Bring bathroom doors back to hotels

2025-11-2622:26804673bringbackdoors.com

Bring Bathroom Doors Back to Hotels

I’m done. I’m done arriving at hotels and discovering that they have removed the bathroom door. Something that should be as standard as having a bed, has been sacrificed in the name of “aesthetic”.

I get it, you can save on material costs and make the room feel bigger, but what about my dignity??? I can’t save that when you don’t include a bathroom door.

It’s why I’ve built this website, where I compiled hotels that are guaranteed to have bathroom doors, and hotels that need to work on privacy.

I’ve emailed hundreds of hotels and I asked them two things: do your doors close all the way, and are they made of glass? Everyone that says yes to their doors closing, and no to being made of glass has been sorted by price range and city for you to easily find places to stay that are guaranteed to have a bathroom door.

Quickly check to see if the hotel you’re thinking of booking has been reported as lacking in doors by a previous guest.

Finally, this passion project could not exist without people submitting hotels without bathroom doors for public shaming. If you’ve stayed at a doorless hotel send me an email with the hotel name to bringbackdoors@gmail.com, or send me a DM on Instagram with the hotel name and a photo of the doorless setup to be publicly posted.

Let’s name and shame these hotels to protect the dignity of future travelers.


Read the original article

Comments

  • By decimalenough 2025-11-272:4114 reply

    I once stayed at a very boutiquey, avant-garde hotel with a platonic friend. We had booked a twin room with separate beds, but what I did not expect was that the shower cubicle, with clear glass on all three sides, would be placed between the beds.

    • By trhway 2025-11-273:087 reply

      The world makes full circle. A 4-toilet (2 facing the other 2 for lively conversation) bathroom per floor, no walls whatsoever between the toilets, "open layout" so to speak, in our dormitory in high school (regional school for advanced science studies) in USSR in 80-ies come to mind. Looks like we were living the boutiquey avant-garde way of the future :)

      • By madaxe_again 2025-11-278:363 reply

        Sounds like the various RAF bases I did stints at as a cadet - the ablutions were just a great big room full of loos, showers, and bathtubs, all with dark brown water, and absolutely zero privacy of any variety.

        The exposed loos were a novelty for me, at school we at least had shoulder height partitions - but we had communal showers and baths so it wasn’t a huge leap.

        I also spent a year or so living in a studio where the loo was in the kitchen area - we at least installed a curtain.

        • By technothrasher 2025-11-2711:43

          > RAF

          On a trip I took with my father-in-law, the first morning he waltzed right into the little hotel room bathroom while I was showering (in a glass shower) and proceeded to sit on the throne and take a crap. I was confused at his lack of basic respect for privacy, and then remembered he'd been a US Navy guy for many years. Military folks just get used to no privacy in such matters.

        • By rsynnott 2025-11-2710:531 reply

          > but we had communal showers and baths so it wasn’t a huge leap.

          I dunno, I've no problem with communal showers, or nudity in general, but partition-less toilets feels like a bridge too far.

          • By MPSimmons 2025-11-2917:291 reply

            Growing up in West Virginia, I was in a moderately sized city (40k people) but when traveling to smaller high schools for football games, you'd often find a shared latrine as the bathroom, and everyone who needed to pee would just crowd around a long sink thing and just let 'er rip. No idea what it was like in the ladies'

            • By Andrex 2025-11-2923:47

              Open troughs are fine, toilets facing each other with no partitions is a bit far. I grew up rural but not that rural.

        • By normie3000 2025-11-279:312 reply

          Kitchen-loo must be illegal these days - I think rentals need to have 2 doors between the two. Did it seem reasonable at the time?!

          • By kergonath 2025-11-2710:15

            I would suspect that this is highly jurisdiction-dependent. Around here (random EU country), it would instantly make all studio flats unrentable, so I don’t think that’s the case. Most of them have a bathroom door, though.

          • By Ekaros 2025-11-2710:44

            I just recently(september) saw a sale advertisement for loo/bathroom-kitchen... With only small not full height partition next to seat...

      • By crossroadsguy 2025-11-276:141 reply

        Seeing it was advanced science, authorities wanted to add venues to encourage constant communication and collaboration. Always working for the people and the state! No time wasted.

        • By philipallstar 2025-11-2710:25

          We pretend to shit and they pretend to pay us

      • By nickserv 2025-11-2713:18

        This is similar to the arrangements of public toilets in ancient Rome, except for them the seats are arrangemed in a circle. Everything old is new again.

      • By krater23 2025-11-2711:14

        Had two toilets in my flat only parted with a thin wood wall. Better talking with another one that is shitting than playing on the smartphone.

      • By fransje26 2025-11-2714:33

        They had built some of those for the Olympics in Sochi, if memory serves.. :-)

      • By FearNotDaniel 2025-11-2710:341 reply

        > 80-ies

        eighty...ies? eightieies? why not just "80s"?

        • By lobsterthief 2025-11-2710:50

          English is not their first language so please give them a break ;)

          Edit: I realize you are probably trying to help them learn. Carry on.

      • By ecshafer 2025-11-273:391 reply

        [flagged]

    • By KineticLensman 2025-11-2711:085 reply

      In London's Shard, the gent's toilets of the observation deck (on approx the 70th floor) have glass walls behind the urinals so if you look straight ahead while using them it is as if you are peeing on the city of London from a great height.

      • By alexfoo 2025-11-2712:10

        The old Warner stand at Lord's cricket ground used to be where the press watched from (before the new Media Centre was built). The urinals in old stand used to have windows above them looking out over the pitch so that the journalists wouldn't miss anything whilst they urinated.

        Image: https://d3rcx32iafnn0o.cloudfront.net/Pictures/980x653fitpad...

        The three square windows under the second tier, just below where the sportingbet.com and Jaguar advertising boards meet.

      • By technothrasher 2025-11-2711:37

        I always enjoy a "loo with a view", including that one at the Shard. I also enjoyed the outdoor one I utilized in Botswana that had the toilet isolated from camp behind a small wooden fence, but while sitting on the throne you are facing out from a slight elevation onto a sweeping 180 degree view of the savanna, with antelopes, giraffes, and elephants roaming around.

      • By paulnpace 2025-11-2712:252 reply

        "Back in my day," Lake Helen (~10,000 ft) on Mt. Shasta had a pit toilet without walls that faced the valley. Depending on the weather, it could even be above the clouds/fog and IIRC on a clear day you could see the ocean.

        • By ghaff 2025-11-2817:231 reply

          I've been on something similar in Washington State. Forget where. Maybe below Shuksan someplace. While wilderness experiences are obviously a different matter, I suspect that people here freaking out about lack of doors or whatever wouldn't necessarily be comfortable with how many deal with climbing/camping/canoeing/etc. People just look the other way.

          • By seanmcdirmid 2025-11-2817:28

            At a road stop somewhere at 5000 meters on a mountain somewhere in Sichuan (a day out of Chengdu?), the latrine was two slippery 2-by-4s over an open pit. I’m really glad I just had to pee, because that was terrifying.

        • By dredmorbius 2025-11-2715:20

          Wilderness privvies often make up for in view what they lack in privacy and/or plumbing technology. I've similar memories from elsewhere.

      • By devchix 2025-11-2716:32

        The W in Santiago, Chile, has a full-length floor-to-ceiling glass window in the shower, with the morning sun shining right in. Your other option is a bathtub set in the middle of the bedroom itself. Mercifully the WC has a door.

