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Why Do American Houses Have So Many Bathrooms?
- o-__-o 7y agoa 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 7y agoIt 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 7y agoNo 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 7y agoI 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.
- gdfasfklshg4 7y agoDo middle class Americans clean their own homes?
- kube-system 7y agoMost do. Some upper-middle do not.
- gdfasfklshg4 7y agoWhy would someone want to clean so many bathrooms?
- ComputerGuru 7y agoThe dirt does not go up with the number of bathrooms but rather the number of uses. With more bathrooms you either have to clean less often or less as much.
- syshum 7y agoIn 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,
- kube-system 7y ago
- philwelch 7y agoMy 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.
- ummonk 7y agoRight! When shopping recently I was looking for 1 bed 1.5 bath places for precisely that reason. I got extra lucky and snagged a 1 bed 2 bath place...
- kijin 7y agoI think the morning congestion is one of the biggest reasons for the doubling of bathrooms over the last 50 years. In the past, only one person was in a hurry to be washed and groomed each morning. Now there are at least two, and even kids are much busier than they were before. Another reason might be the accessibility of traveling. More people are used to staying in a hotel compared to 50 years ago, so when you have a guest you would want to offer them a comparable experience. That includes a private bathroom as you said. Both of these trends are common to most parts of the developed world, but people in other countries don't have as much space to actually go ahead and build more bathrooms.
- yibg 7y agoMe 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.
- ct0 7y agoWe too have an extra bathroom now that we bought a house. Another thing to consider is a bathroom remodel will not retire an outhouse if you have an extra bathroom. Redundancy is really beneficial.
- ecmascript 7y agoMaybe 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 7y agoHmm lived in/visted many places in US honestly never had this issue.
- EliRivers 7y agoI understand SF has this issue, for various reasons; the outcome is not pleasant.
- kbcool 7y agoHaving been well traveled in both places I found for the given population density of a particular city finding a toilet is harder in Europe than the USA but both are horrendous. Public toilets are a basic human right in Australia.
- mschuster91 7y agoIn many places in Europe, restaurant codes demand appropriate toilet access as condition for the license - and licenses can and will be suspended when inspections find your toilets to be inadequate / damaged / unclean. (source: worked in the industry)
- elteto 7y agoI've never had this issue in US cities. I don't think I've seen an actual _public_ toilet facility, but I've never suffered because of it. Unless you are in a shopping mall it is required by law to have a restroom. Starbucks, McDonalds, Burger King, these all have restrooms and are open to the public. Sometimes they might require a small purchase (like a water bottle). Heck, I was in NYC not too long ago and was surprised to find that all Starbucks have open restrooms (in other cities I've visited sometimes you needed to ask for the key).
- Al-Khwarizmi 7y agoAnd 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.
- mewpmewp2 7y agoYeah same, just recently was in US and I think first time in my life I clogged a toilet. And it was a respectable hotel.
- syshum 7y agoSeems you visit some places with poor plumbing then. In my 40 years of life in the US the only time I have experienced a clogged toilet is because someone put something down it that did not belong (or the entire plumbing system was backed up do to tree roots or other issue unrelated to toilet design)
- turk73 7y agoMy workplace has typical commercial toilets and somehow they manage to get clogged at least daily. I suspect the "nest builders" are somehow to blame for all this. I would hate to be a janitor here, honestly. They do keep the bathrooms clean here because we have a lot of foreign nationals whose toilet behavior is um, sorta 3rd World. There are signs all over the place in the bathrooms describing proper etiquette and requirements to wash hands afterwards, etc. So while disgusting, the company is at least trying to keep it under control. The funniest are the signs that show you should not stand on the toilet seats. Contrasting with previous workplace, it was much the same but the company didn't clean nearly as often and didn't have enough bathrooms. That place had mostly young, white guys in their 20s, and so Mondays you didn't even want to go near those bathrooms because all the excess food, alcohol, and probably drugs consumed over the weekend ends up in dire remorse by Monday morning. Sad, but totally predictable.
- 7y ago
- danabrams 7y agoIsn’t it obvious? Have you seen what we eat?
- hycaria 7y agoYeah 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.
- qaq 7y agoIt's not US specific I live in Ireland houses are way smaller here yet most(all?) new construction have large number of bathrooms.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- raverbashing 7y agoThe 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
- sschueller 7y agoWhat 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-water-law-restrictions-shower-laundry/ https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/06/08/new-california-wa...
- ComputerGuru 7y agoThe USA is slowly moving to front-loading washers. The top loaders were water hogs.
