermost hole. If this distance is 8” then you will need an 8 inch, or widespread faucet. These faucets come in 3 separate pieces – hot handle, cold handle, and spout – and can sometimes fit holes that are up to 16 inches apart.

• 4-Inch – Four inch faucets most often have a baseplate that is connected to the hot and cold handles as well as the spout. If your measurement of the sink holes comes to four inches, then this is the faucet for you. Some 4 inch faucets come in three pieces, if you prefer the style of a wide spread faucet on a smaller sink.

• Single-Hole – If your sink has only one hole cut for a faucet, then a single-hole is what you’ll need. More often than not these faucets involve a spout that either has two handles for hot and cold attached directly to it, or a single lever that controls water temperature and flow rate.

• Wall-Mounted – As the name says, these faucets are mounted directly to the wall by the sink. They come in all different shapes and sizes and, being mounted to the wall, there aren’t many restrictions to what you can choose. You should, however, make sure the spout reaches the interior of the sink – preferably the center – and the spout should have at least 1 inch of clearance above the sink rim.

If you have a sink that doesn’t have any holes, but you aren’t a fan of wall-mounted sinks, there’s an option of fastening an 8-inch, 4-inch, or single-hole faucet directly to the vanity countertop. Just make sure the spout has the same clearance as recommended for the wall-mount faucet.

Bathroom faucets are an important part of your bathroom design. By choosing one that compliments the other faucets and hardware in your bathroom you can really tie together the whole design.