      • By noduerme 2025-11-2711:411 reply

        Pretty sure I went to a bar in NYC that still had a urinal trough running directly below the bar as you were standing there... so one wouldn't need to leave the bar to take a leak. This was 30 years ago. McSorleys maybe?

    • By PessimalDecimal 2025-11-272:581 reply

      Not the Platonic ideal of a hotel room

      • By tsimionescu 2025-11-277:211 reply

        No, but I bet the shower was a decent approximation of a Platonic solid.

        • By HansardExpert 2025-11-2716:04

          I like to leave my platonic solids in the toilet bowl.

    • By cobertos 2025-11-279:002 reply

      Such an odd decision. No privacy or isolation for the shower, but yes for the two twin beds. Sleep apart but shower together.

      • By nickserv 2025-11-2713:14

        My SO and I move and snore, not a bad arrangement. Somehow I don't think that's what they were going for though.

      • By maininformer 2025-11-2717:35

        It builds tension

    • By rwmj 2025-11-278:281 reply

      There's a hotel in Edinburgh with boutique pretensions I stayed in that had smoked glass (only) around the toilet. That was a pretty annoying arrangement for me and my wife. Luckily they had regular loos in reception.

      • By 4ggr0 2025-11-2722:091 reply

        was it a travelodge? with that smoked glass bathrom being right behind the bed?

        • By rwmj 2025-11-2813:391 reply

          It was "The Hub by Premier Inn". There are some photos on Google.

          • By 4ggr0 2025-11-2910:14

            wow, it is actually the one me and my SO stayed at! specifically this[0] kind of room. when reading your description i immediately thought about this one. we did have a gentleman's agreement, "can you please put on your noise cancelling headphones and don't look back, i gotta..."

            only stayed there for one or two nights, it says a lot when a campervan gives more comfort than a hotel room :)

            [0]https://www.premierinn.com/content/dam/pi/websites/desktop/n...

    • By nephanth 2025-11-2710:57

      In between the beds?? Does that mean the shower was right in the middle of the room ? So that it would be impossible to place a double bed ? This is the weirdest part to me

    • By baxtr 2025-11-278:261 reply

      That's how platonic friendships usually end.

      • By fransje26 2025-11-2714:32

        Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder..

    • By bamboozled 2025-11-273:311 reply

      Was it a "love hotel" because...that doesn't sound like a regular hotel?

      • By hotep99 2025-11-276:363 reply

        That bathroom layout has become extremely common in normal hotels in parts of Asia and the Middle East.

        • By Al-Khwarizmi 2025-11-278:332 reply

          But what's the logic? I have never seen it but it doesn't sound good even aesthetically (which is usually the justification for all kinds of violations of common sense). So what are they thinking?

          • By graemep 2025-11-2711:25

            A number of hotels that were built with this lack of privacy (including one I love - but its been fixed there though - more subtle worse as you could see in from the stairs) were all designed by the same architect who is said to have had a kink about looking into toilets.

            Maybe he started it, and as his hotels are (otherwise) lovely it made it part of a cool aesthetic and was therefore copied?

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Bawa

          • By fph 2025-11-279:17

            It also sounds like a plumbing nightmare to build.

        • By Rastonbury 2025-11-2710:381 reply

          Where is Asia? I travel there often for work and have never come across such a layout

          • By nasmorn 2025-11-2711:541 reply

            It is the large landmass covering about half of the northern hemisphere.

            • By nickserv 2025-11-2713:232 reply

              I get the joke on OP's typo for is/in, but even then you answered "what" instead of OP's "where".

              • By nasmorn 2025-11-2715:57

                It’s miscommunication all the way down

        • By bamboozled 2025-11-2813:24

          I live in Asia, I've only seen in love hotels.

    • By mikesabat 2025-11-282:26

      It's called foreplay. Jk.

      I've seen a glass shower where the glass turned to smoked opaque glass with the push of a button. Maybe this shower had something similar?

      But this is no excuse, still completely awkward and horrible design.

    • By smusamashah 2025-11-2716:26

      I went looking for pictures (someone must have shared this on internet ...). This is the closes I could find https://www.reddit.com/r/CrappyDesign/comments/if6ahf/the_sh...

    • By ralferoo 2025-11-2711:02

      I've only really encountered glass walls for the shower room in Asia, and in almost every case there's been a curtain that could be drawn across the glass if required.

    • By stefanfisk 2025-11-276:141 reply

      Please tell my that you have pictures of this to show!

      • By growt 2025-11-276:29

        Wouldn’t be very platonic to take pictures.

    • By DontchaKnowit 2025-11-283:38

      In my high school the toilet stalls had no doors and the walls were only about waist high brick walls. Horrific

    • By everdev 2025-12-011:32

      [dead]

  • By rjdj377dhabsn 2025-11-2623:4616 reply

    Huh.. I've stayed in over 1,000 hotels and Airbnbs over the last 15 years and not once saw a bathroom with no door. Lots of bathroom windows, but always some kind of door.

    • By stavros 2025-11-2623:513 reply

      Was it made of glass?

      I've stayed in a hotel where the toilet door was made of glass, and had big gaps. I was staying with an acquaintance, so things were really awkward. It didn't help that the shower was right in front of this frosted glass, so the person's entire silhouette was very visible when showering.

      Another time, in Amsterdam, I stayed at an AirBnB where the toilet was on the balcony, and had a glass door (non-frosted) in the kitchen. Yep, if you needed to go, and someone was cooking, or was a neighbour, they were looking right at you.

      • By thaumasiotes 2025-11-271:092 reply

        In Hyperion, the character Martin Silenus is rich enough that he lives in a novelty palace where all the rooms are connected by teleporters. As a joke, the bathroom is a wallless raft on an ocean world.

        Outside of the realm of science fiction, my sister followed a TV show for a while that was basically a set of advertisements for a modular home company. One episode featured the installation of a small home on a remote British island; the shower was a pipe outside the house itself.

        • By Loughla 2025-11-271:181 reply

          We installed an outdoor shower at our house. There's nothing as nice as a cold shower outdoors on a really hot day. It feels so luxurious that I can pretend I'm a rich person instead of lower- to mid-middle class.

          We live way out in the boonies, so that helps.

          • By tbrownaw 2025-11-272:111 reply

            Also really good for a house that has beach access.

            • By mogoman 2025-11-2710:52

              We once stayed in a beach house with an outdoor shower in South Africa. One morning I got up, took a shower (without my glasses, I am very short sighted) and went in for breakfast. About 20 minutes later my sister-in-law comes running into the house shouting that "there is a huge snake in the outside shower"

        • By fph 2025-11-279:241 reply

          I wasn't expecting to read a Hyperion reference in this thread, such a great book.

          (And if you haven't read the book you can guess what could possibly go wrong with this setup.)

          • By rsynnott 2025-11-2711:00

            I feel like that house was a _bit_ of a Chekhov's gun; I think it was the first point in the story where what was going to happen became clear to me.

            (This wasn't Simmons' invention, incidentally; Larry Niven did it first.)

      • By noufalibrahim 2025-11-278:281 reply

        I've seen this. Sometimes, they have curtains. I don't really understand what the point is though. It's definitely not price. I would imagine that it's costlier to add a window to a wall than just to brick it. I thought it was to allow one to watch the TV while taking a shower or a bath. It's the most reasonable thing I could come up with.

