
Why Do American Houses Have So Many Bathrooms? - prostoalex
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/why-do-american-houses-have-so-many-bathrooms/605338/
======
as-j
I've lived in a 1 bathroom house in the US and i said never again. It was one
of the first things I looked at when buying a house overseas as well, and it
served me well.

Problems with a single bathroom which includes the toilet:

If you have kids, everyone is fighting over a scarce resource in the morning.
Showering/shaving/etc all takes time and you're all leaving in a narrow
window.

If you don't have kids the people buying the house may, and they will care. It
makes selling the house so much harder.

The bathroom _must_ be cleaned to be guest ready, and they get to accidentally
snoop through everything. I love my ensuite for this reason. (and if you don't
care about it being clean, your partner probably does)

If you have the room, why not have an extra bathroom? So much easier to build
in new construction than add later.

When I lived in Australia the toilet was in a separate room, so the 4 bedroom
house worked ok with only 2 bathrooms. The toilet wasn't blocked/held hostage
by someone taking a shower. (washing your hands on the other hand...) But this
also helped sell the place, since with 2 full bathrooms you can have
kids/house mates/etc.

My current house has 3 baths with 4 bedrooms. One is in the in-law suite,
which I airbnb, so we have 2 on the main floor. It makes 2 baths for 3
bedrooms. This feels like a nice "adult" house. We have a spare rooms for
house guests, and they have a full bathroom they can use. This means we can
host friends/family for days/weeks and we can be annoyed by their personality,
instead of annoyed fighting over a bathroom. ;)

Of all the weird things in the US, a house having "too many" bathrooms really
doesn't seem like a problem.

~~~
matwood
I grew up in a 1 bathroom house until I was 14 or so. 1 bathroom for a family
of 4 was rough. If anything ever broke (which it did because the house was
old), and it's a full on emergency. Having to drive 15 minutes to use bathroom
and take a shower at a family members was a common occurrence.

My current house has 3 full bathrooms which is really too many for just my
wife and I. But, the extra bathroom has come in handy as we have remodeled
over time.

~~~
c2f46833
Friendly, unnecessary, pedantry: "for just my wife and me".

"I" is used when it is in subject position. Occasionally, the rule is a little
bit obscure ("He does it better than I", where the subject position is
implicit ("better than I do it")).

This grammar error is becoming very common even among well-educated writers
and speakers, in the US at least. It must be stopped!

~~~
WWLink
Probably because of the far more atrocious "me and my wife" grammar error.

Edit: Wait, "for my wife and I" was a grammatical error?! The fuck? Fuck the
rules! That's a stupid rule.

~~~
u801e
Would you say "for me" or "for I"?

------
CrazyStat
> But the U.S. wasn’t always so profusely bathroomed. In the past half
> century, the number of bathrooms per person in America has _doubled_. “We
> went from two people per bathroom to one person per bathroom in the last 50
> years,” says Jeff Tucker, an economist at Zillow. “That’s amazing, because
> postwar America was already rich and booming, and we just, you know, kept
> building more bathrooms.” Across the country, bathrooms are
> multiplying—including in apartments and condos—even as American families and
> households are getting smaller.

The article misses a major point here which explains much (though not all) of
the trend: household sizes have decreased dramatically in the last 50 years,
and the number of single-person households has increased dramatically. Single-
person households can generally be expected to have at least one bathroom per
person, and small households will generally have higher ratios than large
households.

In 1960 single-person households were about 13% of all households; they have
more than doubled, to about 28% in 2019 [1]. In 1960 the average household
size was about 3.3; in 2019 it was 2.5 [2].

[1]
[https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizat...](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/time-
series/demo/families-and-households/hh-4.pdf)

[2]
[https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizat...](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/time-
series/demo/families-and-households/hh-6.pdf)

~~~
BurningFrog
> _postwar America was already rich and booming,_

It was booming, and it was richer than it ever had been, but it was very poor
by today's standards.

GDP per person in 1950 was 27% of the 2019 level.

And since this _always_ has to be pointed out: That _is_ adjusted for
inflation.

[https://www.multpl.com/us-real-gdp-per-capita/table/by-
year](https://www.multpl.com/us-real-gdp-per-capita/table/by-year)

~~~
re-actor
There's a LOT more to wealth than GDP/person, saying postwar america wasn't
rich is absurd.

~~~
devmunchies
exactly. The economy didn't need to support so many restaurants and food
services when most people cooked at home. People also mostly entertained
themselves or spent time with friends/family. Moving all that to a company or
service will raise the GDP.

~~~
njarboe
Plus childcare and eldercare. Take those and the ones you mention into
account, and GDP/person has probably dropped since the 1950s.

------
flexie
As for bathrooms in modern US inner city apartments, I believe it's mainly
because many bathrooms allow the apartments to be shared by several flatmates.
For the developer, it opens the market to more buyers.

American dwellings are larger than European Union ones for several reasons:

\- Most US homes are new: All over Europe, people live in much older housing
and apartment stock. Go back to 1940, and the US only had a 130 million
population, which typically lived in large families in shared houses. In 1940,
the European population (excluding Russia) was already 420 million. Thus,
whereas the US population has more than doubled since then, the European
population has only increased some 50 percent. This meant construction of far
more dwellings in the US in the large 80 years.

\- Eastern Europe: Eastern Europe has been much poorer than the US during the
last 80 years with people largely living in apartments.

