One session that I'm really looking forward to at the CRAN Symposium is 'The Art of the Plumbing Fixture'. As architects we appreciate the details that go into the perfect bathroom. Bathrooms are perhaps the most intimate place inside the home. We give babies a bath there, brush our teeth each day and sometimes crouch down inside them during tornado season. So every time that I'm looking for my next home (and I've had to look a lot over the past few years!), I'm always a little more critical about the bathroom.
I love unique spaces and don't mind any extra shots of color as long as it is coordinated, but what the bathroom has to be for me over anything else is functional and efficient. Everyone has a different idea about the ideal bathroom and everyone has different priorities for how the space should be used. In general though I'd say that it has to be right sized for the home's occupants. For me, that means that bigger is not better.
I've noticed a few trends over the past few years that are affecting both apartments and single family houses and that is the inclusion of the toilet closet. I've borrowed this term from my sister-in-law who affectionately gave it this nickname long before I expressed my opinion about it. I've just not been able to justify why there is a need for a master bathroom to have an individual space for the toilet. A master bathroom is generally just for two people and, with some exceptions, if there's a master bathroom odds are there's another full bath somewhere in the home anyway which would usually give someone another option for a private space. I had a master bathroom in an apartment recently with an extremely large master bath and a toilet closet. I found I had two experiences. 1. The bathroom echoed and it was too large to use efficiently. Despite its giant size, the only storage was a couple of small cabinets under the sink. 2. The toilet closet was too closed in. It was about the size of a public stall but with a full door closed and a lower ceiling than most public buildings, I found it to be too tiny.
I posed this topic to a co-worker recently and one arguement was that with a family, it would be easier for one person to be parked on the throne while others use the bathroom for fixing their hair. I'd buy that argument, except that where I'm seeing most toilet closets is in the master bathroom, a room usually reserved for one or two people. Of course there's the argument that the two people who share a master often need to use it at the same time, and yes, in many families this poses a few privacy issues.
But I'd like to pose an alternative. Why not include one extra half bath some place in the home. A half bath is usually larger than a toilet closet, thus eliminating a tiny room, and it comes with its own sink. And because it would be in another part of the house, it would probably afford one more privacy than a closet within a bathroom.
Now one could argue that we're using space and materials in excess by adding another bathroom. I say take that space out of the master bathroom! I once went on a tour of new homes, one of those dream home exhibitions. This particular one was very popular so many people were in a house at the same time. We wandered into the master bathroom at one place and I took a look around me and started counting. 1, 2, 3, 4...13! Yes, there were 13 full sized adults in one master bathroom with enough room for twice that amount. It was at that point that I decided if you could throw your own party in your bathroom, it was too big!
Well, there is no right or wrong prescription for a well appointed bathroom. This blog is designed to allow us to have an opinion which we can express with our fellow designers and as this is my last blog before the upcoming CRAN Symposium, I thought I'd take advantage of that opportunity and express a few thoughts on our most personal space. I find that bathrooms are an area which allows us a moment of calm among a day of chaos and I will always take the opportunity to discuss its design challenges.