        • By kuschku 2025-11-2713:541 reply

          What I believe:

          It's to encourage e.g. two coworkers to get separate rooms instead of one room with separate beds. The increase in revenue is more than the construction cost.

          • By noufalibrahim 2025-11-286:26

            That's equal parts evil and clever. And completely plausible. You've just reduced my faith in humanity a little. Thanks. :-/

      • By grugagag 2025-11-270:193 reply

        Review and vote with your wallet and your feet

        • By venturecruelty 2025-11-271:583 reply

          This strategy is so successful, it brought down Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Philip Morris, Frito-Lay, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Monsanto, and Boeing.

          • By Aloisius 2025-11-272:543 reply

            People voting with their wallet are why Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Philip Morris, Frito-Lay, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Monsanto and Boeing are still in business.

            And people voting with their wallet have led to literally hundreds of thousands of companies going out of business.

            So yeah, it is successful.

            • By 4gotunameagain 2025-11-278:061 reply

              You might need to read up on the concept of a monopoly.

            • By dymk 2025-11-275:43

              Ah yes, people voted with their wallets, some people just have much larger wallets than others.

            • By canyp 2025-11-2722:36

              Such a bunch of nonsense, among other things because it ignores the government's role in the sucess of all those businesses.

          • By the_af 2025-11-273:011 reply

            I think Boeings bring themselves down on their own.

            ba-dum-tish!

            • By Psype 2025-11-276:09

              Terrain, terrain.

          • By bryan_w 2025-11-277:253 reply

            Is it possible that people just think differently than you? Or is everyone else wrong?

            • By Eisenstein 2025-11-277:511 reply

              Or perhaps the individual's dollar is not really that effective. It's like plastic recycling -- it is a way to make the consumer feel like it is their job to fix things that they really have no responsibility for or control over.

              • By ikr678 2025-11-2722:48

                The individuals isnt, but as soon as you attempt to organise a widespread boycott they will come for you. BDS type movements are sucessful, that's why they often get so much push back.

            • By venturecruelty 2025-11-2820:12

              They think differently precisely because they're wrong.

            • By canyp 2025-11-2722:37

              They're wrong.

        • By kitku 2025-11-2712:131 reply

          People with more dollars get more votes

        • By stavros 2025-11-270:24

          I did indeed.

    • By cammikebrown 2025-11-2623:505 reply

      A lot of them are becoming barn style sliding doors, with large gaps. So if you’re making some noise, everyone will hear you.

      • By dotancohen 2025-11-270:542 reply

        This erosion of privacy is being taken to extremes.

        One of my short stories takes place in a not-to-distant future, where there is absolutely no privacy. In one chapter a child goes to a bathroom in an old building, and he sees that there is not only a door, but there is a contraption on it. A lock! The child runs out of the bathroom in fright. The audience learns only a little later that the child is frightened about what human-eating animals might stalk prey in that area, that anybody would ever think to lock themselves in there.

        • By kakacik 2025-11-278:534 reply

          It was quite shocking for me as somebody from eastern Europe to see ie Danish or Dutch homes having no curtains whatsoever, so me walking on sidewalk looking at them 3m from me behind the windows having breakfast, in pyjamas, kids doing early morning nasal cavities treasure hunt with finger etc.

          Same for living rooms and bedrooms (those I would expect to at least have some curtains aside).

          Still not used to it, i like my privacy and ability to shamelessly say scratch my butt when alone if needed.

          • By teekert 2025-11-279:34

            Haha dutch guy here... Who cares? Our bedrooms have curtains! Actually living rooms usually as well, but we are reluctant in closing them I guess. Also, you'll often find patches of intransparant glass to prevent directly looking in.

            But then the horror to go to the US and find toilets in i.e. hospitals that don't have doors closing all the way. You can literally stare someone in the eye through the crack in the door, or over the door, while he's taking a dump. Holy cow. Imagine the sounds echoing through the collective toilet room. My god. I'm still recovering from my visit to the prestigious Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Having a s* together with someone in the next stall is a whole new level of intimacy I was not ready for.

          • By kolp 2025-11-2710:101 reply

            When I lived in NL, it was explained to me that closing the curtains would imply, in some sort of weird Calvinistic belief, that the occupants were engaged in some nefarious activities; therefore the curtains are left open to show that the occupants have nothing to hide and are engaged only in wholesome activities.

            The other side of the social contract obliges passers-by to not look inside.

            The other strange thing that I found is that some apartments have little spy mirrors mounted on the exterior wall to allow the occupants to monitor what's going on in the street.

            • By kergonath 2025-11-2710:231 reply

              > the occupants were engaged in some nefarious activities; therefore the curtains are left open to show that the occupants have nothing to hide and are engaged only in wholesome activities.

              That sounds utterly dystopian. Whose business is it if we want to shag in the morning?

              It’s also completely self-defeating. Nobody can prove that they never did anything that someone else would disapprove. There are solid reasons behind the "innocent until proven guilty" principle.

              • By tremon 2025-11-2712:541 reply

                That sounds utterly dystopian

                Welcome to 18th-century small-village politics.

                • By TitaRusell 2025-11-2714:091 reply

                  Priests used to visit houses if the wife had not been pregnant for a while.

                  Most of us do not realise how utterly NEW individuality and freedom is. Not so long ago we were all Taliban.

                  • By dotancohen 2025-11-2719:10

                    Most of us (humans) still are. Only in Europe and the Americas is privacy or individually widely acknowledged.

          • By jonasdegendt 2025-11-279:47

            The Dutch simply shamelessly scratch their butt, and if someone's watching that's their problem ;)

          • By normie3000 2025-11-279:34

            I think that system requires that passers by don't look inside the houses.

        • By volemo 2025-11-275:391 reply

          > One of my short stories takes place in a not-to-distant future, where there is absolutely no privacy.

          You might like “We” by Eugene Zamiatin.

          • By dotancohen 2025-11-279:031 reply

            That's the book that was similar to 1948, but written a few decades before? I've heard of it, I will see if I can find an audiobook. Thank you!

            1948 is one of my favourites, by the way.

            • By volemo 2025-11-2712:481 reply

              I’m sorry, do you mean Orwell’s “1984”? Because all I can find for “1948” is an Israeli autobiographical novel, that, as far as I can tell, doesn’t resemble “We”. (Although, imho, “1984” is quite different from “We” as well.)

      • By RoyTyrell 2025-11-270:02

        Yes! I was just recently traveling for work in a decent hotel but not a suite, just one with two queen beds but by myself. It had a glass barn door and the top half was frosted glass with "painted" glass on the bottom. Irritating but at least it was just me.

      • By tohnjitor 2025-11-270:481 reply

        The worst aspect of the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport was the sliding bathroom door. Almost everything else about the place was really great but the bathroom door wae 1/2" from the face of the wall and bounced off the end of the slider track.

        • By bcoates 2025-11-277:17

          I think it's an unavoidable consequence of the space constraints they're working with.

          On the plus side, when I dayroomed there it was dead silent and the room had blackout curtains.

      • By dawnerd 2025-11-270:13

        Lowes hotels at Universal Orlando has them. Worse is they sometimes just slide open on their own.

      • By op00to 2025-11-270:015 reply

        People make noise when they piss and shit. It’s not scandalous.

        • By olyjohn 2025-11-270:084 reply

          Well, I still don't wanna make everybody in the room have to listen to my grunts as I push out an unhealthy binge-drinking hangover turd followed by a liter of flatulent gas and and liquid spraying into the bowl. I like my privacy, kthx.