\- Space: The US simply has more space per capita. We are 500 million in the
European Union (for a few days more) in an area half the size of the US.

\- Sprawl: The great US population expansion coincided with the automobile
revolution allowing for people to live in suburbs far from city centers, which
in turn allowed for larger houses.

\- White flight: Europe never had an exodus from city centers comparable to
the US.

\- Materials: Europeans live in brick and mortar houses or concrete buildings.
American houses are made of wood and are cheaper to construct allowing for
larger homes.

~~~
mindthegap
> in an area half the size of the US.

Is that so? Europe seems to have slightly more than 10 million square
kilometers in area and the US slightly less than that. Europe is certainly
more fragmented, but looking at thetruesize.com, one can use a better area
preserving map projection and it seems that Europe has more space.

(I still agree with your points in general though.)

~~~
flexie
The EU (with 500 million people) is around half the size of the US. Europe
including the land outside of the EU is much larger, as it includes vast areas
in the former Soviet Union as well as Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Serbia and
a few other small nations.

~~~
mindthegap
My bad, I was thinking we talked about Europe (and not only the EU).

------
Mtinie
“This type of bath went out of style in Europe for almost a millennium after
the fall of Rome, thanks in part to Dark Age scientists’ developing the very
unscientific idea that bathing in water invites a host of awful diseases into
the body’s pores. For most of the Middle Ages, “most [European] people didn't
wash, or even get wet, if they could help it,” Bryson writes. When John
Wesley, the founder of Methodism, declared that “Cleanliness is next to
Godliness” in a 1778 sermon, he was talking about our garments, not our
armpits.

This is a minor statement within the article but one which hints at shallow
research in some sections. This makes me less confident in the rest of the
conclusions.

Bathing was very common and encouraged during the “Dark Ages”. A few articles
which do a better job than I can covering the hows and whys:

[https://www.medievalists.net/2013/04/did-people-in-the-
middl...](https://www.medievalists.net/2013/04/did-people-in-the-middle-ages-
take-baths/)

[https://www.medievalists.net/2013/04/did-people-in-the-
middl...](https://www.medievalists.net/2013/04/did-people-in-the-middle-ages-
take-baths/)

[http://unusualhistoricals.blogspot.com/2013/01/myths-
misconc...](http://unusualhistoricals.blogspot.com/2013/01/myths-
misconceptions-bathing-in-middle.html?m=1)

~~~
xamuel
It seems like people so often underestimate dark age intelligence, as if
everyone back then just spent their time groping around in mud pits. I'm
curious how extreme you could go (in a Sokal affair kind of sense) and get
away with it. Start a rumor that in the dark ages people bathed in giant tubs
full of chicken blood because they believed it would ward off witches and
prevent their souls from decaying. See how long it takes before columnists are
solemnly citing this well-known dark-age fact.

------
philwelch
My wife and I recently moved into a 2 bed 2 bath apartment, mainly because we
wanted the extra bedroom for an office as she works remotely. I was surprised
to discover that it is so nice not having to share a bathroom—no stress about
getting in each other’s way in the morning, less bathroom clutter—it’s really
nice. I can see how people would get used to it. And then of course having an
extra half bathroom for guests is the obvious next step.

~~~
yibg
Me and my partner just did the same and it was so much better than we thought.
Not longer having to time things in the morning, no longer needing to rush the
other person because you are going to be late, no need to fight over shelf
space.

Downside though is I end up spending more time in the bathroom since no one
else is waiting to use it and it’s a bit of a quiet space.

------
gwbas1c
I just built my house with three bathrooms. ("Two and half," by American
standards.) I almost did four, but I just didn't want to have to scrub another
toilet.

Why three toilets:

The "half bathroom" is by the kitchen, living room, ect. It's just a sink and
toilet. This is the one that, by courtesy, guests use. Because there's no
bath, guests don't see our towels, toothbrushes, and other mess that
accumulates. (No toothpaste stuck in the sink!) We also put prettier fixtures
in there, because it's the one we go in most often.

Then there's a normal bathroom (toilet, sink, and tub) that the kids and
overnight guests can use.

Then we have our master bathroom, attached to the master bedroom, which has a
toilet, shower, and two sinks. (Useful when my wife and I brush our teeth at
the same time.) The point of keeping it attached to the master bedroom is
basically so we don't have to walk around the house in "bedclothes" when we
have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Another thing that this article misses: A lot of people like to loose track of
time reading on the toilet. There's nothing wrong with that when you have
extra toilets in your house.

~~~
davidw
> A lot of people like to loose track of time reading on the toilet.

"If it's urgent, and all the bathrooms are occupied, turn off the wifi"

~~~
darksaints
I firmly believe all workplace bathrooms should be completely Faraday shielded
for this reason.

~~~
duderific
Except when I'm in the bathroom.

------
tzs
For the actual numbers, go to this site [1] which the article cites. It has
XLS files containing stats over time for all kinds of characteristics of
American housing.

Eyeballing the "bathrooms" file, the "bedrooms" file, and the "bathrooms by
bedrooms" file, it looks to me like most of the growth in bathrooms matches
the growth in bedrooms, so maybe the question should be "why do American
houses have so many bedrooms?".

One reason number of bathrooms per person may have gone up on average is
because people have children later. Over the past 50 years average maternal
age at first birth has risen from the low 20s to the high 20s.

