People want doorless showers but most of them don’t have the space in their bathroom that would be required to build one that works properly.
Some of them can’t accept that fact and try to build one that relies entirely on the delusion that water respects boundaries.
They’re terrible. Everything you said is true, but I’ll add that unless you crank up the heat in the room, they’re miserable on cold days. The enclosed showers trap the steam and warmth from the how water in with you, but with no door it’s just cold.
Thought that heat lamps might get rid of the chill factor?
I have 3+ meter ceilings in all rooms including the bathroom, and the heat lamps are a godsend in winter.
I’m looking to renovate the bathroom over the coming years and thought that an open space shower might be a great addition but maybe we will reconsider.
I do like the Japanese prefab wet bathroom units, but not sure if they are available here, nor if the other half would approve.
Well, they do, but they’re giant energy hogs. Just have a door on the shower and that stuff isn’t needed.
Hm. My bathroom is always 23°C or warmer, no matter the weather. When is colder outside, my heat pump delivers more warm water to the heating circuits. Does heating in the US work differently?
Look at this high and mighty European with a heat pump and everything… /s
Most of the heat in the US is electric or gas. In areas where the temps get freezing and below outside, people don’t tend to run it to get the temps into the mid 20s like that.
Does that really make a difference on the bill, are the houses so badly insulated? I always thought that style of building with wooden walls and insulation foam should make heating extremely cheap.
Insulation varies, but even a well insulated house is going to get cold if it’s freezing outside, and it takes energy to get them up to a toasty temp.
the delusion that water respects boundaries.
Water, the anarchist.
The Conquest of Wet
The opening is too wide, the shower head should be a rainfall shower, not the Commando 450.
Nah. Ours is a rainfall shower but the floor still gets wet.
I think you’re dead-on. I had a 5’ wide doorless shower, 3’ of glass, and a rainfall showerhead and it was fine. Minimal leakage
Mine was fine till the kids grew up and wanted showers not baths. Water everywhere. Had to replace it with a sliding door
I’ve built three doorless showers.
You can wash an elephant with that thing.
Wouldn’t a handheld showerhead be even better? That way, you could aim the showerhead directly away from the opening, somewhat reducing the incidence of splashing.
I know from experience that it’s not sufficient, but I’m certain it minimizes the damage, and honestly I consider handheld showerheads to be superior regardless
That just looks like an unfinished shower, or a sliding door set with a missing half. Maybe you could get a little shower curtain to hang up across the hole
I encountered this exact setup at a hotel recently. This seems like a hotel as well with how those bottles are attached to the wall
Looks like a hotel. Best just to ask the front desk for extra towels.
Peak aesthetics
Why even have a doorless/curtainless shower? I don’t understand the appeal. How is the warmth supposed to stay in so you’re not shaving off the tips of goosebumps?
Shower doors are difficult to clean well, shower curtains stick to the body, space is limited (problem if you’re bigger), steam can make it harder to breathe…
Finns have figured out doorleess showers: they waterproof the whole room and equip it with a squeegee on a long stick. The floor is flat with a slight slope towards the drain. After you’re done you just wipe the floor with the squeegee (takes 10 seconds) and that’s it.
The Japanese did it right. Essentially the same thing you’re describing and in a way that mitigates anything commenters below you blurted out.
Unfamiliar with Finnish techniques.
That’s still worse than just having a door. The squeegee helps, but it’s not perfect, and I hate stepping on wet/damp floor after drying my feet. I mostly see that style in hotels or bathrooms which are too tiny to fit a proper shower. Whenever not space constrained, I’m pretty sure they’re just there to save money.
Building code in most if not all of northern Europe require bathrooms to be a proper wet room, meaning waterproofing and a drain for all parts of the bathroom. This means either having two drains, or to allow water to flow from the rest of the bathroom to the shower. Guess which alternative is easier and cheaper to do?
Dude, why do you think this is the code in Northern Europe?
I haven’t checked the code in every country, but I do know it’s code in Norway, and you see a lot of the same building techniques in the rest of northern Europe.
Why do you think it is not code?
I’m not saying it’s not code, I know it’s code. And it’s code because they’re all doing the open shower thing. Why else would they want the whole room waterproofed if not because the whole room routinely gets wet?
It’s still code if your shower has a door. It’s not unusual to stick your washing machine in the bathroom, and even if you don’t, the toilet could always overflow.
North America is really the only place I know of where bathrooms are not required to be waterproofed throughout.
Yeah, I’m saying they made it code because the doorless showers are the standard, not that putting door there would somehow invalidate the code.
I come from another European country and the law only requires waterproofing the floor + wet areas (shower, around the bath etc.)
