Are Hotel Bathrooms Getting Worse? The Design Choices That Grind My Gears

I’ve written broadly about my hotel pet peeves, as we all have our own preferences when staying at hotels. Regardless of whether we’re talking about luxury or limited service hotels, I appreciate a functional and well designed bathroom. There are certain hotel bathroom design choices that drive me bonkers, and leave me scratching my head.

Along those lines, there was recently a national story about how hotel bathroom design keeps getting worse. I’d like to talk about that a bit, and then share the hotel bathroom design choices that frustrate me the most.

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Are hotels cutting costs on bathroom privacy?

Big picture, we’ve seen the enshittification of the hotel industry as time has gone on, particularly in the United States. Hotel owners want to maximize their profits, and the major hotel groups only care about growing their total room count, even if it comes at the expense of quality or brand standards.

The Wall Street Journal recently had an interesting story about how “hotels are getting rid of proper bathroom doors and guests are revolting” (thanks to Jason for flagging this).

The story is specifically focused on how an increasing number of hotel rooms don’t have real doors between the main part of the room and the bathroom. Admittedly I think this applies more to limited service properties than more luxurious ones, but the idea is that we’re seeing more hotel rooms with sliding panels, frosted glass, curtains, or no separation at all, between the bathroom and the rest of the room.

Hotel owners suggest that this trend is due to rising construction, maintenance, and energy costs, which are causing them to cut corners. Simplifying room layouts not only reduces construction costs, but also reduces long term costs.

However, an increasing number of guests are furious about these design changes, and point out how it makes it increasingly awkward to share hotel rooms with others. The idea is that what happens in the bathroom shouldn’t be seen, heard, or smelled, outside of the bathroom area.

Some people don’t even like this layout when staying at a hotel with a long-term spouse, but say it’s manageable. Meanwhile they say it’s completely unacceptable for situations where you’re staying with a friend or other family member.

Now, I’m not sure to what extent this is actually impacting stay decisions, but some people claim they’ve started calling hotels before their stays to ask about what the bathroom setups are like, for situations where it’s not clear based on the website.

Proper doors seem to be the latest thing to be eliminated from hotel rooms, following the elimination of things like proper desks, seating areas, etc. And let’s not even talk about the elimination of things like housekeeping and room service.

My hotel bathroom design choice pet peeves

I’d like to think that I’m not too much of a diva when it comes to this stuff, but it never ceases to amaze me how poorly designed some hotel bathrooms are. You’d think that if you’re going to take a design and use it hundreds of times (across all rooms in a hotel), you’d make sure that it’s functional. Yet all too often, I’m just in disbelief at how poorly designed hotel bathrooms are.

Let’s start with privacy:

• Just like the above complaints, I agree that hotel bathrooms should have proper privacy, separating them the bathroom from the rest of the room; this should be a real door, and not frosted glass, or anything that’s sliding (even from a light pollution perspective, if someone needs to use the bathroom in the middle of the night)
• For hotel rooms that aren’t super compact, ideally there’s actually some proper separation between various parts of the bathroom, with the toilet being in one room with a door, the sink and shower area being in another part of the room, etc.
• All of this glass shield and peep show stuff needs to stop; like, it’s fine to have a glass shield if it has blinds that can be lowered all the way, but unless you’re renting hotel rooms by the hour, bathrooms should be about functionality, and not helping people put on some sort of a sexy show
• It’s particularly important for privacy to be a consideration in rooms with multiple beds, where it’s less likely that the guests are a couple

Then there’s the shower situation:

• Showers should be completely enclosed so that water doesn’t flood into the rest of the bathroom; it always amazes me how many showers just have a half glass shield, and then the shower is elevated above the rest of the bathroom, so that water flows out
• The temperature and pressure controls should be clearly labeled and easy to use; I’m not claiming to be a stable genius, but I’m also not some complete idiot, and if I can’t figure out how to use the shower controls, then they’re too complicated
• The shower controls should be controllable without having to step into the shower; that seems so obvious, but so many showers require you to get wet to even select the pressure and temperature, and it shouldn’t be that way
• Personally, I very strongly prefer a walk-in shower or a proper soaking tub, and I hate the shower/tub combos, as I feel like they give you the worst of both worlds

Privacy and poorly designed showers are my two biggest hotel bathroom issues. However, it’s also worth mentioning the whole category of hotels that try too hard to make their bathrooms look stylish, rather than focusing on function (which partly overlaps with the above).

For example, take SAX Paris, Hilton LXR. The below bathroom looks stylish, right? Double sinks in a room the size of a broom closet is nice, but the issue is then that there’s virtually no counter space. So it’s a situation where I almost wish the sinks were smaller (or there were one sink), so that there would be more room to actually place things. And don’t even get me started on how the sinks sprayed, and how they were oddly difficult to use.

Bottom line

There are many things that contribute to a good hotel stay, including functional and thoughtfully designed bathrooms.

It seems that hotel bathrooms are the latest area of cost cutting for many hotel developers, as they choose to no longer have proper doors between bathrooms and the rest of the room. That’s not great, and it’s a trend that many guests aren’t happy about.

My frustrations with hotel bathrooms go beyond that, though. Yes, privacy needs to be a huge focus, but I also think that so many hotel showers are so poorly designed, in terms of ease of use, stopping water from gushing outside of the shower, etc.

What do you make of the evolution of hotel bathrooms, and what are your pet peeves?