So 50 years ago, a young couple would buy a house, and quickly start a family,
lowering the bathrooms per person ratio. Now that couple might by a house,
sized for the family they plan to start, but not start that family for almost
10 years. So for 10 years they are living with a higher bathroom per person
ratio, helping bring up the average.

[1]
[https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/](https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/)

------
paulsutter
When buying rental properties, you always want at least 2 bathrooms because
otherwise a problem with a toilet is an emergency and will get you out of bed
at 2am

~~~
Svip
Do American toilets break that often? I've lived in the same flat for 10
years; one and the same toilet. Never had a problem that made it useless for
unacceptable amount of time.

The only thing that took long to fix, was when it loaded the water slowly. But
that only meant longer waiting between flushing; merely an inconvenience.

~~~
angry_octet
North American toilets are bizarrely complex and seemingly designed to clog.

Cross section : [https://www.maven.co/wp-
content/uploads/2012/07/toilets-00.j...](https://www.maven.co/wp-
content/uploads/2012/07/toilets-00.jpg)

This is because they use a siphon mechanism, which also results in a narrow
diameter pipe. Old style ones use an enormous 14L of water per flush and still
jam.

Other countries use gravity flush which has lower water usage and less
blockages, but forces you to periodically clean the toilet bowl. Personally I
would rather clean than plunge.

This article has a rather biased overview: [https://toiletfound.com/siphonic-
vs-washdown-toilet-which-is...](https://toiletfound.com/siphonic-vs-washdown-
toilet-which-is-better/)

Personally I find US toilets need to be flushed repeatedly because you don't
want to risk a blockage.

~~~
dehrmann
A lot of the complexity you see in that image is the trap. It holds water in
it to prevent sewer/septic gasses from entering the home. Sinks also have
them.

~~~
angry_octet
Both types of toilets have a trap. The complexity is due to the siphon
mechanism.

------
sschueller
What I would like to know is why the America average wash cycle requires
around 40 gallons (151L) of water [1], when my machine in Europe uses around
13 gallons (50L) and a 10 year old one uses 22 gallons (84L).

[1] [https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/06/08/new-california-
wa...](https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/06/08/new-california-water-law-
restrictions-shower-laundry/)

~~~
ComputerGuru
The USA is slowly moving to front-loading washers. The top loaders were water
hogs.

~~~
sjg007
The problem with front loaders are that the rubber gaskets get moldy. You can
get lower water use top losers now.

~~~
Symbiote
If possible, just leave the door and detergent drawer open.

~~~
ComputerGuru
+1 for also mentioning the detergent drawer. That thing is a breeding ground,
I believe many molds thrive off of detergents.

------
thomk
Throughput.

As soon as you have >1 persons, you are going to find the bathroom to be a
bottleneck at some point.

~~~
onetimemanytime
Agree! But what I don't understand is the 8 bedroom, 14 bathroom type of
houses (rich people). I mean what's the point. I agree that you need at least
two bathrooms in a home and max one bathroom for each bedroom...but after
that, what's the point?

Need in the sense that, it improves the quality of life, and it's a worthy
expense.

~~~
misthop
Those houses are designed for entertaining and large parties. Any event hall
that you go to will have at minimum 1 bathroom for each gender with multiple
stalls, 2-6. This is still a home, so they choose not to have stalls in
bathroom setting, hence 6-10 "extra" bathrooms.

Additionally in the very large houses the bed/bath ration doesn't capture the
setting of the bathrooms. There is a house not to far from me that has a
connected indoor pool and that has 3 bathrooms for changing/shower.

(edited)

~~~
onetimemanytime
makes sense. Why not have them, when you can afford them? So your own
bathrooms are not used by the guests...

------
dghughes
The toilet and shower being in the same room is the biggest issue. If someone
is in the shower and someone needs to go to the toilet that's a problem. The
worst is in the morning with homes where more than two people are living.

From what I understand many in the UK, European countries have separate rooms
for toilet and bath.

------
nradov
Due to a water leak and repairs my family of 4 has temporarily gone from 2.5
bathrooms to 1. It's miserable when everyone needs to go at once. Plus guests
now have to come upstairs to use a toilet.

Extra bathrooms are absolutely worth the cost.

~~~
alkonaut
Most people with a family of four or a 3 bedroom place would have 2 baths (or
often 1 proper bath and one toilet without shower/bath) in Europe too. What I
find a bit strange is the "4 bedroom / 4 bathroom" thing. Bathroom 3/4 seems a
bit over the top.

I imagine it's because 1-2 of those would be ensuite to one or more of the
bigger bedrooms and/or that one or more aren't full baths.

~~~
pacaro
I used to own a three bedroom suburban townhouse that had 3½ baths. Each
bedroom had a walk-in closet and en-suite bathroom. It definitely made the
properties (this was a 10 unit condominium) attractive for people who wanted
roommates

------
alkonaut
I have a normal European detatched house with 2 bathrooms. I find that
stressful and expensive considering the cost of renovation. Say you do it
every 15 years or so. (Yes I realize it would last longer of course, probably
want to do it after 15 years or less, especially if you plan on selling). The
going rate for bathroom renovation here is $12-15k for small or cheap standard
rebuilds, up to $40-50k for large or higher standard jobs. Normal standard and
normal size is probably $25-30k. For most people this is a years' pay after
taxes. If I had 4 bathrooms I would have just doubled my cost.

