Hotels with semi-open bathrooms / glass panels

[Evo20]

I have been staying in various different hotels in recent weeks:

>50% have had bathrooms which are either open to the bedroom, have glass walls (ie you can see straight into them), have a glass door etc.

Some of this glass is totally clear - some blasted but you can still see through.

Does anyone really want to watch whoever they share their room with on the toilet? In the shower? Changing a tampon?

The most recent was a family resort ie it’s expected a whole family is sharing the room, with a slightly blasted glass door

YABU: you’re a prude
YANBU: this is an insane design trend

Oh, this also reminds me of a nightclub I went to once in my 20s - think it was in Leeds?

The bathroom was unisex, which was stupid to start with, but what made it worse was the glass panels either side of the cubicles were frosted. I could see the silhouette of the person next to me sat on the loo.

I guess they are very marginally better than "open plan ensuites" ...just only just.
I can't understand the appeal at all!
(And unlike most of MN I'm quite able to cope with a normal ensuite with solid doors and walls!)

I think it's because it makes the bathrooms look bigger when there is more light coming through the see through walls into them. I hate them and won't return to hotels that have them.

And really posh luxury rooms that have a claw bath in the middle of the actual bedroom as a feature.

As well as not wanting to be seen scrubbing my bits thanks, I imagine the bedding getting all mouldy with the steam.

I'm 100% with you on this.
DH gets a lot of free hotel stays for us due to a huge amount of international travel for his job, and we use the "points" for the odd night away.
Staying in some on the really high end hotels for me, and I fully admit this is ungrateful, is a nightmare.
The last three we have stayed in all had glass bathroom doors, the toilet being being a tiny "wall" but barely big enough to disguise someone on the loo. The doors slide shut but don't lock and leave a 1 inch gap down the side so you can clearly see and hear all bathroom activities.
There is no window in the bathroom so your makeup looks horrendous when you come outside into natural light, and don't get me started on those bathrooms with the "double door" which functions both ways, so that you close it to block off one part of the room but then you can also fold it to block off part of the bathroom. Awful.
My last bugbear was a room that the light panel was so damn complicated to use that we literally could not find a normal steady light for the room or one that wasn't a weird rainbow colour, and the bedside lamps had to stay on all night as we went through every function and could only find a low level light that never went out, and the control panel itself stayed lit up all night. Had to throw clothes over the lamps, there was no way to unplug or turn them off.
Give me a real locking door and a plain lightbulb ANY day. While I'm at it, give me a real KEY instead of a card that doesn't work or needs to be plugged in to activate all the electricity in the room.
Who designs these things? Obviously people who don't poo or have periods, or children, or who share hotel rooms.

I'm another one who avoids hotels with any mentor of this. I usually check tripadvisor so thank you to those who warn me!

DH and I once had a hotel room for a week that had a window from the bathroom to the bedroom. It was quite high up and frosted so didn't really affect privacy but it faced the bed and when anyone went to toilet in the night ihe light woke the other person up!

Smart glass, also known as switchable glass, uses polymer-dispersed liquid crystals (PDLCs) to change from clear to opaque when an electric current is applied. When the current is applied the crystals line up and light is allowed through. Without an electric current it’s opaque.

I went on holiday with my Mother this time last year and had a whole thread about how awful 'trendy' hotel bathrooms were. We were in a lot of different countries and therefore lots of different hotels and some were really unpleasant.

Special mention for the hotel in Kerala which had an open air bathroom. It rained a lot, it was a mosquito area, there were lots of plants in the bathroom for the mozzies to cluster around while they waited for an opportunity to feast on me. There was a path running directly outside that other guests would walk along to get to their rooms, I could hear their conversation so they would definitely be able to hear any poonami events. The loo and sink were under cover but the shower was open to the rain, and it rained almost all the time that we were there, it was more unpleasant than you might expect it to be in a very warm country. It did, at least, have a lockable door so I had a bit of privacy from my Mum who has terrible short term memory so even though I would tell her I was having a shower she would just walk in on me in other hotels that were not properly private. I ended up waiting until she fell asleep in those hotels before I went for a shower.

I hate this as well ! Good to see I'm not some weirdo. The last very nice hotel.had a small glass window from the bedroom to the toilet! Ugh ! so I put a cushion in it where it remained firmly for the week . I noticed the cleaner didnt move it - I bet she knew why I'd out it there .

