Bathroom per bedroom?

In My Humble Opinion
21

It’s coincidental that you started this thread. Yesterday, my wife and I walked through a model in a new, under-construction, gated community. The house was beautiful. 4800 sq. ft. on 2 acres. It had a fantastic kitchen designed to facilitate and accommodate a catering crew, which we have a need for from time to time, a morning room just off the kitchen that can hold up to 10 guests, in addition to the dining room that can hold another 8 comfortably. We loved the butler’s pantry, and the large family and living rooms, and the 4 car garage. We thought the house was absolutely perfect for us, until we went upstairs.

The first annoyance was there were five bedrooms, which is one too many, and there was no option to combine any two of them because of how the rooms were oriented. But we could have worked with it. Almost immediately, however, as we went through each room, we began to feel we were in World-O-Bathrooms. Not only was there a full bath in every room, there was a hall bath. To be fair, one bath was a Jack and Jill (which I hate) shared by two of the bedrooms, but that still meant 5 full baths on the second floor. Add the powder room on the first floor and that’s 5 1/2 baths, in one house. Ridiculous. Yes, the house is a good size, but we’re not talking mansion by any stretch.

My wife and I have no children, but do a bit of entertaining throughout the year, and our current house doesn’t work too well for that purpose, but to redesign and expand our kitchen, breakfast nook, dining room, add the sunroom we keep talking about, and extend the deck and patio, we’re talking almost $170K, which doesn’t take into consideration all the upheaval and the year+ of construction we’d have to endure. It’s simply begun to make sense for us to look for something new that we could just move in to without any of the hassle of retrofitting what we have.

We loved the neighborhood where the model was located, and based on the site plan and brochure, there will be a total of only 26 homes when building concludes. Also, being able to garage our three cars, motorcycles, and bikes would have been amazing. The entire second level of the house, however, was a complete turn-off; 5 bedrooms and especially 5 baths on one floor just didn’t make any sense to us. The master bedroom was also smaller than in our current home, which we couldn’t wrap our minds around, but that’s another story.

22

The majority of my childhood was spent in a series of 2 bedroom 1 bathroom homes. It wasn’t too bad… My dad was usually up at 3:00 or 4:00 but it did tend to become an issue during the school year… My mom, brother and I all had to get showered before the bus came which meant that we had to get up very early (stupid 1 hour bus rides).

I’m of the opinion that there should be (in a 2 story house) a master bathroom in one room, a half bath downstairs for guests and regular use by occupants and 1 bathroom per two additional bedrooms. In a one story house, a master bathroom in one room plus one bathroom per two additional bedrooms.

Currently we live in a 2 bedroom 1.5 bathroom townhouse and it is perfectly fine. However, if we had kids or if my wife worked and had to have a shower in the morning as well I could see it being too few bathrooms.

23

We have a full bathroom (with shower) for each of the 5 bedrooms, but there’s also 3 half baths, a formal one for guests near the living room, one off the game room and one off the party kitchen / pool. Thing is, we’re out in the burbs in Texas and space really isn’t a consideration, certainly not to the degree it would be in a neartown condo.

Actually, I kinda like having them spread throughout the house except for one thing, I do have to make the rounds periodically to make sure they’re all working correctly, not running, dripping, hanging, etc. That is kind of a pain and I’ve got an entire laundry room shelf stocked with replacement flappers, universal floats, etc.

We easily could get by with several less but it’s convenient, especially if you do much entertaining.

24

Any house with more than two bedrooms should have at least two toilets. The shower can be shared. Three or four people could make one bathroom work, but it would suck, especially if one those people spends a long time in the bathroom for whatever reason.

25

I always thought the ultimate would be to have a half bath in each bedroom [sink and toilet] with 2 bathing rooms [sink and tub/shower] for up to 4 bedrooms and a half bath in the common area for guests that are not issued a bedroom. People need toilets, not body cleaning facilities.

Think about it, how often was the lack of bath complaint about body function not cleaning?

26

We have four people, three bedrooms, and 1.5 bathrooms. We can (obviously) live with this arrangement, but when we have guests it’s really just too many people for one tiny bathroom. There isn’t enough room to hang more than four towels!

My dream renovation currently involves adding a master bath and replacing the half bath with a full bath, so guests don’t have to go upstairs to shower. I guess I’m on board with a 1:1 ratio. However, if we had more than three bedrooms, I don’t think I’d want more than three baths.

27

Whoa. In the 1950s there was an sf story in Galaxy where all rooms were so ornate that all real business was conducted in the bathroom. Looks like we might be heading in that direction!

28

It was crazy. Bathrooms everywhere and, other than the master bath, which was amazing, there was nothing special about the other four bathrooms. Standard tub, sink, toilet configuration.

29

I think that 1BA:2BR is ideal with the following provisions:

Master suite does not count toward BR/BA count.

Always add a half bath for guests.

30

I’m in a house with six bedrooms and four full bathrooms, and it seems like one toilet too many. What is worse, the fourth toilet is in a built-in room in the dining room so you can hear everything that goes on in there while you’re eating.

I think 2:1 is good.

31

Bathrooms= 0.5*(Bedrooms + 1)

32

As long as I get my cottage-sized Scarface master bath, I don’t care where everyone else shits.

33

I’ve lived in a four-bedroom ranch with two full baths, no halfs, and another ranch with three bedrooms that had two full and a half. In each case I only lived with one other person.

My current home, a townhouse, has a full up and a half down and it’s just me. Count me in the full bath for each person category, simply because I like it that way.

I take a lot of baths, with the whole candles, book and wine scenario, so I spend some serious time in the bathroom. In fact, that’s the one thing I’d like to improve upon if I had the money - expand my master bath, which is a little on the tight side for my taste.

I once spent eleven days in Ireland on vacation, on a package that included B&Bs. You had to choose one and then phone ahead for reservations.

This idiot 'merican here learned **right quick **what an en suite was. :smiley: I wasn’t familiar with the term, then.

The US really doesn’t do stand-alone baths like Europe, so imagine my surprise the first night in a foreign country when I discovered I had to share a bathroom DOWN THE HALL from my room! :eek: After that, I paid a little more attention to details when choosing accommodations!

34

Well bathrooms aren’t all that expensive to build as long as the plumbing is easy to connect to the main line. So it’s a cheap way to add a lot of value to a house.

But if you look at the 50s Levitttowns that sprung up all over suburbia, you can see most of them had only one bathroom. Of course few people had central air or even window units back then