~~~
ubermonkey
Why would you renovate your bathroom so often?

~~~
alkonaut
The design life is probably 20-25 so it's not much different.

Or turn the argument around: would one rather have 2 bathrooms with an average
age of 7.5 (15 years interval for renovation) or 4 bathrooms with an average
age of 15 (30 years lifespan)?

The house with the 4 bathrooms in worse condition would be a worth a lot less
money on the market than one with two bathrooms in better condition.

The cheapest option is of course having 2 bathrooms but staying with long
intervals for remodeling. That's where I am now, but as both are pushing 13
yers now it's kind of stressing as they'll both "come up for renewal" at the
same time soon.

But yes, living without 80's tiles is something I very much imagine paying a
lot of money for.

~~~
cptskippy
> Or turn the argument around: would one rather have 2 bathrooms with an
> average age of 7.5 (15 years interval for renovation) or 4 bathrooms with an
> average age of 15 (30 years lifespan)?

A home with 4 bathrooms is going to see half the traffic of a home with 2
bathrooms so they might last 2x. Or is as the case a lot of times, the
bathroom in the common areas of the home gets renovated as does the master.

> living without 80's tiles is something I very much imagine paying a lot of
> money for.

A lot of European bathrooms I've experienced were very trendy for their time
and while that occurs in America I would say it's the exception and not the
norm. In general our bathrooms are relatively bland and the materials are
"timeless" in the sense that they're not very stylish ever, even new, but also
never look that dated either. The last 3 bathroom renovations I did all
involved using subway tiles, which while currently trendy, have been used
consistently over the last 100 years. The houses I grew up in all used a
similarly bland while tile that was 3x3" while squares.

The fixtures and finishes I've seen in European bathrooms also don't tend to
stand up either. Pedestal sinks with exposed metal pipes and those detachable
shower wands on sliding poles. Apart from the master bathrooms, most American
bathrooms are boring with simple sturdy faucets and fixed shower heads. The
sinks use vanities which hide/protect the plumbing which is usually plastic
and much less vulnerable to corrosion.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Timeless!? They are insane. The toilet uncomfortably low to the ground. The
sink that splashes, and you have to spend 40 seconds every time to get the
water temperature right. The cabinet that's 2 inches deep and things fall out
each time its opened. The mirror that fogs up. The slippery tub. The moldy
curtain. Noisy flush. Soap gunk by the sink. Plumbing that leaks and clogs
under normal use.

Spider Robinson wrote about it. An alien looking at human bathrooms, would
have to conclude we are masochistic, stupid, or have some cultural blind spot.

~~~
cptskippy
> The toilet uncomfortably low to the ground.

In many parts of the world you squat on the ground, which actually better for
you than sitting. Most toilets in the last 30 years are taller to accommodate
ADA requirements and you can get even taller ones for a slight cost.

> The sink that splashes

I've really only experienced that in those awful flat bottom or angular sinks.
The traditional hemisphere or egg shaped sinks don't splash.

> you have to spend 40 seconds every time to get the water temperature right.

I'm assuming you're talking about showering? Most American bathrooms are not
located near the hot water heater and the water in the pipes between the
spigot and the heater generally cools because it's not well insulated. As
such, most Americans don't hop in the shower immediately when they turn it on
but instead let it warm up for a minute or two.

> The cabinet that's 2 inches deep and things fall out each time its opened.

Are you talking about medicine cabinets? Sounds like the one you used wasn't
pitched properly. There's two screws inside you can remove on the inside walls
to loosen it, you can then shim the bottom edge and replace the screws. This
will pitch the cabinet back so things fall to the back and not out the front.

Generally medicine cabinets fell out of fashion as the size of bathrooms grew
and are usually only found in pre80s homes. Fun fact, most of them have a slot
in the back to let you dispose of straight razors and if you remove them from
the wall you'll find a stack of rust old razors in the wall cavity.

> The mirror that fogs up.

Hmm... so fancy heated mirror that will fail or a bottle of defogger you apply
once or twice a year? * Better yet just turn the ventilation fan on before you
start your shower.

> The slippery tub.

The only time I've ever fallen in a shower was in Italy in one of those shower
coffins. So... yeah that's not a problem unique to America.

> The moldy curtain.

You know you can change those right? And if you spend more than $2 you can buy
one that's mold resistant?

> Noisy flush.

That sounds like those jet flush toilets used in commercial property, most
residential toilets are gravity flush tanks like their European counterparts.

> Soap gunk by the sink.

I'm guessing by this and your mold curtain comment that you're not one to
clean your bathroom?

> Plumbing that leaks and clogs under normal use.

That's not normal.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
In denial.

Remember those two faucets that used to be on sinks, one hot and one cold? Got
replaced by the lever-valve that you push right or left to adjust temp? Took a
generation to switch, though the benefits were obvious the first day.

Well, those two faucets go back even further. Watch any old cowboy movies? In
the rooming house, the wash stand with the enamel basin and two pitchers? One
pitcher hot water; one cold. Mix in the basin, then wash and shave.

When plumbing happened, the basin got set into the wash stand, a drain put in
the bottom, the two pitchers replaced by two faucets.

Then, for about 100 years, nothing. No progress. Just that old familiar setup
without modification.

Finally the kids were like "hey! I'm not filling that dirty old basin with
water and washing in there! I'm just washing under the running water." The
basin became simply a drain. So thus the impetus to combine hot and cold. So
you didn't alternately scald and freeze your hands.

The 'modern' bathroom sink took 100 years to come about. Not because to took
that long to invent. It took only a moment to see the advantages. What it took
was, 100 years for the old, hidebound folks to pass away and let the kids take
over.

I'm convinced our bathrooms are the way they are (weak explanations
notwithstanding), because people are slow to change.