          • By tortilla 2025-11-270:234 reply

            AI can't generate this prose yet.

            • By shermantanktop 2025-11-270:40

              It just doesn’t want to produce it, and it’s holding it in. Maybe if you ask it try hard, it might finally release a backlog of text.

            • By ssl-3 2025-11-271:19

              Oh, yes it can.

              There was a time, over a year ago now, when I was working on a project that required some very raunchy, dirty, absolute gutter language.

              ChatGPT would only get about 30% of the way there, and never further. It stayed restrained, always.

              But ChatGPT + image gen? This produced unfiltered amazement.

              It played out like this: Tell the bot to generate an image involving some ludicrously filthy text backstory, and it would generate and display a prompt for Dall-E. But that generated prompt seemed to bypass the filters and could be absolute trash -- plain, no nonsense, dirt-nasty holy-fuckballs craptacularity.

              Dall-E would refuse the prompt, of course, but it remained in the chat log for perusal.

              Later, they made the generated prompt disappear when Dall-E refused. (This may in fact be my fault. I sent it on some pretty deep dives.)

              And nowadays, it seems that we don't get to see the generated prompt at all, even when Dall-E accepts a (very normal, not pushing boundaries at all) prompt and generates an image.

              But for a minute there: I did get to peer into depths of the wildly creative foulness that the bot can concoct. What we see above (in GP comment) isn't even scratching the surface.

              (I didn't write about this little "jailbreak" anywhere at that time because I'm selfish, and I wanted to keep using it myself.)

            • By myvoiceismypass 2025-11-276:42

              I can picture a certain CEO taking this as a dare (or improvement suggestion) for the next version of Grok

            • By DANmode 2025-11-275:49

              Literally 80% of grok output.

          • By potato3732842 2025-11-270:31

            You oughtta pride yourself on being able to make that jobsite porta potty ring like a bell.

          • By op00to 2025-11-2718:25

            How will we know your digestive health otherwise?

          • By bregma 2025-11-2711:37

            Just yell out "Who is number two working for?" and then give a courtesy flush.

        • By giantg2 2025-11-270:08

          If it's not scandalous, can I shit in the lobby trashcan? If the hotel wants me to have an audience, might as well...

        • By rkomorn 2025-11-270:041 reply

          It's not, but I prefer not being heard and not hearing over being heard or hearing.

          • By recursive 2025-11-270:052 reply

            Just make an even louder jungle cat snarling noise.

            • By buu700 2025-11-270:231 reply

              Hotel bathrooms should just play rainforest sounds[1] whenever the fan is turned on.

              1: https://youtu.be/ef_3Wj4T_ts

              • By shmeeed 2025-11-2711:341 reply

                You're joking, but my wife got us a box emitting bird sounds when the motion sensor is triggered. Suffice to say that it does absolutely nothing to mask the sounds that are produced on a toilet, it's just another ridiculous layer on top of it.

                • By venturecruelty 2025-12-023:511 reply

                  Sounds pretty relaxing for the user, though!

                  • By shmeeed 2025-12-0211:59

                    Right, one might suppose so. Alas, the chirps echoing within a tiled 3x3' cell grind my ears. Besides it feels a bit out of place within these plain white confinements. I just can't conjure up the mental image of being out in the woods.

                    But you have to pick your battles with your partner. I'm turning the volume down, and when the battery's empty I don't exactly hasten to change it.

            • By rkomorn 2025-11-270:20

              "What the hell?! That scared the shit out of me!"

              "You're welcome."

        • By Brian_K_White 2025-11-270:174 reply

          Some people make noise when they eat with their mouth open. It's not scandalous, it's just ignorant and gross. It's always an utter clod that is so unaware of themselves just smucking and squelching away on their open mouth full of gloopy donut muck.

          It's not a virtue to be so unselfcounscious. It's not about being ashamed or inhibited or in pathological denial of biological realities. It's about being fucking minimally considerate and just the tiniest bit self-aware.

          • By simianparrot 2025-11-276:52

            Tell that to my asshole. I’ve tried training it to be silent on the shitter for near 40 years but it fails more often than not.

          • By Loughla 2025-11-271:21

            I had a friend growing up who ate with his mouth open. I fucking hated it. But he had problems breathing through his nose due to something with his soft tissue in his throat. So, you learn to ignore it.

          • By snypher 2025-11-271:481 reply

            It would be virtuous to not judge others based on some small thing they do that annoys you, just as you do things that annoy others.

            • By yunwal 2025-11-272:33

              Actually what’s virtuous is just having a fucking door on the bathroom

          • By foxglacier 2025-11-270:272 reply

            I agree but only because that's the standard for our culture so somebody not doing it is probably being disrespectful which means it becomes offensive to others because it normally only comes from people with some sort of negative feeling or inconsiderateness for those around them. In some cultures, noisy eating is the proper way and shows you're enjoying the food. Same goes for clothes, toilet sounds, etc. It's a lot more repulsive seeing a human poo on the street than a dog even though it's not fundamentally very different.

        • By m463 2025-11-270:10

          But it is a good argument for privacy.

    • By mitthrowaway2 2025-11-270:131 reply

      I recently stayed at a hotel in San Francisco that had no bathroom door. I'd even upgraded to the queen size room specifically because their layout map showed a door while the smaller rooms did not. I was pretty annoyed by that. (Edit: Despite being a single traveller. I think doors are important for hygiene).

      Happy to see someone is trying to fix this trend.

      • By eru 2025-11-271:074 reply

        How are doors important for hygiene?

        • By ssl-3 2025-11-271:543 reply

          In my part of the US, a lot of our "old" houses were built before indoor plumbing.

          So when the plumbing was installed, obviously some went to the kitchen. And the bathroom, which previously didn't exist, was often an addition to (or a division from) the kitchen -- with a doorway [with a door] betwixt the kitchen and the bathroom -- because that made the plumbing easier.

          IIRC, that particular feature disqualifies the home for financing with both the VA and with HUD for reasons of hygiene.

          So by extension: According to VA and HUD, hygiene requires at least one door and at least one additional room of separation between the place where you shit and the place where you eat.

          • By ghaff 2025-11-274:261 reply

            I assume my house in the Northeast didn't originally have indoor plumbing. The bathroom is upstairs; I assume it was carved off from one of the upstairs bedrooms or it was a closet/storage area of some sort. It's been redone a couple times since I moved in and it does have a door.

            • By ssl-3 2025-11-2710:481 reply

              That's not so unusual, either.

              My present house (in Ohio) also has its singular bathroom upstairs. The bathroom is on top of the kitchen. Neither room is an addition -- as far as I can tell, it has always used this basic layout.

              According to aerial photos, it was built in the 1950s. It resides within a small but very industrialized city that was positively booming at the time the home was constructed; it definitely included plumbing from the beginning.

              A previous house in the same city was definitely built before indoor plumbing. It was even built before separate kitchens were considered normal or necessary. It originally had only two rooms downstairs, and two rooms upstairs. Heating and cooking would have been provided by a central stove (probably wood-fired, and with no ductwork).

              While it was stick-built, it was initially only a step or two above a fairly primitive log cabin in function.

              By the time I lived there, it also had a kitchen, laundry, downstairs bathroom, another upstairs bedroom, and subgrade basement added. The bathroom was part of the kitchen addition, and one entered the bathroom through the kitchen.

