Have you ever been to a home that has commercial furnishings? I also wonder why we don’t see it often if at all.
November 7, 2024
For reference this is a hospital, but the curved floor and panelling is just ….easier to maintain so I wonder why it's not the norm at home. Yes it doesn't look as nice but I'm sure things like this could be made functional AND look good.
Because people generally don’t want their house to look like a disabled toilet in a hospital?
There was kind of a shift towards this with the wet room craze a few years back.
Also, my wife’s great aunty (still young at 97) lives in sheltered accommodation, and her bathroom is very much of the clinical easy-clean design where I imagine the carers/cleaners just hose it all down and have done with it
In Japan it is common for the entire bathroom to be a wetroom like this and you can just hose the entire room down like a big shower.
Mums house has a downstairs wet room built like this, it’s a council house and the previous tenant was a very elderly lady that had a panic alarm in the living room, ramps and banisters outside, and a downstairs wet room fitted for her by the council.
That’s the only one I’ve seen, and I cat sit so I see a lot of houses.
as aesthetically unpleasant as it is you can’t really knock the functionality of it in terms of the flooring. grippy and waterproof. the walls however feel like they would eventually harbour all sorts of nasties behind it.
My ex’s bathroom looked like this because her elderly mother lived with her and she’d kitted out the bathroom to keep her mother as independent and safe for as long as possible.
Then her mother passed and she immediately had the bathroom redone. They may be practical but no one wants to live like that.
The house I grew up in had accommodations like this for the previous owner who was wheelchair bound. It was certainly more difficult to clean as the whole floor (no slip nobbles) had to be cleaned
No.
Because it looks terrible
I have a wet room with exactly the same flooring, but tiles on the wall instead of the flat walls. with the hand rail too, but also a fold down seat incase you need it.
But my husbands disabled and need all of the adaptations. If he wasnt disabled, it would just be a downstairs toilet. No shower,
Had similar when we moved house, downstairs wet room for disabled gent, grab rails, a pulley in the ceiling, strangely tall toilet
They’re very easy to maintain and can look less clinical. It could’ve been really useful for mum (late 70s) had they fitted the flooring properly, but round the back of the toilet, they had not sealed the floor in and instead overlapped the edges of any cuts.
Growing mould underneath for who knows how long the whole thing had to come out and be re fitted
Note to anyone who wants one, it is NOT a novice diy job
It depends on whose home you are in. They are a thing and usually for disabled or the elderly. They’re called Wet rooms and I think they are fab. They are so easy to keep clean.
Yeah I’ve seen it a few times where elderly and less abled people have had funding for accessibility stuff throughout their home, so making their showers and toilets more accessible for them. This has sometimes meant entire bathroom refits and they’ve been done in this style.
I am not from the uk (sorry for intruding) but I had the same thoughts as you, and can now basically shower down my whole bathroom if I want. Linoleum flooring that looks like terrazzo tiling and water proof walls that look like normal gypsum walls (painted light pink).
The floor extend a bit upwards the walls, and are sloped to a floor drain. I could have a quite a big leak without a problem (untill it goes through the door I guess).
This is the kind of thing I’ve seen installed in people’s homes who have mobility issues so want a wet room with easy access to the toilet and washing facilities.
Like others have said, the reason it isn’t installed as standard is because it isn’t aesthetically pleasing at all. If you want it installed during your next bathroom refurbishment you won’t have any problem getting it done.
But some people do have wet rooms in their homes and that generally involves tiling ceiling to floor with a waterproof hard floor which looks nicer than this.
These are more common than you think.
Homes that have been adapted for the disabled, usually with a disabled facilities grant will tend to look a bit like this.
You can even style them too, they don’t have to be dull colours like you’d see in commercial buildings.
Mostly because commercial fittings are generally more expensive as they are built to take a battering.
If the price was the same or less you might deal with the ugliness but who wants to pay more for less good looking.
The one here was likely fitted by the council for someone with disabilities.