~~~
cptskippy
You responded to my comment about the timelessness of an aesthetic as somehow
wrong because the underlying technology is not to your liking?

No one is agreeing or disagreeing with what you're saying because no one
understands where you're coming from. You've basically said "Green is stupid
because we're still using cars!"

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Hey, I can speak for myself. No need to put words in my mouth. Thanks!

Design aesthetic is different from 'stuff that doesn't work'. I'm reminded of
design students that create something that looks like a bicycle out of
cardboard layers, and say "See! I've improved the bicycle! It'll change the
world!" And what they have is a useless sculpture of a bicycle.

It's plain to most folks, using ordinary bathrooms in ordinary houses that the
stuff is laughably awkward, dangerous and hard to clean. Try to explain it
away all you like.

~~~
cptskippy
> Design aesthetic is different from 'stuff that doesn't work'

Again, we were speaking about durability and aesthetics, not functionality.

Since you want to discuss functionality...

> laughably awkward

For example? Do you have any better real world alternatives.

> dangerous

What and how?

> hard to clean

Compared to?

> Try to explain it away all you like.

No one is trying to explain away anything. We're not talking about the same
thing. You're interjecting your thoughts on functionality as if they're in
opposition to our discussion about reliability and design.

To put it another way, we're talking about reality and you're arguing
hypothetical. It's like showing us how your air guitar is better than our
actual guitars.

------
Al-Khwarizmi
And why do Americans keep using that kind of toilets with high water level and
soft flushing that tend to get clogged?

I mean, in my 37 years of life in Europe I haven't ever clogged a toilet, I
don't think it's even a thing, at least if you don't throw anything that
doesn't belong in there. But in my trips to America... I'm not going to be
specific, but let's just say that some experiences have made me very cautious
when I use the toilet there.

~~~
Slartie
Yeah, I totally get what you're hinting at ;-) I stopped counting the number
of times that I clogged American toilets with...let's say "substances that
clearly belong in there". Seriously, am I supposed to hold it in the middle of
the action and flush?

Another really, really backwards thing seems to be shower fixtures. If you
aren't lucky and find a modern mixing valve, you are likely doomed to
experiment with various push, pull, turn-while-pull, push-while-turn-then-
pull, turn-until-searing-hot-then-go-on-because-warm-comes-after-hot-on-the-
scale moves to get a decent water temperature. And not only is this totally
unintuitive, it also differs between every single shower in every single hotel
or motel room (especially motels seem to have these weird fixtures).

~~~
jwr
It took me a long time to discover how some fixtures in hotels work in the US,
because the idea that to get hot water you have to open up full-throttle
(passing through cold) and there is no way to control the amount of water was
totally alien to me. I never expected such a wasteful design.

~~~
yibg
Worst ones are (although not limited to America) ones where you have to reach
under the water flow to get to the control.

Eg the knobs are on the inside wall of the shower facing the entrance. So to
turn on the water you have to reach your arm and sometimes half the body
across the shower. Then you have to turn the bloody thing past cold full
blast, with the cold water coming down on you. And to add to it, you can’t
really tell where you set the temperature to unless you feel the water. If the
temperature is wrong you have to reach through the water stream again to
change it. Annoying if you set it too cold, good luck if you set it too hot.

Who designs these things?

------
rayiner
I don’t think this requires that much analysis. As the article acknowledges,
American houses are on average double the size of ones in the EU. That leaves
plenty of space to place bathrooms to maximize convenience (as opposed to just
handling maximum expected occupancy). For example, our 1950s house growing up
had three bedrooms and two bathrooms, one upstairs shared by the bedrooms, and
one downstairs for the family room. My parents’ current house has one more
bedroom, but two more bathrooms. Two of the bedrooms get a private attached
bath, and the other two share a Jack and Jill bathroom. The main level gets a
powder room. If we finish the basement, that’ll be another bathroom, because
people don’t want to have to go to another floor to access the bathroom.

------
wazoox
There's an historical error in this article; public baths were very common in
Europe up until the Black Death. Actually people became really dirty from the
late 15th Century onwards, and yet with stark differences between countries.

~~~
jkingsbery
See e.g., [https://www.medievalists.net/2013/04/did-people-in-the-
middl...](https://www.medievalists.net/2013/04/did-people-in-the-middle-ages-
take-baths/), which describes the many bathing habits of the Middle Ages that
contradicts the original article's claims, including this anecdote:

> The Dutch philosopher Erasmus, writing in 1526, notes the fall of the public
> bathhouse. “Twenty-five years ago, nothing was more fashionable in Brabant
> than the public baths,” he remarked. “Today there are none, the new plague
> has taught us to avoid them.”

That is, water does spread disease, and public baths went out of fashion
_during the Renaissance_ , not the Middle Ages.

------
amluto
> In the mid-19th century, American sanitarians came to believe that disease
> stemmed from “sewer gas” emitted by toilets, which encouraged home builders
> to cram tub, sink, and toilet into one well-ventilated room with exposed
> pipes, in order to limit the spread of disease.

To be fair, sewer gas is indeed gross and can be toxic. So modern plumbing
carefully vents the sewer gas out the roof and has traps that prevent sewer
gas from entering the room.

(The P trap under your sink isn’t to catch valuables that go down the drain.
It’s there to hold water so that gasses and critters can’t come through.)