              I've actually lived in three houses so far that were initially constructed like that -- with two rooms downstairs, and two upstairs.

              Only one of those 3 had a bathroom that was separated from the kitchen by a room, and that one was perhaps the oldest: The floor joists for the first level were made from logs that were hewn flat[ish] on the top by hand, and that still hard bark on them. For that house, the bathroom was its own small separate single-story addition that jutted off of the side of [what had become] the dining room.

              The house I grew up in was larger and much more-nicely finished in terms of things like woodworking and trim, but was also very old by US norms. It was built before both plumbing and electricity, though it included gas lighting (!) in every room. The partial basement, kitchen and downstairs bathroom were additions, but the bathroom connected to two different common rooms even though it was physically adjacent to the kitchen. There also was an upstairs bathroom, and which was created by taking part of the master bedroom and making it into a hallway while the the original bedroom closet became the bathroom (with a small and somewhat haphazard roof extension where the bathtub was).

              Anyway: The point, other than that old houses present interesting evolutions, is that old houses often (but not always) had bathrooms attached to the kitchen -- and that we usually seek to keep them separated these days in newer construction, at least in the US.

              I've also lived in a few different apartment buildings (many of which were "old", but all of which were initially intended to be apartment buildings), and all of those bathrooms were separated from the kitchen by a hallway.

              And all of these bathrooms had doors. I don't understand the questioning of bathroom doors that I see here in some comments -- at all.

              (I shall spare at this time the details of the house I once owned that had been an old farmhouse (with no gas, no lights, and no plumbing), and which had subsequently been divided into a triplex that contained a total of 17 distinct rooms. I could probably write a whole book about that place.)

              • By ghaff 2025-11-2716:28

                My house is early 1800s (old farmhouse). Yes, the bathroom is pretty much right above the kitchen/pantry presumably because that was the most straightforward way to pipe it. Not even sure what is original and what was probably installed/built around 1900 or so.

                No real opportunity to put in another bathroom and I've talked with contractors. You could squeeze a really minimalist half bath in the pantry but then you lose the pantry and the washer/dryer need to go somewhere and the basement isn't really a good idea for various reasons.

          • By eru 2025-11-272:081 reply

            In Singapore (of all places) many apartments have one of their toilets right next to the kitchen. Seems to be fine.

            • By mitthrowaway2 2025-11-273:141 reply

              But they have a door, right?

              • By eru 2025-11-275:581 reply

                Yes, of course, we are not barbarians.

                (Just to be clear: I think doors on bathrooms are great. I just don't think they really contribute to hygiene or health--apart from mental health.)

                • By lazide 2025-11-278:581 reply

                  Airborne fecal contamination from flushing is likely reduced by having a barrier

                  • By eru 2025-11-282:541 reply

                    Like a toilet lid?

                    • By lazide 2025-11-289:43

                      It helps. Know what also helps more? A second barrier after that one.

                      I’m sure a third would also help even more (front door of the house?) but most people consider that a bit excessive for daily use within their own domicile.

          • By kelnos 2025-11-277:34

            That wouldn't apply to hotel rooms, though, as most do not have kitchens in the guest rooms.

        • By kgeist 2025-11-271:442 reply

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_plume

          A door provides at least some kind of physical barrier.

          • By ThomasMidgley 2025-11-277:131 reply

            Only if everybody is closing the door. If I use a hotel room alone, I never close the bathroom door.

            • By drowsspa 2025-11-278:411 reply

              You don't close the door when doing number two in your own home either?

              • By eru 2025-11-279:122 reply

                If you are alone at home, why would you?

                • By drowsspa 2025-11-2711:502 reply

                  If you don't feel disgusted by the idea of your poop particles being ejected and spreading around, I don't think anyone can instill it in you

                  • By vacuity 2025-11-2716:113 reply

                    How much does the door help? I think generally people don't follow hygiene to the point that particles anywhere in the bathroom won't get tracked out of the bathroom. Don't get me started on people who touch their phones while eating...

                    • By ssl-3 2025-11-2723:14

                      I'm writing this while sitting on the toilet, and I'm thinking about making a sandwich.

                    • By drowsspa 2025-11-3015:21

                      A bit, and it's not like it's too much of a hassle

                    • By eru 2025-11-282:55

                      People often keep their toothbrushes in their bathroom..

                  • By tommit 2025-11-2712:251 reply

                    tbh if I start worrying about poop particles in my day to day, I fear I'm one step closer to becoming a germaphobe. plus I feel if that's something that truly worries you, you'd start taking showers after each poop because clearly you will bring some poop particles with you when you leave anyway.

                    maybe this thread will end up being some kind of revelation, but I very much agree with the person you replied to. If I'm alone, I'm not bothered and the door may as well stay open

                    • By drowsspa 2025-11-3015:20

                      Sure, you can't get rid of everything. But you can mitigate a few things, and closing the door is such an easy fix... There's worrying too much, and there's not worrying enough

                • By kgeist 2025-11-279:54

                  So that poop particles didn't spread beyond the bathroom.

          • By eru 2025-11-272:022 reply

            Have you considered closing the toilet lid?

            • By kgeist 2025-11-272:191 reply

              >A 2024 study showed evidence that even closing the lid may still lead to small viral particles escaping through gaps under the lid, resulting in viral cross contamination of the air and surfaces in a washroom

              • By eru 2025-11-272:581 reply

                Viruses don't last long outside the body.

                So in a hotel bathroom, you'd only be exposed to viruses from people you already share a room (or even bed) with.

                • By d3Xt3r 2025-11-275:421 reply

                  > Viruses don't last long outside the body.

                  SARS-CoV-2 would like to have a word with you (it can last as long as 28 days on smooth surfaces).

                  • By eru 2025-11-276:001 reply

                    You can't get covid from contact infection. Or at least it's really, really hard. We could dig up studies for that, but you can also look at how food delivery which exploded in popularity all over the world during the lockdowns apparently did not transmit Covid.

                    • By flowerthoughts 2025-11-277:08

                      You're moving the goal posts. Your assertion was that viruses don't last long outside the body. GP shot down that argument. You have not refuted their argument.

                      Even without being that strict about the discussion, I think GP was making the point that viruses can survive for many days, so stating that "you'd only be exposed to viruses from people you already share a room (or even bed) with." is an argument that requires some elaboration.

            • By bjourne 2025-11-2718:13

              Many American toilets don't have lids.

        • By throwawayffffas 2025-11-272:371 reply

          Flushing generates aerosols that travel.

          • By eru 2025-11-272:582 reply

            Have you considered closing the lid?

            • By foobarchu 2025-11-273:321 reply

              Have you just been trolling this thread for a few hours posting this copypasta to anyone who thinks not having bathroom doors is gross? This is the third or fourth one of these I've seen, and that's a pretty weird battle to fight, is all I'm saying.

              • By eru 2025-11-276:01

                Oh, I agree that bathroom doors are great. And it's "gross" not to have them. Yes.

                It's just that I don't believe they contribute to hygiene or health.

            • By mitthrowaway2 2025-11-273:131 reply

              Yes, but I've also considered the previous guest not closing the lid.

              • By eru 2025-11-276:161 reply

                What makes you think they closed the door?

                • By ssl-3 2025-11-2723:17

                  When there is a door, I don't know if they closed it or not. I'm not their mom. Maybe they did; maybe they did not.

                  But when there is no door, I can say with certainty that it was never closed because it doesn't even exist.