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoLike currently moving to front loaders? Top loaders were once common in the UK, but I don't think I've seen one since the seventies, maybe eighties.
- arethuza 7y agoLast time I saw a top-loading washing machine was 1988 in a student flat!
- kube-system 7y agoYes, currently. Right now it’s probably around 50/50. There are still many people who prefer the lower price and familiar design.
- pansa2 7y agoTop loaders are still common in Australia and New Zealand. They’re terrible, but they are cheaper than front loaders and are what many people are used to.
- teruakohatu 7y agoThey are great for people like me who remember to put something in something just after I start running it.
- kube-system 7y agoBecause 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 7y agoYeah 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?
- adreamingsoul 7y agoCould it be as simple as poor design? Another trend that I think is poor design is the "open-floor" trend for newer homes.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y agoMeanwhile, 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 7y agoHold on, am I missing out on some shower innovations? I’ve never heard of this pressure control
- eesmith 7y agoThese are showers with two controls; one for temperature, another for flow. There are two main types (IANAPlumber): Pressure-balanced valve - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure-balanced_valve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure-balanced_valve > A pressure-balanced valve provides water at nearly constant temperature to a shower or bathtub, despite pressure fluctuations in either the hot or cold supply lines. thermostatic showers - https://www.steamshowerparts.co.uk/how-to/thermostatic-shower/ https://www.steamshowerparts.co.uk/how-to/thermostatic-showe... > A thermostatic shower seems like a regular shower, but it has something very unique inside; a thermostatic valve. Thermostatic valves mix both hot and cold water together to a consistent predetermined temperature, preventing scalding and thermic shock.
- thomk 7y agoFWIW, a pressure balancer is usually only required if the supply to the shower is too small.
- jvzr 7y agoWhat 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)
- 7y ago
- trumbitta2 7y agoAnd no bidet to use after the paper.
- hellofunk 7y agoWell, 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 7y agoSomething unintentionally amusing about your comment. Sounds like the opinion of an alien playing SimToilet :)
- osullivj 7y agoKinda like single thread async vs thread pooling...
- 3dprintscanner 7y agoReminds me of this gem of a comedy sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npEwra5344s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npEwra5344s
- mmhsieh 7y agoand they do not have as time or mobility to move across their dwellings to the can?
- flexie 7y agoAs 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.
- DraftDodger67 7y agoDon't forget US houses being much lower in latitude - allowing savings in insulation, and generally thinner and lighter construction. New York is further south than Rome.
- pfdietz 7y agoInterestingly, new US apartment buildings are now predominantly wood frame as well. This is a recent change due to intricacies of fire codes and the politics behind them.
- packet_nerd 7y agoThey use wood construction because of fire codes? How does that work?
- tomThom 7y agoI 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.
- robocat 7y agoI 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.
- turk73 7y agoI 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.
- paulsutter 7y agoWhen 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 7y agoDo 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.
- SmirkingRevenge 7y agoPeople don't always respect the limits of what you can/can't flush down toilets, especially renters.
- RankingMember 7y agoTampons and "flushable" wipes that aren't really
- ryanmercer 7y agoAnd condoms. I've had more than one former partner tell me to go flush the condom. So I'd just wad it up in toilet paper and toss it in the trash. From what I've read around the internet this seems to be pretty standard in the sex trade too (and probably with hotel/motel guests in general).
- tuckerpo 7y agoYou have to consider American diets. :-)
- skohan 7y agoThis is a nice joke, but the reality is that standard American sewage pipes are smaller in diameter than in Europe, and European toilets tend to flush with more pressure.
- thomk 7y agoThroughput. As soon as you have >1 persons, you are going to find the bathroom to be a bottleneck at some point.
- elric 7y agoMore than one person can use a bathroom at the same time. Toilets are a bit trickier, but if you're spending enough time on the toilet for it to be a bottleneck in your hosuehold, you may want to consider adding more fibre to your diet.
- onetimemanytime 7y agosure just like we can also live in our cars or 100 sqt houses. What if you don't want to rush, when the other person knocks on the door?
- onetimemanytime 7y agoAgree! 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 7y agoThose 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 7y agomakes sense. Why not have them, when you can afford them? So your own bathrooms are not used by the guests...
- goodcanadian 7y agoIs 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 7y agoSome 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.
- wazoox 7y agoThere'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 7y agoSee e.g., 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..., 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.
- nradov 7y agoDue 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.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- alkonaut 7y agoMost 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 7y agoI 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 7y agoI 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.
