Me and my girlfriend are thinking about settling down, buying our own place, starting a family and all that fun stuff so here I am browsing around, checking house prices and locations around Bangkok, and I kept seeing all new houses with at least as many bathrooms as bedrooms and up to twice as many bathrooms as bedrooms.
Am I crazy or is that crazy? I don’t know if it’s a trend or quirk of the Thai market or what, but I just can’t grok why would someone want 4 bathrooms in a 2 bedroom home. :dubious:
Is it the same in other countries? I don’t remember houses being built like this back in my home country (Uruguay), then again, I wasn’t looking into buying a house there so who knows.
Mr. Bodoni and I made a bid just this Monday on a house that has three bedrooms and two bathrooms. I’d have been happier with a house with three of each.
If you’re in the habit of throwing large get-togethers, having several bathrooms available is a definite plus, especially if most of them aren’t connected to a bedroom.
Also, if you have teenage girls, it’s easier for them to share a bedroom than a bathroom.
Searching for “Isabel Preysler baños dormitorios” tells me her house has 13 bedrooms and 14 bathrooms (her first husband was Julio Iglesias, the second one a Marquis and the third one left his position as Spanish Minister of the Treasury for her). I remember that when they built it, one of the things that was considered completely scandalous was the amount of bathrooms. Apparently the main bedroom is 150m[sup]2[/sup]: my house is 60m[sup]2[/sup] and it has 2 bedrooms, living room, bathroom, eat-in kitchen and a hallway longer than a train, don’t they get lost in there?
Nowadays in Spain it’s common to have two bathrooms for anything with more than two bedrooms, but in pre-1980-or-so housing, two bathrooms were extremely rare. My grandmother’s flat (built in the 1950s IIRC) had two bathrooms, but it also used to be the home of a family formed by five children, their parents, grandmother, dowager great-aunt and cook. One of my university classmates was rich and had a big house: two families living in the same chalet, six-car garage, a total of 10 children. Eight bedrooms (one of them a guest bedroom), three bathrooms. The house had been built in the 1960s.
I’ve been noticing this same phenomenon while apartment hunting. Apartments in Chicago which are “gut-rehabs” (many of which were an apartment building someone bought and took all the internal walls out of to make into condos…then had to rent out instead because the condo market took a nosedive) have at least as many bathrooms as bedrooms. This includes 2 bedroom places!
Me, I’d rather have an office or den, or just larger bedrooms than a 3 bedroom 3 bathroom place. But apparently, I’m in the minority, or builders think I am.
2 bathrooms, I like, for convenience. In anything less than a 5 bedroom, or a 3-4 bedroom over two floors, three bathrooms seems like an unwise use of space.
There can be specific construction reasons with remodeling or such, but the main reason is that people want an extra bathroom for entertaining. They want to keep there regular, usually bedroom, type bathroom private while allowing strangers to use the guest bath. Remember, strangers always carry HIV, HEP, STD’s and everything else. Plus, they always check your medicine cabinet to see what you are using.
My first thought that it is because Thai people like to shower very often. My lower/middle class Thai buddies were happy with sharing a very basic bathroom with a big family or group of friends. Maybe it’s a new, upper middle class thing to finally have a bathroom for each family member?
ETA: Also, Thai bathrooms can be cheaper than Western ones - does the shower just spray onto the floor in some/all of them?
Is it a Thai custom to have a bathrooms (not a full bath, just toilet and sink, referred to as a half bath in the US) for guest to use? Maybe they need a men’s room and women’s room, much like you would find in a business.
My parent’s current house has four bedrooms and four bathrooms, which sounds a bit silly when I say it like that but if I actually describe the house I think that it makes sense. All of the bedrooms are on the top floor. The master bedroom has its own bathroom and there’s a second one on its own. The main floor has its own bathroom and the finished basement has one bathroom
I was wondering when this would come up. Our home built in ‘01 is 5 bedroom, 8 bathroom. That’s right, 8 frikkin’ bathrooms. The problem I see so far (we just purchased in March) is that bathrooms can’t be left unattended for prolonged periods of time w/o unintended consequences. Sinks need to be run and toilets flushed or algae and other things may be prone to flourish. I’m always trying to “go” in a different room to give each some attention. I still walk around to each once every month or two with a large bottle of Clorox to nip problems in the bud, pouring a bit in each sink, shower and tank.
It makes sense. One bathroom is attached to the master bedroom, which is pretty common. Another is between the two spare bedrooms, which also makes sense. Then there’s a bathroom in the basement - it’s a finished, walk-out basement, and it’d be inconvenient to walk upstairs to use the bathroom. There’s also a sauna and a room that could be an unofficial bedroom down there, so the bathroom is logical.
The fourth bathroom is a guest bathroom that’s attached to the greatroom (combo dining/living room). If that bathroom didn’t exist, the only other bathroom on that floor is between the two spare bedrooms. You actually have to walk into a bedroom to get to the bathroom (it’s a jack-and-jill kinda thing where the two bedrooms each have sinks in them, but share a common shower/toilet in a room between them), so that would be bad if someone was actually using those bedrooms.
The only really odd thing is that the guest bathroom has a full-size shower in it. We’ve never even once used it. The only thing I can figure is the previous owners liked to work on cars, and I’m thinking his wife made him put a shower in the guest bath so he could hop in it directly from the garage and not track grease around the house.
It doesn’t seem that odd having one bathroom per bedroom and then one extra, but it’s surprising that they have more than that. I guess they could have a bathroom per bedroom, then one for the ground floor and one for the basement?
Unless you throw those get togethers on a daily basis, I just can’t see the point. I grew up in a 4 bedroom house with two bathrooms and it was never a problem even with massive birthday parties. My mom’s current three bedroom house is a 1.5 bathroom place.
In areas such as Chicago, where co-sharing an apartment or house is common, having a dedicated bathroom for each bedroom and then one common half bath may be a strong selling feature.
My parents’ house has 5 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms - one bathroom per bedroom (it’s fashioned as a potential bed and breakfast) plus two powder rooms on the main floor. Works nicely, doesn’t seem crazy.
I have 3 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms. I live in a 3-story townhouse and the bedrooms are on the third floor, so I have a master bath and one for the other bedrooms. I have a powder room on the main floor so guest don’t have to run up and downstairs, and a full bath on the lower level. Again, it’s a hassle to have to run upstairs to use a bathroom and since I use the lower level for guests, I wanted a full bath there so that they wouldn’t have to climb 2 sets of stairs to shower.
This all seems like overkill to me, having been raised in a three-bedroom, one bathroom house with seven people in it, but our current house for two people has three bedrooms and one and a half baths (there’s an en suite off the master), and we’re planning a full spa bathroom for the basement.