        • By dboreham 2025-11-271:442 reply

          Little pieces of shit can fly through the air quite far when the wc is flushed. As a former British person I had no idea about this, but was brought up to speed by US family members..

          Update: this is why you should put the lid down to flush. But put it back up again after because <reasons>

          • By eru 2025-11-272:041 reply

            The steady state of my toilet is closed. As my mother used to say: 'This ain't an open plan toilet.'

            (Of course, she said it in German, so she complained about 'Wohnklo' in analogy with a 'Wohnküche' which is the German word for an open-plan kitchen.)

            • By prawn 2025-11-276:301 reply

              So, would you state that you generally advocate for hinged surfaces in bathrooms, and being able to use them to adequately close/shield a larger space from a smaller space? ;)

              • By eru 2025-11-279:13

                Doors are great. I never doubted that. I'd want a proper door on my bathroom.

                But I'm under no illusion that it would help with health or hygiene. Perhaps with mental health; the door is mostly there for social reasons.

          • By shmeeed 2025-11-2713:55

            >But put it back up again after because <reasons>

            What reasons?

    • By jampa 2025-11-270:021 reply

      Me neither, but I remember that when searching for hotels and Airbnbs, I only filter for hotels that are 8+/10 domestically and 9+/10 internationally, which filters out many of the hotels that have those kinds of issues (and score doesn't affect budget much).

      • By netsharc 2025-11-270:522 reply

        Booking.com has this grade inflation issue. if something is shit but you rate everything else fairly (things like location, staff friendliness, etc), the final score will be 7 or 8.. in summary: I had a lousy experience, 7/10!

        It takes some experience to realize that a place graded 7.x probably has serious issues.

        • By cperciva 2025-11-274:311 reply

          The problem here is that "mean" is a poor average. For hotels, if you're rating in 10 different categories, you really want a single 0/10 to bring the overall score down by way more than one point.

          The opposite situation can also occur. At my university, entrance scholarships were decided a few years ago based on students' aggregate score across 25ish dimensions (I can't remember the exact number) where students were each rated 1-4. Consequently a student who was absolutely exceptional in one area would be beaten out by a student who was marginally above average in all the other areas. I suggested that rather than scoring 1-4 the scores should be 1/2/5/25 instead.

          • By zejn 2025-11-2717:54

            The problem here begins even before the mathematical issue - it's that web sites that live from listing bookings have an incentive to offer a way to delete reviews that are not in line with what the owner wants to see.

        • By rsynnott 2025-11-2711:091 reply

          Honestly, the ratings on those sites are essentially useless anyway, because people are bad at reviewing.

          I generally sample the lowest rating written reviews, to check if people are complaining about real stuff, or are just confused. For instance, if a hotel doesn't have a bar, some of the negative reviews will usually be about how the hotel doesn't have a bar; these can be safely ignored as having been written by idiots (it is not like the hotel is hiding the fact that it doesn't have a bar).

          Occasionally some of the positive reviews are similarly baffling. Was recently booking a hotel in Berlin in January, and the top review's main positive comment about the hotel was that it had heating. Well, yeah, I mean, you'd hope so. I can only assume that the reviewer was a visitor from the 19th century.

          • By sgerenser 2025-11-2712:35

            The worst thing I’ve found with positive reviews is ones that are obviously fake/incentivized. I looked up reviews recently for a hotel that I used to stay at a lot for work, and had gone way downhill with many issues (broken ACs, mold, leaking ceilings, etc.). I was curious if they ever fixed their problems. I was at first surprised that they had a fairly positive overall review rating. But looking deeper, the many negative reviews were just crowded out by obviously fake reviews. Dead giveaways: every single one named multiple people by name. “Dave at the front desk was just so friendly and welcoming! Barbara the housecleaner did a fantastic job cleaning. And Steve the bartender just made my day! I love this hotel! 5 stars!” (Almost) nobody reviewing a hotel for real does that.

    • By misja111 2025-11-2710:05

      Wow I've only stayed in about 100 but have seen several. There are several variations:

      - bathrooms with glass walls but with (glass) door

      - bathrooms with walls but without door

      - bathrooms with partially open walls, sometimes even with door :P

      The worst was when I was once sharing a room with my daughter and the bathroom was one with glass walls and no shower curtain. We decided to schedule our toilet visits and showers so the other one would not be in the room.

    • By rsynnott 2025-11-2710:571 reply

      I've been in hotels with no bathroom door, but it has pretty much always been in tiny one-person rooms, where realistically there are not going to be two people in the room because they _would not fit_. I don't have a particular problem with it there.

      (In that case, the reason it's done is fairly clearly that to accommodate a door they'd have to make the room bigger.)

      • By ralferoo 2025-11-2711:05

        To be honest, those are the rooms that I hope would have a bathroom door so that you don't end up with water everywhere outside the bathroom.

    • By cogman10 2025-11-273:102 reply

      Reading this thread, it seems like it's a trend with very fancy hotels?

      I usually stay at chain hotels and this is never really a problem.

      • By zamadatix 2025-11-273:31

        I run into this barn door style decently often at run of the mill Marriotts and Hiltons across the US. It seems like the chances are higher the newer the construction.

      • By rsynnott 2025-11-2711:11

        I've seen it at cheap hotels (EasyHotel and similar) but generally only in tiny single-person rooms (of the "single bed and just enough space to walk past it to the bathroom, which is the size of an airplane toilet" variety), where it's basically _fine_.

    • By abustamam 2025-11-276:06

      I've stayed in probably 15 hotels in the US in the past 15 years and at least one of them had either no bathroom door, or a glass door, or a bathroom door and a shower that had a glass door.

      My sister shared with me a home listing that had a bedroom and basically a toilet in a closet, and no door — just a curtain for privacy. That was weird.

    • By etskinner 2025-11-274:542 reply

      You've never seen a sliding door rather than a fully closing one? That's one of the types of doors that the author is complaining about

      • By happyopossum 2025-11-276:091 reply

        The author of TFA doesn’t really mention sliders at all - just harps on about “no doors”.

        • By AmbroseBierce 2025-11-2711:13

          The author does point out glass doors being an issue that he asks about.

      • By rjdj377dhabsn 2025-11-275:23

        Ah yes, quite a few. Not great, but definitely better than literally no door.

    • By aiisjustanif 2025-11-280:56

      The last 3 JW Marriotts had open shower rooms connected to bedroom, no door, just a curtain [1].

      [1]: https://www.google.com/travel/hotels/Houston%2C%20TX/entity/...

    • By grishka 2025-11-2710:18

      The weirdest one I stayed at so far was a hotel with tiny rooms in central London which had the upper half of the wall separating the bathroom made out of the kind of glass that becomes opaque with electricity. The switch to control that was outside of the bathroom, of course.

      And I don't even travel that much, around once a year on average.

    • By tetris11 2025-11-270:274 reply

      ALoft London Excel hotel. Fancy as hell, no bathroom doors.

      You shit behind your bed, I kid you not

      • By potato3732842 2025-11-270:293 reply

        Well that explains why I've never seen this trend.

        I stick to rooms with two digits in front of the decimal.

        • By Symbiote 2025-11-271:261 reply

          In London that will get you a different set of problems. Like gaps in the window frame, and a damp smell in the bathroom without ventilation.

          • By bregma 2025-11-2711:49

            Ah, just like home.