I have had this style once. The shower head even reached around near the toilet, so when cleaning I could just hose the whole thing over, and then squidgee. Very convenient.
But your towel would get damp. And your poor toothbrush is gonna taste like your brother’s shampoo!
What if I like the taste of shampoo?
But seriously, doorless doesn’t have to mean completely open, for example I have a glass divider wall in my bathroom, towels and toothbrushes stay safely behind the wall.
your brother’s shampoo!
Have you met the brother? That’s scampoo for sure.
Well that’s just bad design. The opening is wrong so of course it’ll splash and the floor needs to be one level and tilted to the drain.
I’ve seen some really good ones that work
we have one at work that doesn’t have any glass at all, just the plastic fixture. we installed a curtain rod because it felt strange but yeah drain in the shower basin and a decent floor grade, followed up by non-slip tile. Works a treat the whole 2 times I used it.
Came here to say this, if don’t right they’re pretty sweet
My fav is the ones that just say fuck it and make the whole bathroom into a shower; as if people don’t keep anything else in the bathroom, like idk towels or the clothes you’re putting on after you shower…
I didn’t want a practical bathroom anyway…
This is the way most Japanese showers are set up, and it works well because the shower/tub, toilet, and sink/storage area are three separate rooms.
Here is a (simplified approximation of a) common layout:
When the shower is literally alone in its own room, that’s a little different.
I’m talking about when the full bathroom; toilet, sink, and shower, are all in the one uninterrupted space.
Did Dave piss on the damn toilet seat again, or is it just splash from the shower? 🤷🏻
Just use the bum gun to spray the seat off. And then talk to Dave.
Interesting. I thought a lot of Japanese dwellings were smaller than the average American home. But I’m in the US and my entire bathroom is like between one third and one half of this image. I don’t have room for a setup like this without making the neighboring room significantlly smaller.
There’s diversity for sure. Old, rural, traditional Japanese homes are huge, most apartments are tiny, and standard single-family homes are usually somewhere in-between. The layout pictured here is most common in houses and apartments with multiple occupants; single-person apartments (especially cheaper or more modern ones) often have a more western-style “unit” bathroom with everything shoved into one room. But there’s a lot of variety; for instance some places have the sink and tub/shower together while the toilet is separate. Japanese homes (especially apartments) often only have one bathroom, so separating out the bath, toilet, and sink/vanity is actually a space-saving compromise, because one person can be using the toilet, one taking a bath, and another brushing their teeth all at the same time with relative privacy without the need for a second (or third) bathroom.
Oh hey it’s the bathroom from my student campus housing
I love bathrooms like these. Just put the towel on a hook and you are good to go.
They shouldn’t. If this is new enough construction, the contractor needs to fix this.
I looked at an apartment once where they had a proper door-less shower. You had to, like, walk around a corner to enter it. I considered leasing that apartment just because of the shower, but yeah a proper door-less shower takes up a lot of space.
This is becoming a staple in cheap and mid-price hotels. I have to use half my towels to keep the floor from being wet.
Question on this… Why would you do that? Like 1 medium towel vaguely covers the wet area and its not like your probably sub-one-week stay is going to hurt anything if there is permanent water damage.
Get a spring-loaded window curtain rod, and notch the end that goes against the glass, so it doesn’t slip. Throw on a shower curtain liner (they’re cheap) and call it a day.
Pretty sure that is a hotel room, nothing a customer could fix. Been to rooms like that and hated the shower.
Yeah, I don’t get this new trend of doorless showers. One of the many modern interior designs I think are bad/ugly. What’s the deal with modern minimalism? Shit is ugly.
Also, this kind of design is gonna make for cold ass showers in the winter unless you pump your heat all day and night.
Had a doorless one at my last place and it was great. The shower head was pointed at the side wall vs the open door, so maybe it kept it cleaner.
Every hotel ever these days it seems. I guess it’s cheaper than replacing a curtain, or the curtain rod every jackass seems to have to yank on and bend for some reason.
That is not enough clearance, the door needed to be way longer
I’ve briefly thought about it, but I would need to make the whole bathroom waterproof, and that stops the intrusive thoughts.
You should really at least make the floor waterproof anyway. Every old shower floor I’ve torn out has water damage right outside the shower from the years of splashes and drips.
And at that point, just get rid of the booth altogether and have the floor slope down towards the drainage hole. If you’re doing a renovation there anyway. You can still add a shower curtain if you want, or you can even skip that if the room is big enough. It’ll feel way less cramped.
I like my clawfoot tub too much to get rid of it
Just need a layer of Ditra under the tile.
Understood, it’s just a bigger undertaking than I want to deal with. 100+ year old houses are a project on their own
