I have a friend who installed a urinal in one of their bathrooms when they remodeled a few years ago. The fact that they have four sons and no daughters may have had something to do with it.
People probably don’t want urinals in their houses because they seem so industrial and un-home like.
Of course that’s just because so few people have them.
I’m guessing that the reason so few people have them historically is that spacious bathrooms (and houses in general) are a newer phenomenon, and smaller houses couldn’t afford the extra space taken up by superfluoush (badum-ching!) toilet, especially when water conservation wasn’t mandated.
I think a urinal would be about as high as the bathroom sink. Hey, that’s an idea & every bathroom already has one 
I don’t want a urinal cause of the smell, plus the splashback, plus they don’t save any water. I would like one of those paperless toilets.
What is a ‘paperless’ toilet?
Do you mean a bidet???
All right, all right, if you people will pause for a moment while you trade “ick” imagery, logical alternatives do exist.
A casual search for “dual flow toilet” turns up this little number, an Australian model that has two flush settings, 1.6 and 0.8 gallons, for solid and liquid waste disposal. The unit is possibly more expensive than installing a conventional toilet and urinal (though I doubt by much), and you don’t have to waste as much space in your bathroom, though you do have to explain its function to your guests, while a urinal is pretty obvious.
In areas where water consumption is strictly regulated, this seems a viable solution.
It is also a question of space. I don’t really want to make my bathroom bigger to add a urinal at the expense of less living space in the house.
When I was teaching English in Japan, one of my fellow teachers (a Japanese woman of independent means who taught school mainly as a hobby) had a urinal in her bathroom, and I thought - how sensible.
Regarding the dribbles on the floor- first of all, those get bad only in bathroom that aren’t cleaned often enough, as each succeeding guy ends up standing further away to avoid stepping in it. Second, some urinal designs are worse than others - I 've found that in general the larger, deeper (I mean front-to-back) urinals don’t have that problem.
If memory serves, I saw a Penn & Teller profile on E! or A&E or MTV or some other station with letters in it. Penn Gillette has a urinal right in his TV room, so he doesn’t have to miss any of the game. Of course, he also lives in a former penitentiary in the desert outside of Las Vegas, so he has quite a few interesting design elements.
“What is a ‘paperless’ toilet?”
A brilliant american thing, I think from the 70’s. It had a button you would use that would spray warm water on your butt & another one that would spray warm dry air. I don’t know what happened to them.
[slight nitpick]
Penn’s house (“The Slammer”) was designed to resemble a penitentiary. It’s never been anything but a residence. [/sn]
Quoth glilly:
On the contrary. In my mom’s house, for instance, nearly a century old, the (only) bathroom is the same size as the bedrooms. At the time that the house was built, indoor bathrooms were still somewhat new, and nobody thought to make them any smaller than any of the other rooms in the house. It was only once folks started getting used to bathrooms that they started shrinking down to the size of the fixtures.
And handy, what you describe is called a bidet, and it’s about as far from being an “American thing” as you can get. I understand that they’re rather popular in Europe, but they’ve never caught on here. And it goes without saying, of course, that they don’t particularly save water.
I can’t find the Thread , but it was covered a year or so ago.
Men are NOT the only people who stand while urinating.
You want the Straight Dope? Here Ya Go.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you. It’s graphic but entirely accurate, and as far as I can tell, it is NOT a put-on at all.
Live and learn. 
Cartooniverse
My bad. I was only half watching the show at the time and must’ve misheard. (I thought it looked like an awfully nice jail, penitentiary!)
My uncle also has one in his downstairs bathroom. He lives in El Paso, so water conservation was probably a factor.
Why get a bidet, though, when you can use the sink! It’s there, and it’s at just the right height …
Uhhh … forget I said that.
My dad* had one put in our bathroom when I was a kid. I thought it was pretty disgusting, but I tell you, it’s better than the seat being left up on the toilet and worse - the toilet seat being left down and being covered with piss.
(*My dad is also from El Paso…)
Jill
My house in Aomori prefecture had a urinal in the downstairs bathroom. It was tres chic ! I thought it was the coolest thing in the world, as did my friends. I haven’t seen one since.
American? I was always under the impression that they were from Japan. Whatever the case, they are extremely popular in Japan. My father used on on his visit there–he loved it so much he had one imported & installed in his master bathroom. He LOVES it…
Urinals are common in older Japanese houses. The toilets are separate rooms from the bath/shower/sink area. Also the other toilet is most likely a squatting toilet. Nowadays Japanese houses use Western style toilets, albeit with some high-tech twists. (Yes, all the stories you heard about high-tech Japanese toilets are true.)
Japanese trains often have urinals, which is a bit strange. The urinal-only toilets do have doors, but with a tinted window at head height and no lock. You’d be walking through the train and see the back of the head of some guy using the urinal.