My in-laws had a downstairs wet-room like that but the walls were tiled. Was great for showering the dog down as the whole room (about 2.5×2.5 metres) could be used as a shower cubical
Never asked why it was like that
Yeah, the kitchen of my student digs in Bristol looked like a ‘halfway house special’. Linoleum floors and all that. Awful.
It’s a wet room. It’s essential for many disabled people. They can look nice though. Got one at my house through a disabled facilities grant and we were able to pick the floor and tile colours. It’s really functional, but looks so much nicer than the one you’ve shared.
I saw a video not too long ago, which featured an interior designer type person who advocates for having commercial dishwashers in residential premises, as they are so much quicker than the ones found in homes.
when i was a kid (in america) i lived for a time in a house that used to be a small retirement home. the hallways were huge, probably for wheelchairs, and there were ramps everywhere. i have a clear memory of reading a book by the light of the exit sign outside my bedroom door. the living room was more like a lobby done up to look homely, and it was great for hosting christmas parties, plenty of room for sofas and guests
In China this type of bathroom is really common. Even really cheap and nasty places I lived had bathrooms done up like this.
My mom has put up a “No Smoking” sign in our loo …
In her final year of uni, the house my girlfriend lived in had a bathroom like that, which I affectionately referred to as “the Chinese prison shower” because it was poorly maintained and everything dripped.
I dream of having a commercial kitchen at home, fryer, grill, gas hob, rational oven. Big double sink and dishwasher.
This looks like hotel or student halls. I would only want it in either. Sure the alarm is fine if you need it in your home but you could make your bathroom look less miserable.
We are having a side extension built to house an en-suite and utility room. We are going to have a hybrid accessibility-friendly shower. Industrial vinyl on the floor but nice wall tiles, a glass partition but wider access and room for a stool inside the shower. We were inspired by a couple we met, whose downstairs loo had been converted into a gorgeous wet room and toilet as she was an occasional wheelchair user with a degenerative condition.
Also, DIY SOS: The Big Build is a brilliant show to watch to see how domestic spaces can be accommodating for people who are wheelchair users or need beautiful but hardworking and extremely functional rooms.
I’ve always wondered why homes don’t have hand dryers?
Everyone so far seems to have focussed purely on wet rooms and showers, but I think the question can be asked about other rooms as well.
There are “kitchen areas” in my workplace, and they are designed just like home kitchens, using the same components. The only differences are: a) the floor is designed for easy mopping, with the waterproof flooring extending a little way up the walls, and a loose carpet; b) there are no laundry appliances; and c) the heavier use of the kettle means it has to be replaced every month!
Some commercial cupboards wouldn’t look out of place in a modern home; they are built more sturdily – like domestic furniture used to be, before the advent of cheap particle boards and flat pack self-assembly units which always start to fall apart at the joints within 12 months. But the price of a commercial cupboard made with better, more durable materials is even more than you’d pay for a domestic piece in real wood.
Commercial upholstered seating is usually very functional and wouldn’t look attractive in a lounge. The exception might be furnishings sold for executive offices for senior management, council heads and the traditional professions; I don’t have any experience of those!
Commercial bedroom furniture, perhaps that used in hotels? With clearance under the bed for ease of vacuum cleaning. I can’t think of anything else that distinguishes it from domestic furniture. Probably made on the assumption that it’ll be replaced every year?
Because it’s but ugly.
I work in the flooring industry and there’s very little way of making a wet room look good in a house as it’s entirely substance over style. The worst is when I occasionally get people wanting commercial stairnosings in their house, why would you want to live in a house that looks like the stairwell of a bloc of flats?
I have a shower cubicle a bit like that. It has a shower tray, with glass panels around it. Rather than a wet room floor.
The wall are covered in big plastic panels. Floor to ceiling. It’s so easy to clean.
It’s not white, it’s a swirly brown and grey pattern and it’s fine. I can’t really indulge in any other decorative aesthetics. But it’s a tiny room to wash and pee in. Meh.
