to not understand whats wrong with a bathroom downstairs?

[notveryinventive]

Just been watching Homes Under The Hammer and they often do get houses with bathrooms downstairs and seem to think its a bad thing. Ours is downstairs and even though its a bit odd I kind of like it. Its much easier to bath the kids and dress them in the front room. Also if I fancy a bath on a night or when I get up before everyone for a shower I am less likely to disturb anyone sleeping.

So whats wrong with your bathroom being downstairs?

Wait until you are ill with a bad stomach upset and you just want to lie in bed and die quietly and have to run up and down stairs every few minutes.

Nothing, I was brought up in a bungalow

I grew up with a bathroom/toilet downstairs.

It's ok if you have a separate loo upstairs but we didn't.

what redrubyshoes says....
mind you bathroom upstairs with downstairs toilet is fabulous

It's a bit annoying if you're pregnant or sick.

That's it.

(I like ours being downstairs too, it's a lot easier to keep an eye on what's going on with the DC)

Distance from the bedroom.

Smells. Particularly if bathroom is off the kitchen as they often seem to be on HUTH.

Good point redrubyshoes Though we have a toilet upstairs too.

I'm the same as you OP, my parents' house was built as a bungalow, so the bathroom was on the ground floor. They added a couple of bedrooms upstairs when I came on the scene, so we slept upstairs with the bathroom downstairs. If we were ill, we had a basin at the side of the bed, which is what I do now if anyone's ill that way and we have 2 bathrooms upstairs.
I guess it's what you're used to-I didn't know any different when I was growing up

Hambles Maternity leave

We have a bathroom upstairs and another loo downstairs and I still get small children coming in for a poo when I'm in the bath
My friend has her bathroom beyond the kitchen, right at the end of the house, downstairs. She says it is a proper pain in the arse to go for a wee at night and it's freezing too. And if you want the toilet when somebody's using the kitchen you're a bit self conscious!

I have downstairs bathroom and don't mind it a bit. I thought it would be a nightmare when DS came along but actually it is great. I didn't have to carry him upstairs every time I needed the loo etc. It apparantly puts people off though when it comes to selling a house.

Only time it was a pain was in latter stages of last pregnancy when I needed the loo 2 or 3 times a night. We solved that by having camping loo in spare room and I just used that. Wouldn't want to do that in redrubyshoes's example though.

the people in the bottom flat might be a bit pissed off with all the neighbours trooping through to use the loo.

Basically, most people prefer upstairs bathrooms for the reasons already stated on here. Unless you intend a house to be a forever house you always have to look at the resale potential, not just what you would put up with. We haven't found our forever house yet so we have always taken a resale point of view into account when buying a house.

I've got a downstairs bathroom, and got round the illness issue with strategically placed buckets or getting the sofa bed out in the next room.

It did cause a few problems with the children when they were being potty trained at night time, again a bucket with zoflora solved that issue.

I would like one upstairs and one downstairs though, but having only one dowstairs just impact my life very much.

My loo is downstairs next to the kitchen. It's not much bother really, it gives us more room upstairs.
The only time it's ever been a problem was when I lived in a dreadful old Victorian house which was damp and spooky. I was pregnant, and the tramp to the loo was horrid. I used to pee in a potty and then tip it down the bedroom sink, with a bleach chaser!

Doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Nothing wrong with it if you have a loo upstairs, but one of my objections to the second house we viewed when trying to buy was the fact that the only toilet was downstairs. I hated that aspect of the last two rented houses I lived in - one where the stairs were dodgy and the bathroom was at the far end of the building (and btw had clear glass in the window for the first month or so and my housemate always got his washing in after dark when I was showering) and the other where my room was on the top floor so I had to negotiate two flights of stairs if I needed to wee at night. Oh, and I threw up on the stairs one night when really ill, and had to clean it up with housemates watching . Now I've been spoiled by four years in a flat! Plus, in the winter having a bath/shower means shivering up the stairs in a towel to get to the bedroom...

Our house had the bathroom downstairs when we bought it, we 'moved' it to upstairs though. It needed completely re-doing anyway so we thought we might as well.

I think it's a lot easier getting ready in the morning when bathroom and bedroom are close together, and I thought it was a bit gross having the loo just off the kitchen. Also thinking of resale potential as well, it would probably put a lot of people off.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to have the extra (small) bedroom upstairs, though I think overall we did the right thing.

We talk about potential resale, but then when we bought our last house which had a downstairs bathroom we thought to ourselves that well, we bought it...and we're normal! So there will be other people who felt the same way as us, and of course there were and the place sold. We were unlikely to be the only people in the county happy to have a downstairs bathroom.

We have an upstairs bathroom with separate toilet and a downstairs shower room and toilet combined. No-one and I mean no-one is allowed to more than wee in the downstairs toilet as it's right next door to the kitchen and I'm not cooking dinner to any smells coming from the toilet! I make sure my two girls let their friends know and that their are abolutely no exceptions, not even for potty training toddlers

I just wouldn't buy a house with a downstairs bathroom (unless it was a project house and I would be able to move the bathroom, but because of the cost and hassle of that the rest of the house would have to be pretty damn marvellous to make it attractive). I lived in a few as a student and hated having to go downstairs to the loo in the middle of the night and wander through the kitchen in my towel. I also felt self-conscious going to the loo when there were people in the kitchen. We rejected a few houses when househunting for our current house because of the downstairs bathroom, and eventually told the estate agent not to bother showing them to us unless there was scope to change it.

Nice to have a downstairs loo, though - we don't have one in this house and it's definitely something I'd like in the next house.

Well yes we bought ours with the downstairs bathroom, but only because we could afford to move it and didn't mind the hassle of doing so (and had somewhere else to stay while the work was done). Not everyone would be able or willing to do that, so you reduce the number of potential buyers (and maybe how much they're prepared to pay).

Having said that, I'm not sure we would have done it just for the resale value, we were planning to stay a good few years, and wanted it upstairs for our own convenience as well!

my house has a toilet next to the kitchen with the cooker just the other side of the toilet wall, so we are cooking right next to the toilet. You can hear all the toilet noises and smell the smells in both the kitchen and the living room, there is no escape! we have an upstairs bathroom too- I am very grateful for a toilet on each floor due to my health problems but i think the downstairs loo could be in a better place! just a bit of distance between it and the kitchen would be great.

I have lived in a couple of places with just a downstairs bathroom off the kitchen- i used to sleep in the living room as I had no chance of getting downstairs in time