to think that en suite bathrooms are a total

[helloclitty]

waste of valuable space in many recently built houses.

Currently house hunting and I am flummoxed as to why so many new build houses seem to have postage size 'double' rooms but have an en suite for nearly every bedroom.

Am I the only one that couldn't give a monkeys about having 4 bathrooms (to clean) and to think hope this might just be a passing trend?

The best solution IMO is to have 2 family bath (or 1 just shower) rooms in a family house, + downstairs toilet. If you need 4 bedrooms, then a 2nd bathroom is a real bonus, but one that any combination of people can use, not just one that's restricted to the users of one bedroom.

Wouldn't be without my ensuite it's proper big one tho' with bath, shower, 2 sinks (BLISS!), mostly because I wouldn't want to share the family bathroom (3 teen sons, ugg). Wouldn't let visitors near it either - they use the guest room ensuite (tiny but lovely). It only a waste of space if they are not being used..... obviously the example of the 7 bed, 13 bath house is just stupid!

Helloclitty, I wouldn't buy one with every room ensuite, but if you have a family of 5 or 6, then 3 or 4 loos sounds about right to me :)

see what I really want in a house is:

ground source heating for low billing

rain water harvesting to run washing machine, toilets and garden water for again low bills

good triple glazing to keep warm

and a kitchen near the car port of garage to take shopping bags directly to kitchen rather than trundle through the house with loads of shopping.

bathrooms to clean - well only a man designing a house wouldn't think about the cleaning involved and not worry about keeping running costs low

I agree OP. An en suite is personally the last thing I look for.

I grew up a family of 5 in a 4 bed detached house, with a downstairs loo and a family bathroom upstairs. Even when we had family visiting we were never caught short!

I'd rather have a dressing room than an en suite.

Euuurrrgh! No poos in the en-suite - 'tis the rule in our house! For showers, teeth brushing and wee wees only!

Well I currently have three bedrooms and three bathrooms and as I said, extra room will have extra bathroom. Why wouldn't you want a private bathroom?

I wouldn't buy a house with small rooms though. I like space.

We have an ensuite and the "family" bathroom belongs to DD. She sometimes invades ours to use the "proper shower" (rather than the shower abover her bath). We never go in hers though - I've not had a bath since she was born (9 years ago)!

I don't follow the concept of smelling though. Does your hall smell if it is next to the family bathroom? Certainly we both use the ensuite "facilities" and have never noticed any odours lingering into the bedroom.

I like them but then I antisipate having three teenage daughters in the house so I guess I would, shame about the house attached to the en suites otherwise I'd definitely buy one.

An increasing number of friends/ family have houses like this eg. 5 bed house with 2 en suites. The kids are all small at the moment so the 'spare' en suite room is a guest room but GOK what is going to happen when the kids grow up.

Two (or more) teenagers competing for the ensuite bedroom sounds like a recipe for disaster. It is however lovely to be a guest and know that your shower won't wreck the carefully worked out bathroom routine. However, this is not something that is worth sacrificing useful bedroom space for.

We had ensuite out in when the loft was converted. Judging by how long a 3 yr old can spend on the loo and the stink, I'm happy we have our own upstairs!

First thing we did in our new house was rip out the master bedroom ensuite in favour of giving me an office. Contributes far more to our quality of life.

When I see property listings with an ensuite for every room, my first thought is 'house-share pad' - I imagine 5 sweaty twenty something 'professionals' trying to inject some quality of life into sharing an inner-city 3 bed terrace.

We have an en-suite in the master bedroom and one in the third bedroom, which we use as a guest room. We have a lot of guests because we live abroad, so for us it is fantastic for them to have their own bathroom. It means they are all out of my way!

But now I come to think of it, we don't have what you'd call a family bathroom at all - just a shower room, and the kids use our ensuite to bath in. I have not noticed this as a drawback, but now I will...

For what it's worth our bedroom has never smelled of poo. The bathrooms are well ventilated.

In our loft conversion we squeezed in an ensuite. Gave us a second loo. Invaluable as don't need to go downstairs to use a toilet at night. Great when we have guests. Also has a fab shower. Suits us in this house.

Agree. Maybe it's going to be like the fashion for putting a basin in your bedroom in the 80s. What was the point of that?

Much nicer to have a bathroom that people can use without walking through your bedroom to get to it, and some proper sized rooms.

I also don't get the 2 basins fad. How much time do people spend at the basin?

I had a basin in my bedroom in the 80s !
It was very useful. All teeth cleaning / hand washing /face washing didn't involve the bathroom being clogged up by people. Loved it!

We had an en-suite in our last house. Totally pointless - I was quite capable of walking the three paces across the hall to the main bathroom (we also had a downstairs loo so there were 3 loos for 3 people, one of whom was in nappies at the time!). And no storage space - small master bedroom, small second single bedroom and tiny boxroom. Nowhere to put towels, sheets etc etc (we could only fit one set of drawers in our room so we put all our towels etc in the single room and thanked goodness we only had one small baby and not many guests). We rented there - when we bought our place we made a point of ignoring en-suites and looked for storage space instead! Don't have an en-suite now and it's made no appreciable difference in my life except I can fit my linen in easily!

I'd LOVE an ensuite.

Instead I've got a big house with four good size double bedrooms and one shite shared bathroom off the landing, a bathroom so small I burn my massive arse on the towel rail every time I bend over to dry my legs.

I'd gladly sacrifice a third of my bedroom for an ensuite.

En-suite is invaluable as you get older and need the loo in the night at least once! And nobody is allowed to use it for anything other than wees!!

We have ensuites for every room.

Thought it would be good for when we're having visitors. Would mean that the main downstairs bathroom wouldn't get trashed so often and that we can all get ready and have showers at the same time!

What I didn't figure in my reckoning, was that all these bathrooms need cleaned. It is a PITA.

But it is quite nice to prepare a bathroom with lovely towels etc especially for guests.

I just want a 'girls toilet'! Three boys + DP.

Dressing room anyday. We have a lovely big family bathroom, but when house hunting we saw a lovely house where they had turned the room next to main bedroom into a bathroom AND a big dressing room. Perfect (not perfect location, hence not buying it)

My friend has just built a new house. 4 upstairs bathrooms, one downstairs bathrooms, and another toilet.

Mind you, it is gorgeous.

I like having an ensuite. Especially since the children came along.

We only had one bathroom when I was a child it it was always a scramble in the morning

I agree. It's because the developer is hoping to charge more because they can say that it has lots of bathrooms.