I do have a bidet toilet though. Best thing I indulged in when I was redoing the house.
You can get this kind of stuff in nicer looks but it will cost a *lot* of money compared to what can be achieved aesthetically with more domestic bathroom finishes. But, in a public setting, some people seem to temporarily become wild animals while using public loos, most domestic fittings would not withstand the onslaught of the zoo using it constantly. Practicality / budget / aesthetics is the balance.
Accessible wcs in particular have to be designed with a fairly strict layout and colour limitations plus commercial loos have to be significantly more durable and easy to maintain which means looks are often sacrificed to make sure the cost doesnt break budget constraints.
Search ‘Doc M Pack wc’ or similar if its of interest and you will see that most commercial fittings for acc. toilets are sold as a standardised pack of parts. You’ll probably see just how expensive the nice stuff can be too.
The floor is an anti-slip vinyl type, basically a layer of special rubber, it will have a high spec durability and will be designed to not be slippery when wet, it typically requires a specialist to install depending on what you want done with the edges. All this tends to limit colour pallettes options. Altro ‘Pisces’ or ‘Aquarius’ (cant remember which) would show you how limited and blegh the options can be.
The wall panels are very solid chunks of varying materials and are primarily designed for durability, there is a fair bit of variety here but its not normally worth the effort / cost in a domestic setting where the bathroom is only used a few times a day. While it may not seem like a big deal, those panels can be fairly thick, almost structural to a degree, which takes up that little extra room which could make a difference in some settings. Panels have to be more precisely installed, its just simpler to slap tiles on as needed and call it day really.
I knew a youngish lady with MS, her home had council funded adaptations and her downstairs shower/toilet/wet room looked just like this. In a domestic setting it was very jarring. But also exactly what she needed.
I’ve been in a house where the downstairs loo had a cubicle for sitting down to do your business and a wall-fitted urinal for guys to quickly deal with theirs.
Emergency pull cord is a bit of a giveaway
It’s expensive , shower valves alone start at £300, baths and shower trays are very much thicker with zero movement in them, and a price to match the quality, having spent that sort of money on fittings you’re certainly not going to be hanging it on stud walls with shitty plasterboard covered with a mildly less shitty tile backing board, when cement board exists, the plumbing needs to be absolutely perfect, a good wet room starts with a stable floor that’s strong enough to remain stable despite the increased weight, if it’s tiled cracks in tiles or grouting won’t let water through to the fabric of the building.
The other reason is that many people feel the urge to change things every few years for nothing more than aesthetics, which is fine if everything in your bathroom was cheap, with easy to remove walls, most bathrooms can be stripped out fully and re tiled and refitted in a few days, doing it properly to last 25 years or more takes much longer and adds further costs.
Pull the cord
I bought a house from someone who had been moved into a nursing home when his health deteriorated quicker than expected. I am so pleased he moved out before he could refit the bathroom with a wet room (his plan had been spend his money keeping himself as independent as possible for as long as possible, but he thought he had five years not two) because I hate the things – I’ve stayed in places that have one and you just end up with everything wet, and the feel of the floor is unpleasant to me. I can live with the lower than usual kitchen worktops, in fact they’re even a bit helpful for me because of joint problems making it harder for me to keep my arms up, but if there had been a wet room that would have put me off of buying the house.
I have similar at home but I am disabled, plaster and painted walls would be the only real difference.
Had a wet room at uni halls. It was completely tiled and it sucked.
Water always seeped out from the “bathroom”, and if you needed the loo for any point later in the day you felt like you’d slip off the loo.
42 comments
Because people generally don’t want their house to look like a disabled toilet in a hospital?
There was kind of a shift towards this with the wet room craze a few years back.
Also, my wife’s great aunty (still young at 97) lives in sheltered accommodation, and her bathroom is very much of the clinical easy-clean design where I imagine the carers/cleaners just hose it all down and have done with it
In Japan it is common for the entire bathroom to be a wetroom like this and you can just hose the entire room down like a big shower.