~~~
baud147258
> The P trap under your sink isn’t to catch valuables that go down the drain.
> It’s there to hold water so that gasses and critters can’t come through

Yeah, I have a P-trap in the kitchen space of my single-room flat, in theory
for the dishwater; but since I don't have a dishwasher, there's no water and I
got sewer smells until it was plugged by rags.

------
9nGQluzmnq3M
Meanwhile, American showers still have a fixed showerhead mounted on the wall
and a single control that doesn't let you adjust pressure, only temperature.

~~~
2fast4you
Hold on, am I missing out on some shower innovations?

I’ve never heard of this pressure control

~~~
jvzr
What we get here in the rest of the world, is something that allows for
control of both temperature & water flow. Usually (but I can't really speak
generally) with a freely-moving showerhead connected by a metal-jacketed
rubber hose (which can be placed on a fixed position to the wall for overhead
showering)

~~~
philwelch
We have those too. In particular, I have one of those. You can buy them at
Wal-Mart. I rent and I take it with me when I move (re-installing the original
hardware).

------
stevehawk
A lot of people get more utility from an extra half bath than an extra closet

Bathrooms make entertaining people easier, both by having them conveniently
located and by reducing the privacy infringement of making your master bath
available (everyone's an asshole and goes through everyone else's medicine
cabinet)

It's not wasteful since having more bathrooms doesn't mean you go to the
bathroom more.

~~~
roter
There is also an emergency health issue. I had c.difficile and was instructed
by the nurse to use a separate bathroom from my spouse to avoid cross-
contamination. We only had one bathroom so this meant I had to bleach the
toilet whenever I "took the boys to the pool".

------
jkingsbery
I can't say I've done a full study on this, but at least anecdotally, the
claim of this article seems over-blown. I'm a software engineer for a large
tech company (i.e., I make pretty good money), and I live in a relatively well
off part of the US (New Jersey, in the New York suburbs). When I was looking
for a house, most houses in our price range had either 1 full bathroom or 1
full bathroom and 1 half bathroom. So even in a pretty well-off situation,
it's not automatically the case that you live in a huge house with lots of
bath rooms.

To the extent that the claim that American houses have so many bathrooms is
true, I'm not sure you can think about American real estate in such a
homogenized fashion to assume it is universally true. I think it applies in
certain particular circumstances, but is not universal.

~~~
joegahona
NJ is the most population-dense state in the U.S., so that (and its being
really old, and comparatively expensive) might have something to do with your
experience.

~~~
mcny
> NJ is the most population-dense state in the U.S., so that (and its being
> really old, and comparatively expensive) might have something to do with
> your experience.

Yeah, a house built in the eighties or the nineties is pretty new in Journal
Square of Jersey City. However, the city (Manhattan mostly) has it worse. I
saw an ad for a tiny room that explicitly said no access to kitchen or the
bathroom. I don't think it is even lawful to say that.

Imagine someone living in that room comes across this article...

------
adreamingsoul
Could it be as simple as poor design?

Another trend that I think is poor design is the "open-floor" trend for newer
homes.

------
qaq
It's not US specific I live in Ireland houses are way smaller here yet
most(all?) new construction have large number of bathrooms.

------
pmarreck
I spent a lot of dough on a master bathroom renovation (large steam shower
with elevated seat, THREE showerheads and 3/4-inch pipe direct from the
boiler), double sinks, all-LED lighting, WC room with this Toto:
[https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B009IJ2JQW/ref=ppx_yo_dt...](https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B009IJ2JQW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
and a jacuzzi tub)

... and it's just been a fantastic place to start and end the day in. The
universal response people have when they walk into it is "wow". It's a
significant quality-of-life improvement IMHO.

------
stanferder
American houses have too many square feet, and about enough bathrooms. I don't
see how a three-bedroom 1-bathroom house is compatible with two people getting
to work on time, especially with kids around throwing things off-schedule.

------
pwthornton
The delta between one and two bathrooms is huge. When someone is showing and
someone else really needs to go to the bathroom, that’s a mess.

The delta between two and three and higher is quite small.

I don’t get these houses with like six bathrooms. What’s going on there?

------
kube-system
Because it is a nice luxury to never have to wait on someone else to be done
in the bathroom. This is further amplified because our bathrooms customarily
have more functions that tie them up, as we don’t use separate water closets.

~~~
blaser-waffle
Yeah after travel in Europe that's one that irks me being back in the US. Why
does my toothbrush need to be in the same room that everyone is dropping
deuces?

------
schnevets
I can't help but think of the sprawling McMansion my extended family vrbo-ed
in Houston during a wedding. The home comfortably housed 14 people across 7
bedrooms and I counted 6 bathrooms. While the rest of the house was thoroughly
maintained (and a little gaudy), one bathroom tucked in the corner of the
house had an awful mildew smell, white duct tape covering a crack on the
toilet, and a bunch of stains on the wall and tile that I could only assume
were a rush job to remove mold.

Just a little anecdote that fits my worldly philosophy of the more things you
own, the more things that can break.

------
robocat
I thought it was status signalling: a house with more toilets implies higher
social status. Especially holds in one state (Arizona?) where Healy costs for
local water connection were much higher for more toilets.

------
Androider
Another strange thing to me is the ridiculous number of bedrooms in new single
family homes, and the assumption that more is better.

Sites like Zillow don't even let you put an upper limit when searching. Agents
can't believe you don't want a bigger place. I don't mean cheaper, I mean I
don't want all those rooms and stairs. In my area, you perversely have to go
to the ultra-luxe range of the market to get a high quality 2-3 bedroom single
family home, while 5 bedroom new constructions are a dime a dozen. That makes
no sense.