        • By rsynnott 2025-11-2711:12

          My most recent encounter with no-bathroom-door was in a hotel in London that was under 100 pounds a night. Though the room was so tiny that I'd honestly be happy enough to give them a pass on it.

      • By ghaff 2025-11-274:29

        Post-Sheraton acquisition, I find the Marriott branding can be a bit random. Still stay in them a lot, but I've had a couple of relatively mediocre Aloft stays of late.

      • By squigz 2025-11-272:16

        $200+ a night and it doesn't come with a bathroom door?

        This is why I just stay home.

      • By decimalenough 2025-11-272:52

        Uhh, Aloft is in Marriott's "Select" bucket along with Fairfield and Courtyard. They have some shiny touches that let them claim the "Distinctive" label, but are basically just motels.

        https://www.hotel-development.marriott.com/brands

    • By scuff3d 2025-11-271:181 reply

      Ditto. I've never seen this before. They always have at least those sliding doors.

      • By etskinner 2025-11-274:52

        The author of the site considers sliding doors not a real door

    • By 762236 2025-11-279:12

      I'm currently in a room with frosted glass for the shower and bathroom, with my girlfriend and her daughter. I guess it helps with lighting?

    • By conductr 2025-11-271:22

      I see it all the time. I actually don’t have an issue with it though. I’m usually alone in the room, or with my family and we all know that we poop. Not that we don’t respect privacy but when circumstance arise, we can bunk together in close quarters without it being super weird.

    • By zeroonetwothree 2025-11-270:161 reply

      Really? I stayed in far fewer and maybe 10% have no doors. And then another 30% have no locks or doors that don’t close all the way (barn doors)

      • By rjdj377dhabsn 2025-11-272:202 reply

        Yes, not one. I just googled for pictures of hotel bathrooms without doors out of curiosity and mostly see sliding and frosted glass doors. Is that what people are talking about?

        • By elboru 2025-11-275:18

          I’m as confused as you

        • By prawn 2025-11-276:381 reply

          I remember hotel in China several years ago where the bathroom had a door, but the wall between bathroom and sleeping area was unfrosted glass with no blind. Idiotic design trend.

          • By hulitu 2025-11-278:03

            > where the bathroom had a door, but the wall between bathroom and sleeping area was unfrosted glass with no blind.

            Just like in Windows, where the window has a border, but it is 1 px wide.

            > Idiotic design trend.

            Maybe some UX designers found work in other areas.

  • By meisel 2025-11-270:219 reply

    While we’re at it, bring back shower doors/curtains. It’s such a pain having this huge puddle outside the shower just because they decided it shouldn’t have one. It’s not so common to be missing one in US hotels, but it’s common internationally.

    Edit: apparently the virus has spread, and some US hotels now don’t have them

    • By danilocesar 2025-11-273:084 reply

      I was talking about this with my wife the other day: Newer hotel showers are "Hostile Architecture" disguised as modern design. They add those little annoying details with the intention of lowering their water bill. They want showering to be slightly discomfort, so you shower faster without noticing. It's a feature, not a bug.

      • By Tor3 2025-11-277:10

        Some years ago I stayed in a hotel outside London, and they apparently had a policy of saving as much as possible on soap bars.. so they used some horrible high-pH soap, very cheap looking. But it was nearly impossible to rinse it off.. took me fifteen minutes of hot water usage after I was, or should have been done with the shower. Whatever they saved in soap they lost many times over in water and even more in energy use.

        And in a tourist place on an island farther south the room had an information binder which also asked that you shouldn't waste water as there weren't many natural resources for water there. However, the hot water came from the far end of the narrow, rectangular-shaped long hotel, and the pipes were outside and weren't insulated, they were completely bare. Whenever you turned off the hot water for a few minutes it would take some five minutes to get it back, water running, as the pipes got cold right away (there are many other usages for hot water than just using the shower - the rooms had kitchens). So of course all the guests used many times more water than they would have needed, not to mention the wasted heat. Totally baffling.

      • By trymas 2025-11-277:02

        Also they probably save on cleaning costs.

      • By pjc50 2025-11-2712:51

        A more widespread piece of hostile hotel shower architecture is unlabelled controls. You need trial and error to work out which way is more water, and more heat.

      • By atakan_gurkan 2025-11-277:071 reply

        I first thought this is nonsense, but then it made a lot sense. It might be an exception to the rule "never attribute to malice, that which can be explained by stupidity."

        • By georgefrowny 2025-11-2710:49

          > never attribute to malice, that which can be explained by stupidity

          This maxim fails as soon as the malicious realise people will apply it to them.

    • By pnw 2025-11-271:013 reply

      Denmark loves their 'wet' bathrooms in hotels, no shower door and a drain in the center of the room. I spent a lot of time in CPH and would stay at the Marriott because it was one of the few with American style bathrooms.

      • By array_key_first 2025-11-271:032 reply

        Europeans are good at building a lot of things, but I will never understand the "cosplay a small flood" style bathrooms.

        It's just... inefficient? Why wouldn't we want to catch the water closest to where it comes out?

        • By randycupertino 2025-11-271:12

          It's to save money and labor time so housekeeping can just mop it all down easier and faster without having to clean a separate bathtub and no having to clean any shower doors.

        • By jonstewart 2025-11-271:232 reply

          See also: washing machines. If you have three pairs of underwear and all day, Europe’s washing machines have you covered. Otherwise, you’re SOL.

          • By tgsovlerkhgsel 2025-11-278:273 reply

            I've never really run into capacity problems with European washing machines, but the run times are definitely real. Most of them have a well-hidden faster mode. Still not as fast as a US machine on fast mode, but not the mandatory-default-by-law three-hour program.

            Which would be even longer than 3h if some EU bureaucrat didn't realize that making the default unacceptably long for everyone will result in nobody using it.

            • By rsynnott 2025-11-2711:23

              > Most of them have a well-hidden faster mode

              My shiny new (2025) Bosch washing machine has a big button on the front which switches from the default 3 hour programme (for 40 degree wash) to 1hr 30m. Like, it's not very _well_ hidden :)

              Interestingly, the 3 hour programme isn't really a 3 hour programme. If you use it, the timer will generally start at 3 hours and drop to an hour or so after 20 minutes. I have no idea what the heuristic is, and the manual is silent on the matter.

            • By seanmcdirmid 2025-11-278:372 reply

              Isn’t this mostly drying time and the fact that hardly any driers in Europe are vented (so either heat pump based or condensation)? Or is this the uses less water type washing machines? Europe tends to have higher rates on water and electricity to make efficiency worth while.

              My Bosch dishwasher takes 3 hours I guess due to efficiency, it seems reasonable. I didn’t go with a European washer dryer combo though (my laundry room has a vent and I’ve heard that heat pump tech still isn’t good enough).

              • By rsynnott 2025-11-2711:271 reply

                > my laundry room has a vent and I’ve heard that heat pump tech still isn’t good enough

                Heat pump dryers are in a slightly weird place in that they're boring old tech in Europe (they've been common for over a decade), and exciting new tech in the US. This means that dryers made for US preferences (physically larger, either three phase or <1500W, etc) are generally first or second models (and thus unreliable) while those made for European preferences are mature designs (and thus reliable).

                • By seanmcdirmid 2025-11-2717:571 reply

                  I thought Europe used condensation and heat pump tech was still a new thing? Ok, 1997 with wide adoption around 2007 according to Google. I really wanted to give it a try, but with a vent right there it just didn’t seem worth it.