Mums house has a downstairs wet room built like this, it’s a council house and the previous tenant was a very elderly lady that had a panic alarm in the living room, ramps and banisters outside, and a downstairs wet room fitted for her by the council.
That’s the only one I’ve seen, and I cat sit so I see a lot of houses.
as aesthetically unpleasant as it is you can’t really knock the functionality of it in terms of the flooring. grippy and waterproof. the walls however feel like they would eventually harbour all sorts of nasties behind it.
My ex’s bathroom looked like this because her elderly mother lived with her and she’d kitted out the bathroom to keep her mother as independent and safe for as long as possible.
Then her mother passed and she immediately had the bathroom redone. They may be practical but no one wants to live like that.
The house I grew up in had accommodations like this for the previous owner who was wheelchair bound. It was certainly more difficult to clean as the whole floor (no slip nobbles) had to be cleaned
No.
Because it looks terrible
I have a wet room with exactly the same flooring, but tiles on the wall instead of the flat walls. with the hand rail too, but also a fold down seat incase you need it.
But my husbands disabled and need all of the adaptations. If he wasnt disabled, it would just be a downstairs toilet. No shower,
Had similar when we moved house, downstairs wet room for disabled gent, grab rails, a pulley in the ceiling, strangely tall toilet
They’re very easy to maintain and can look less clinical. It could’ve been really useful for mum (late 70s) had they fitted the flooring properly, but round the back of the toilet, they had not sealed the floor in and instead overlapped the edges of any cuts.
Growing mould underneath for who knows how long the whole thing had to come out and be re fitted
Note to anyone who wants one, it is NOT a novice diy job
It depends on whose home you are in. They are a thing and usually for disabled or the elderly. They’re called Wet rooms and I think they are fab. They are so easy to keep clean.
Yeah I’ve seen it a few times where elderly and less abled people have had funding for accessibility stuff throughout their home, so making their showers and toilets more accessible for them. This has sometimes meant entire bathroom refits and they’ve been done in this style.
I am not from the uk (sorry for intruding) but I had the same thoughts as you, and can now basically shower down my whole bathroom if I want. Linoleum flooring that looks like terrazzo tiling and water proof walls that look like normal gypsum walls (painted light pink).
The floor extend a bit upwards the walls, and are sloped to a floor drain. I could have a quite a big leak without a problem (untill it goes through the door I guess).
This is the kind of thing I’ve seen installed in people’s homes who have mobility issues so want a wet room with easy access to the toilet and washing facilities.
Like others have said, the reason it isn’t installed as standard is because it isn’t aesthetically pleasing at all. If you want it installed during your next bathroom refurbishment you won’t have any problem getting it done.
But some people do have wet rooms in their homes and that generally involves tiling ceiling to floor with a waterproof hard floor which looks nicer than this.
These are more common than you think.
Homes that have been adapted for the disabled, usually with a disabled facilities grant will tend to look a bit like this.
You can even style them too, they don’t have to be dull colours like you’d see in commercial buildings.
Mostly because commercial fittings are generally more expensive as they are built to take a battering.
If the price was the same or less you might deal with the ugliness but who wants to pay more for less good looking.
The one here was likely fitted by the council for someone with disabilities.
My in-laws had a downstairs wet-room like that but the walls were tiled. Was great for showering the dog down as the whole room (about 2.5×2.5 metres) could be used as a shower cubical
Never asked why it was like that
Yeah, the kitchen of my student digs in Bristol looked like a ‘halfway house special’. Linoleum floors and all that. Awful.
It’s a wet room. It’s essential for many disabled people. They can look nice though. Got one at my house through a disabled facilities grant and we were able to pick the floor and tile colours. It’s really functional, but looks so much nicer than the one you’ve shared.