- esotericn 7y agoThis is pretty much why I've settled on the idea of buying a small flat. I've lived in most different types of place now (rurally, in the suburbs, in inner city suburbs, in the middle of metro areas) etc and the idea of having to decorate a massive house is something I really can't be bothered with. If I had children I'd want enough space for them, sure, but that's about it. It's not even about the cost but just the mental overhead of it all, cleaning, all the stuff you accumulate, etc.
- npo9 7y agoI have a very sparsely furnished and decorated single family home. I felt intense pressure to buy because the cost of houses was increasing faster than my salary. Purchasing a home felt like a closing window of opportunity. I figure I can always grow into it, and I occasionally buy something to go into it if I find a very good deal. Total cost of ownership is more than a rental property, but I also find my total quality of life has increased due to extra space for pets and decreased noise.
- esotericn 7y agoFrom my perspective, apartments and homes are rising in value at roughly the same rate, so I could trade in a flat in the center for a home in the suburbs later on if I so wished. I figure at that point I'd have more of an idea about where I'd want my theoretical family (that I'm not even planning at the moment) to live, plus a partner with you know, desires and opinions and stuff ;)
- dghughes 7y agoThe 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.
- gwbas1c 7y agoI 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 7y ago> 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"
- cortesoft 7y agoDo people not have cellular data?
- cameronfraser 7y agoAh if only there was another way to connect to the internet with phones
- ivl 7y agoNot a great strategy against people reading books or the newspaper. Two things that are pretty easy to get used to.
- darksaints 7y agoI firmly believe all workplace bathrooms should be completely Faraday shielded for this reason.
- jkingsbery 7y agoI 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 7y agoNJ 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 7y ago> 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...
- nanijoe 7y agoI also live in NJ..In my experience, 3+ bedroom houses here will have at least 2 bathrooms, unless they were built before the 80s.
- taco_emoji 7y agoHow old were those homes? The article is talking about homes built more recently.
- HoustonRefugee 7y agoI 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.
- rayiner 7y agoI 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.
- CrazyStat 7y ago> 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/visualizations/time-series/demo/families-and-households/hh-4.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizat... [2] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/time-series/demo/families-and-households/hh-6.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizat...
- BurningFrog 7y ago> 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 7y agoThere's a LOT more to wealth than GDP/person, saying postwar america wasn't rich is absurd.
- devmunchies 7y ago
- stevehawk 7y agoA 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 7y agoThere 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".
- as-j 7y agoI'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.
- beatgammit 7y agoAgreed completely. I have a 4-bedroom, 3 bath house, and we use them all. We have one attached to our master bedroom, one main bathroom on the main floor, and one in the basement. We spend a lot of time as a family in the basement, we spend a lot of time with guests on the main floor, and my wife likes to use our private bathroom as a little getaway. I think a decent rule of thumb is one bathroom per floor, plus one. It really sucks having to wait for a bathroom when you need it, and they take up so little space (especially if it doesn't have a bath/shower) that it makes no sense to skimp. We've used all the bathrooms simultaneously, so it's hard for me to consider having fewer.
- close04 7y ago
- mmhsieh 7y agowe have come a long way from the days when we asked ourselves why we have so many chamber pots
- mmhsieh 7y agooprah: the key to a happy marriage is everyone having their own bathroom.
- tom_ 7y agoThe 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.
- Androider 7y agoAnother 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 7y ago"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...
- ryanmercer 7y agoBecause "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.
- batushka3 7y ago"... 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
- Y-Bopinator 7y agoBecause it smells bad when you take a shit. Too long didn’t read.
- epx 7y agoA bathroom is one of the few places you can have total privacy. A second place is the car when you are driving alone.
- fallingfrog 7y agoWe 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.
- TehShrike 7y ago> 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 ^_^
- base698 7y agoAlternatively in LA houses less than $1.5 million seem to only have one bathroom.
- mmhsieh 7y agothere 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.
- Mtinie 7y ago“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-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/ https://www.medievalists.net/2013/04/did-people-in-the-middl... http://unusualhistoricals.blogspot.com/2013/01/myths-misconceptions-bathing-in-middle.html?m=1 http://unusualhistoricals.blogspot.com/2013/01/myths-misconc...
- burlesona 7y agoI noticed that too. Triggered a Gehl-Mann amnesia warning for me. Interesting to think America may have a lot of extra bathrooms, but given the shallow research, I wouldn’t put too much stock in that article.
- xamuel 7y agoIt 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.