My partner booked a room in a very beautiful boutique hotel, once, for a week end. I’ve never stayed in such a gorgeous place. But in our room, two steps from the bed, was the toilet, behind a small, movable divider, with the bath tub opposite the bed. This made me so stressed the entire weekend. I still don’t understand how the hotel owners thought this would ever be acceptable, especially at the eye watering amount it cost to stay there for those 2 nights.

It's a stupid trend; but I still don't think you can easily avoid seeing yourself in the bathroom?!

All-glass bathrooms must have been invented by the same criminally insane person who invented taps in public toilets that require you to hold them down permanently for the water to come out - meaning that anybody with fewer than three arms/hands cannot possibly wash two of them properly under running water - unless they are particularly lithe and flexible and can get a foot up to the sink.

@HootyMcBooby agreed that complicated lighting systems are very frustrating. Why do they need to be creative with how the lights work?

Last year I came back late to a hotel I was staying in, and having had a few drinks couldn’t work out how to turn the lights off and had to call reception to help me.

Every residential home I’ve ever been in follows the same patterns for lighting… why not hotels?

What annoys me about hotels is when there aren’t any plug sockets/ USB sockets next to the bed.

You've just induced a terrible flashback @Bamboozie

Doesn't really bother me but DH just can't be going with the whole business. We avoid booking this kind of room, or I spend an inordinate amount of time in the lobby or any lounge areas, leaving DH with 'the room'.

Just had this in a Marriott, sharing a twin room with 17 Yr old son. Wall between sleeping area and shower room was part glazed, frosted but you could see shapes through the glass.
The only place to hang towels and clothes was by the glazed area. Not a comfortable experience at all.
I understand that glass looks great and reduces the need to turn on the light in the day but there should be a way of covering the glass if you want to especially in a twin room where the people sharing are less likely to be intimate with each other.

I am with you on this. The horror of stepping into an otherwise nice hotel room and the first thing you have to do is find the button that closes the blind/turns the glass opaque so the bathroom is private.

I stayed in a hotel once which had two doorways next to one another opening into the main bedroom, one was the wet room and one was the toilet. With one sliding door between them, so if the shower door was closed to avoid the water going everywhere, the loo was open, and vice versa. For a family sharing it was the stuff of nightmares. Like one of those cuckoo clocks where either the little man or the little woman comes out. “Daddy’s in the shower, close the door!” “Mummy’s doing a wee!”

I hate them too, the hotel I stayed in recently in Mexico was like this and while I was taking a shower two hotel staff male and female entered my room to spray mosquito repellent (I hadn’t requested this so no idea they were due to come up to the room) it was very embarrassing. I made a complaint as they had just walked in without even knocking first!

Many years ago a friend went with her new man for their first romantic weekend away in an expensive hotel in Italy - the bathroom had small saloon bar-type swing doors!

Awful. I'm so glad I have never stayed anywhere like this.
Is it the more expensive hotels that do this, thinking it makes them look classy and a cut above other hotels? I usually stay in hostels or cheap to mid-range hotels.
Must be awful to arrive somewhere with a friend, you've booked a twin room and then there's a see-through bathroom or open plan.
Did no-one ever think, "People don't want to see their friends or partner shitting or washing their genitals so maybe this isn't a great idea"

At Sandals Barbados there was a pane of glass separating the shower from the main bedroom BUT you could slide a portrait of a macaque across for privacy 🤣

I stayed at a cloud forest lodge in Ecuador. The showers were outside and open to the elements. They had an open panel on the back so you could look out at the amazing forest as you showered (we were on top of a hill). It was amazing.

Nil points though for:
The pricey Vincci hotel in Barcelona with the flimsy barely-frosted glass wall between the bedroom and bathroom.

And the dirt cheap room in a converted office building in El Salvador somewhere, where the toilet was by the head of the bed and had a flimsy shower curtain as the only divider.

It's horrific. I had one memorable evening in a hotel bathroom like this where I had the shits. I had to ask dh to take the children out until it was safe to return.

Maybe bathroom design is just one of those industries that has been infiltrated and taken over by perverts, who think that wanting to cop a full view of another person straining on the toilet is a completely normal pastime.

The kind of people for whom the phrase 'Cleaned to eBay standards' exists in the first place.