~~~
WhompingWindows
"In my area, you perversely have to go to the ultra-luxe range of the market
to get a high quality 2-3 bedroom single family home, while 5 bedroom new
constructions are a dime a dozen."

Same in the Boston area...you're either getting an older, reasonably sized
home, a new-build condo/apartment, or a new-build McMansion / cookie-cutter
development. These new-builds are often much larger than millenials want,
bigger than boomers need, and too expensive for their blandness.

My guess is homebuilders simply make a better profit on these huge homes...for
now...while the market is upheld...

------
ecmascript
Maybe houses have many bathrooms, but my experience from the US was that it is
incredible hard to find public toilets which is very annoying when you're a
tourist.

When we found one, they were pretty disgusting. Even places like Starbucks
didn't even have a toilet. I mean what the hell? How can you serve people
coffee which makes stomachs rumble without having a single customer toilet?

From a European perspective, this was very uncomfortable and I also have a
condition which makes my stomach untrustworthy.

~~~
qaq
Hmm lived in/visted many places in US honestly never had this issue.

~~~
EliRivers
I understand SF has this issue, for various reasons; the outcome is not
pleasant.

------
trumbitta2
And no bidet to use after the paper.

------
tom_
The overloaded term "bathroom" is not very helpful. What do these bathrooms
have in them? Do they have a bath, or a toilet, or both, or what? I think we
should be told!

More toilets than bedrooms - e.g., the 20:8 ratio mentioned in the article -
makes perfect sense for a house that might see large numbers of guests at
once.

One bath per person surely can't hurt, if you can afford it, though averaged
out this is probably going to mean a bath:bedroom ratio of around 1:1.

------
peter303
I grew up in a Brady Bunch house: nine people and 1 1/2 bath. The father had
priority, then high school kids, then grade school. The bedroom config was
more interesting than bathroom. Always a minimum of two, sometimes up to four.
A rearrangement every couple years.

Perhaps that is why I sought mainly single bedrooms in college and grad
school.

I think all of the next generation were nver more than six in house and every
child with personal bedroom.

------
Pxtl
2-per-person (round down) sounds about right. We have 2.5 and the 2nd full-
bath (in the basement) is rarely used. I'm flabbergasted to know that, as an
upper-middle-class Canadian in a 5-person family, my home would be _below
average_ compared to a new American development. One-person-per-bathroom is
madness.

Stephen Colbert said it best: "One for dinner-guests and one you poop in".

------
epx
A bathroom is one of the few places you can have total privacy. A second place
is the car when you are driving alone.

------
danabrams
Isn’t it obvious? Have you seen what we eat?

~~~
hycaria
Yeah those quora comments really made me think that Americans have diarrhoea
way too often since it is mentioned numerous times as a reason for the high
number of bathrooms.

The same way I've often read silly threads on reddit mentioning those fecal
problems (like after mexican food, it seems like a ritual for us folks to
crush the toilet bowl) which don't seem as common or popular in europe.

------
freepor
It’s not the number of American bathrooms that’s fucked up, it’s their size.
I’ve seen bathrooms big enough to host a dinner party. It’s insane. In student
housing I had a perfectly usable bathroom that was very cramped and I’d love
to have two of those in a house and a normal sized one.

------
raverbashing
The article is overthinking it

The question is: what happens when you have few bathrooms (maybe only one).
It's a constrained resource that is usually used by people at around the same
time frames.

Sharing one bathroom across a family of 4 is not easy. Two or three make more
sense.

This gets worse if it's 4 unrelated people

------
Glyptodon
Having at least two bathrooms is an absolute life saver - if you only have one
and something goes wrong you pretty much have to stay in a hotel. Not to
mention having some privacy from guests is great. So that doesn't seem like an
excess to me.

------
TehShrike
> In the past half century, the number of bathrooms per person in America has
> doubled.

Most people who grew up in the past half-century grew up in a household with
several siblings and appreciate the luxury of not waiting in line to use the
toilet ^_^

------
DoofusOfDeath
Is the ubiquity of "master bathrooms" peculiar to the U.S.?

I don't mean this lewdly, but: I would imagine parents everywhere appreciate
the ability to clean up after sex without having to first walk though the
house's public areas.

------
jborichevskiy
I've shared an apartment with 3 other people (single bathroom) and it can be
either utter chaos or totally fine depending on schedules. Staggered morning
work times are the best, everyone gets their time without feeling rushed.

------
adamc
Having visited my brother for Christmas... I came to appreciate the large
number of bathrooms. (It was originally a farmhouse, so many were added over
time.) It makes having a bunch of visitors a LOT easier to accommodate.

------
goodcanadian
Is it exclusively an American thing, or is it simply that newer houses have a
lot of bathrooms? I was recently in a tiny two bedroom house in England (built
in the 90s, I believe) that had three toilets (two full baths).

~~~
ghaff
Some of it is age. I only have one bathroom in about an 1800 sq ft house.
Presumably the indoor plumbing was added at some point. But, while a house
that size would have 2 brs today, there’s just no easy way to add one and I
don’t need it.