- prostoalex 7y agoI've read Bryson's book, and while I don't have enough background to debate that specific point, he usually invests a significant portion of time into research. It looks like he chose to compile some excerpts from it into an article for Daily Mail https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1281933/Deadly-beds-flammable-hairdos-libido-boosting-corsets--sleeping-pampering-used-dangerous-business.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1281933/Deadly-be... Relevant quotes are toward the end: "Well, until the mid-19th century, bathrooms were a rarity. Indeed, for 600 years most people didn't wash, or even get wet, if they could help it. 'Wash your hands often, your feet seldom, and your head never' was a common English proverb. In 1653, John Evelyn, the diarist, noted a tentative decision to wash his hair annually. Robert Hooke, the scientist, washed his feet often (because he found it soothing), but appears not to have spent much time damp above the ankles. So most people fought dirt and odour by either covering it with cosmetics and perfumes or by just ignoring it. Where everyone stinks, no one stinks. But, then, in the 18th century, suddenly water became fashionable, though only in a medicinal sense. Spa towns cropped up all over the country, and people started adjusting to the idea that they might now safely get wet from time to time. Washing for the sake merely of being clean was remarkably slow in coming, however. When John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, coined the phrase 'Cleanliness is next to Godliness' in 1778, he meant clean clothes. With respect to bodily cleanliness, he recommended only 'frequent shaving and foot washing'. What really got the Victorians to turn to bathing, however, was the realisation that it could be gloriously punishing. Many diaries record how people had to break the ice in their washbasins in order to ablute in the morning. Rev Francis Kilvert noted with pleasure how jagged ice clung to the side of his bath and pricked his skin as he merrily bathed on Christmas morning in 1870. Showers, too, offered great scope for punishment, and were often designed to be as powerful as possible. One early type was so ferocious that users had to don protective headgear before stepping in lest they be beaten senseless by their own plumbing. Increasingly, bathrooms - albeit shared and down the corridor - became standard in hotels, and hoteliers who failed to heed this trend paid a hefty price. Nowhere was that more memorably demonstrated than at the vast Midland Hotel at St Pancras Station in London. Designed by the great George Gilbert Scott, the Midland cost the equivalent of £300 million when it opened in 1873, and was a wonder in almost every way. Unfortunately, Scott provided just four bathrooms to be shared among 600 bedrooms. Almost from the day of its opening, the hotel was a failure. In private homes the provision of bathrooms was hit and miss. The rich proved unexpectedly reluctant to bring them into their lives. ' Bathrooms are for servants,' sniffed one English aristocrat. In existing houses, bathrooms usually took the place of a bedroom, but sometimes were jemmied into alcoves or corners. Baths tended to be of exceedingly variable sizes. A bath at Lanhydrock House in Cornwall was so big that a stepladder was needed to climb into it. Others, with showers built in, looked as if they were designed to wash a horse. Moreover, baths were still extremely expensive. A bath alone could easily cost more than £100 in 1910 - a price well beyond most households. The British journalist, Katharine Whitehorn, recalled that, as recently as the late 1950s, she and her colleagues on the magazine Woman's Own were not allowed to do features on bathrooms. Why? Because not enough British homes had them - and such articles, it was felt, would only promote envy."
- gldev3 7y agoI 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!
- dpeck 7y agoIf 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.
- iLemming 7y ago"Fine, take away my bathrooms, but don't you dare touching my guns. I shit you not - I will be pissed." every Midwestern American
- amluto 7y ago> 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 7y ago> 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.
- josefresco 7y ago"Bathrooms sell houses, period". Which came first, the supply or the demand?
- tzs 7y agoFor 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/
- stanferder 7y agoAmerican 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.
- peter303 7y agoI 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.
- alexjray 7y agoUtah houses traditionally do not have many bathrooms, in fact most made before 1980's only have one. It's quite odd actually
- jborichevskiy 7y agoI'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.
- Glyptodon 7y agoHaving 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.
- Pxtl 7y ago2-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".
- freepor 7y agoIt’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.
- adamc 7y agoHaving 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.
- thorwasdfasdf 7y agoAlso, 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.
- emodendroket 7y agoI 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.
- m3kw9 7y agoOne word, basic convenience, is like phone chargers, you have one in office, and prob one in bedroom or living room
- pwthornton 7y agoThe 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?
- schnevets 7y agoI 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.
- meristem 7y agoA 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. ...
- DoofusOfDeath 7y agoIs 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.
- pmarreck 7y agoI 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_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B009IJ2JQW/ref=ppx_yo_dt... 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.
- dang 7y agoAlso https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22137008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22137008
- apexalpha 7y agoEuropean in the thread: would a bathroom and a seprate toilet count as 2? In this instance? Or are we talking about two full bathrooms?