                  • By rsynnott 2025-11-2718:351 reply

                    Really depends on how expensive your electricity is; a modern heat pump dryer consumes about 1kWh to dry an 8kg load, vs 2-3kWh for either vented or conventional condenser. Though, also depends on what's available to you and at what cost; my impression is that decent heat pump dryers are still very expensive in the US. My fairly high end Bosch one cost about 550eur this year; looking at Bosch's US website the roughly equivalent US model seems to cost $1500, somehow. That's around what they cost here 10-15 years ago.

                    The other advantage of heat pump dryers is that they operate at lower temperatures than the other types (so damage clothes less); on the negative side, they're slower.

                    • By seanmcdirmid 2025-11-2718:441 reply

                      Electricity is cheap here, 12 cents/KwH. I more liked the not ruining clothes aspect and not using the vent means I can get the unit closer to the wall. But I was worried about the smell complaints, my wife is really strict on that, also we have a combo so we can’t pipeline loads anymore. The drawback is that only Samsung makes a vented combo, an Samsung doesn’t have the best reputation. Heat pump was cheaper than vented in a combo at least, but only by 1-2 hundred bucks.

              • By tgsovlerkhgsel 2025-11-278:431 reply

                No, this is just about washing machines, not washer-dryers or doing both in sequence.

                Due to ecodesign legislation, I would assume that all machines that can be legally sold in the EU would count as "uses less water" in the US.

                The dishwashers are another can of worms. My last one had an EU and a non-EU program, and you quickly learned to pick the "non-efficient" one if you actually wanted clean dishes.

                • By ruszki 2025-11-2710:321 reply

                  My experience with dishwashers is that there are bad and good ones regardless of country. I had terrible and great dishwashers in the US, Australia, and Europe (basically in all countries there). The same with washing machines.

                  • By seanmcdirmid 2025-11-2717:58

                    My Bosch is slow but the results are always good. I rarely resort to the quick program.

            • By veeti 2025-11-2710:37

              Thankfully it is just a matter of choosing the "Cotton" program on the dial, not the "Cotton (eco)" one.

          • By trymas 2025-11-277:051 reply

            What do you mean?

            • By tgsovlerkhgsel 2025-11-278:40

              EU ecodesign rules require washing machines to meet certain low energy/water consumption standards in the "default" program. Washing machine designers implement this by making these programs ridiculously long. The EU has now capped them at 3h because they realized that if these programs grow even longer nobody will use them.

              Even regular programs in front-loading machines (at least in the European countries I've been to, these make up the absolute vast majority of machines) are longer than typical top loaders. Top loaders are faster but put more wear on the clothes and use more energy and water. A regular, "non-EU" cycle will typically take around 2h. The EU one will typically max out the 3h limit.

      • By thaumasiotes 2025-11-271:152 reply

        > Denmark loves their 'wet' bathrooms in hotels, no shower door and a drain in the center of the room.

        If you're renting an apartment in Shanghai, a cheap one will have a door to the bathroom, but the shower won't be a separate fixture. The entire bathroom functions as the shower (the hose or fixed piping is mounted on a wall), and there's a drain in the floor.

        A more recent apartment will have a shower installation that is, say, separate from the toilet.

        • By seanmcdirmid 2025-11-272:22

          Higher end apartments will. Even newer apartments in Beijing will have wet rooms at some price point. Remember that the apartments are built in China unrenovated, and even new owners of second-hand properties are expected to redo everything from a concrete box, so it is 100% up to the landlord/owner on how the bathroom is done, and I’ve seen it done many many different ways.

        • By shellfishgene 2025-11-276:55

          This is standard in all of southeast Asia and often the middle east.

      • By Symbiote 2025-11-271:311 reply

        The drain should be within the shower area, with all the bathroom floor draining that way.

        If it's in the centre of the room it's been done very badly. I've never seen this in Denmark, even in some very old apartment buildings.

        • By seanmcdirmid 2025-11-272:20

          I’ve lived in a newish apartment where the wet room drain was in the center. It didn’t seem weird at all. There wasn’t much separation between the shower and toilet and sink, though.

    • By nlh 2025-11-270:353 reply

      I’ve never understood this - it’s maddening. I grew up in the US and the bare minimum was always at least a shower curtain (inner and outer), and if not that, a proper door.

      Why on earth did this half-pane of glass become standard in so many places. It’s completely ineffective and ends up with water everywhere.

      • By Symbiote 2025-11-271:05

        The bathroom needs to be destined properly.

        My shower in Denmark has no door, and no curtain, but the splashes don't reach very far away, and aren't in the way of anywhere I'd want to walk after showering anyway.

        I've often seen hotel bathrooms in other countries that get this wrong. In the worst case, splashed water from the open shower runs all across the bathroom, and in one case (a Grand Hyatt!) into the main room carpet.

        Did the designers not know water flows down?

      • By orev 2025-11-271:061 reply

        The half pane of glass is appropriate in warm parts of the world where you want the heat to be removed as quickly as possible. I suspect some hotel executive thought it looked cool in Miami, then made it the standard for the whole chain.

        • By Arainach 2025-11-271:36

          It's not even appropriate there. Ventilation should be determined by the fan, not the aperture.

          Even in Miami, I don't want the entire bathroom floor flooded, and I want to be able to close the curtain/door and increase the humidity in the shower.

      • By parpfish 2025-11-275:341 reply

        i hate it when the set up the half-pane in such a way that you can't adjust the water temp/pressure without being directly under the shower head.

        when dealing with a new set of shower controls, i like to stand to the side and figure out what's happening and whether i need to let it warm up rather than stepping into the firing lane and taking whatever it throws at me

    • By frank_nitti 2025-11-270:43

      Every single place I’ve stayed in Europe had no shower door, and nothing to prevent the water from spilling out. Occasionally I get lucky and the floor is constructed sufficiently concave so at least the water flows into the drain

    • By dgaudet 2025-11-270:39

      it has become unfortunately common in marriott hotels in the (western) US, specifically the current generation of residence inn; and i think i've seen it in new towneplace suites as well. it's entirely a form over function decision: you end up with cool air wafting in while you shower, and you end up with a wet bathroom floor (including a soaked floormat).

      the same hotels have a kitchen sink tap which has hot/cold selected on the vertical axis, with no indication of which direction is hot/cold.

      form over function. so annoying.

    • By corywright 2025-11-271:51

      This is one reason I'm staying at more Hilton hotels than Marriott brands these days. Having a wet bathroom floor is high on my list of pet peeves, enough so that I'll abandon lifetime elite status with Marriott to stay at hotels with doors on the showers.

    • By btbuildem 2025-11-273:041 reply

      Shower curtains are very much a North American thing (well, US and Canada at least). It's a cultural difference you're seeing not a weird hotel trend.

      • By tallanvor 2025-11-2712:20

        That's an overly broad generalization. Shower curtains are pretty common in Norway, and I've found them in hotels all over Europe and even one in Japan.

    • By crazygringo 2025-11-2717:44

      I assume curtains are just far more labor to keep clean? They build up soap scum on a daily basis, and you can't just quickly wipe them down like tile or glass. A glass shower door just feels so much more hygienic.

      But I'm with you about the confusion around showers that don't even have a door. Never seen that in the US. But abroad, I truly don't get it.

    • By jasondigitized 2025-11-273:54

      But before that, for the love of god, solve the automatic slamming door problem. I understand we need heavy doors for fire safety but please implement soft close with dampers.

HackerNews