------
ryanmercer
Because "everybody poops". If I gotta go, I want to be able to without waiting
on someone else. I spent the first 12 years of my life in a single bathroom
house, not doing that again.

------
fallingfrog
We have one bathroom for the four of us, and I’ve never had a particular
desire for more. That’s just extra toilets and showers to clean and extra
pipes to leak. No thanks.

------
gldev3
I like to be able to have multiple options to do my things comfortably, at
some point when trying to come up with a house design i liked it ended up with
_6_!

------
emodendroket
I mean, you could certainly describe it as frivolous, but I like being able to
shower or use the toilet without worrying about my wife doing the same thing.

------
dang
Also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22137008](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22137008)

------
HoustonRefugee
I believe 99% of the problem is marketing. Adding an additional bathroom can
add $5000 USD (or more) onto the asking price of a home in the US.

------
dpeck
If you’ve every dealt with a stomach virus going through a family at the same
time you’d never question the number of bathrooms in a home.

------
apexalpha
European in the thread: would a bathroom and a seprate toilet count as 2? In
this instance? Or are we talking about two full bathrooms?

------
alexjray
Utah houses traditionally do not have many bathrooms, in fact most made before
1980's only have one. It's quite odd actually

------
meristem
A thing from which, if you have no kids, you are spared: the three-year old
sitting on the toilet holding open an upside-down New Yorker Magazine.

...

------
thorwasdfasdf
Also, why do american houses have so much damn pavement? i mean every single
house i go to there's these massive driveways sometimes even wider than the
garage itself! with even more pavement on the side for god knows what and
behind that some more pavement along the side of the house.

and it's not even nice pavement, it's just concrete, like a big airport.

it's especially bad in CA because the lots are so small making the pavement
look even bigger proportionaly.

------
m3kw9
One word, basic convenience, is like phone chargers, you have one in office,
and prob one in bedroom or living room

------
mmhsieh
we have come a long way from the days when we asked ourselves why we have so
many chamber pots

------
josefresco
"Bathrooms sell houses, period". Which came first, the supply or the demand?

------
base698
Alternatively in LA houses less than $1.5 million seem to only have one
bathroom.

------
batushka3
"... foreigners when we first arrive here, and the sheer number of bathrooms
in suburban houses is very high on the list" and article still contains square
foot without any conversion to metric

------
gdfasfklshg4
Do middle class Americans clean their own homes?

~~~
kube-system
Most do. Some upper-middle do not.

~~~
gdfasfklshg4
Why would someone want to clean so many bathrooms?

~~~
syshum
In the US most people clean their own bathrooms.

I.E in a 4 bedroom, 4 bath home, there are likely 4 people living there, each
person cleans their own bathroom,

~~~
Symbiote
Except in the very common case when 2 of those people are children.

~~~
philwelch
Depends on the age and maturity of the children.

------
iLemming
"Fine, take away my bathrooms, but don't you dare touching my guns. I shit you
not - I will be pissed."

every Midwestern American

------
mmhsieh
oprah: the key to a happy marriage is everyone having their own bathroom.

------
mmhsieh
there is a puritanical thread in american life that is so fundamental we don't
notice it.

the puritan does not hate pooing because it is stinky, but because it gives
pleasure to the pooer.

------
turk73
I grew up in a house with 1 bathroom for 7 people. It was a living hell. I
think that issue alone caused massive strife in my family.

My current house has 4 people and 4 bathrooms.

------
o-__-o
a house i am looking at has a bathroom for every bedroom. it makes no sense
and i am contemplating removing 1.5 of them for more storage if i buy the
house (it's not looking likely).

~~~
newnewpdro
It adds significant value to the home, every room is basically a potential
high-value rental unit, especially if they're full baths.

Oftentimes homes with many small rooms each having private bathrooms were
actually designed specifically for the purpose of room rentals, think elderly
shared housing type places.

~~~
o-__-o
No offense, but you have no clue what you’re talking about. It’s new
construction and going for $1m. I need storage, not a bathroom for a
nonexistent elderly rentals.

~~~
newnewpdro
I never asserted the home you were buying was an example of such a home, no
need for the personal attack.

Such homes are actually fairly common in California, I've rented such a room
on two occasions.

My understanding is there are quotas requiring housing be built for low income
tenants in a regulated proportion to other residential developments. The way
classy SF bay area neighborhoods prefer to fulfill this requirement is to
build shared housing units for the elderly, for obvious reasons.

The two I personally experienced were indistinguishable from regular
residential homes from the outside, but once inside there were some telltales
like exceptionally robust fire suppression/alarm systems, and a high density
of small bedrooms each having a full bath.

It was actually illegal to rent the rooms to people like me, but enforcement
is lax and with CA rents so high, apparently worth the risk for the owner.

------
tomThom
I want my bathroom to have two commode fixtures then my wife and I can bond
over poop. You have your phone when eating but nothing when pooping.

------
hellofunk
Well, Americans do eat quite a lot more food than most people in the world,
and thus they need to relieve bowl movements often. This can be a problem if
this causes a queue in your house due to a shortage of toilets. There are a
few ways to address this bottleneck. One is to apply scheduling to when
individuals eat and carefully study the bowl patterns of each person to
adequately predict when a toilet is available, say, in a house of two or more
inhabitants. Another method is to increase the available resources and add
more toilets.

~~~
hmexx
Something unintentionally amusing about your comment. Sounds like the opinion
of an alien playing SimToilet :)