I saw a video not too long ago, which featured an interior designer type person who advocates for having commercial dishwashers in residential premises, as they are so much quicker than the ones found in homes.
when i was a kid (in america) i lived for a time in a house that used to be a small retirement home. the hallways were huge, probably for wheelchairs, and there were ramps everywhere. i have a clear memory of reading a book by the light of the exit sign outside my bedroom door. the living room was more like a lobby done up to look homely, and it was great for hosting christmas parties, plenty of room for sofas and guests
In China this type of bathroom is really common. Even really cheap and nasty places I lived had bathrooms done up like this.
My mom has put up a “No Smoking” sign in our loo …
In her final year of uni, the house my girlfriend lived in had a bathroom like that, which I affectionately referred to as “the Chinese prison shower” because it was poorly maintained and everything dripped.
I dream of having a commercial kitchen at home, fryer, grill, gas hob, rational oven. Big double sink and dishwasher.
This looks like hotel or student halls. I would only want it in either. Sure the alarm is fine if you need it in your home but you could make your bathroom look less miserable.
We are having a side extension built to house an en-suite and utility room. We are going to have a hybrid accessibility-friendly shower. Industrial vinyl on the floor but nice wall tiles, a glass partition but wider access and room for a stool inside the shower. We were inspired by a couple we met, whose downstairs loo had been converted into a gorgeous wet room and toilet as she was an occasional wheelchair user with a degenerative condition.
Also, DIY SOS: The Big Build is a brilliant show to watch to see how domestic spaces can be accommodating for people who are wheelchair users or need beautiful but hardworking and extremely functional rooms.
I’ve always wondered why homes don’t have hand dryers?
Everyone so far seems to have focussed purely on wet rooms and showers, but I think the question can be asked about other rooms as well.
There are “kitchen areas” in my workplace, and they are designed just like home kitchens, using the same components. The only differences are: a) the floor is designed for easy mopping, with the waterproof flooring extending a little way up the walls, and a loose carpet; b) there are no laundry appliances; and c) the heavier use of the kettle means it has to be replaced every month!
Some commercial cupboards wouldn’t look out of place in a modern home; they are built more sturdily – like domestic furniture used to be, before the advent of cheap particle boards and flat pack self-assembly units which always start to fall apart at the joints within 12 months. But the price of a commercial cupboard made with better, more durable materials is even more than you’d pay for a domestic piece in real wood.
Commercial upholstered seating is usually very functional and wouldn’t look attractive in a lounge. The exception might be furnishings sold for executive offices for senior management, council heads and the traditional professions; I don’t have any experience of those!
Commercial bedroom furniture, perhaps that used in hotels? With clearance under the bed for ease of vacuum cleaning. I can’t think of anything else that distinguishes it from domestic furniture. Probably made on the assumption that it’ll be replaced every year?
Because it’s but ugly.
I work in the flooring industry and there’s very little way of making a wet room look good in a house as it’s entirely substance over style. The worst is when I occasionally get people wanting commercial stairnosings in their house, why would you want to live in a house that looks like the stairwell of a bloc of flats?
I have a shower cubicle a bit like that. It has a shower tray, with glass panels around it. Rather than a wet room floor.
The wall are covered in big plastic panels. Floor to ceiling.
It’s so easy to clean.
It’s not white, it’s a swirly brown and grey pattern and it’s fine. I can’t really indulge in any other decorative aesthetics. But it’s a tiny room to wash and pee in. Meh.
I do have a bidet toilet though. Best thing I indulged in when I was redoing the house.
You can get this kind of stuff in nicer looks but it will cost a *lot* of money compared to what can be achieved aesthetically with more domestic bathroom finishes. But, in a public setting, some people seem to temporarily become wild animals while using public loos, most domestic fittings would not withstand the onslaught of the zoo using it constantly. Practicality / budget / aesthetics is the balance.
Accessible wcs in particular have to be designed with a fairly strict layout and colour limitations plus commercial loos have to be significantly more durable and easy to maintain which means looks are often sacrificed to make sure the cost doesnt break budget constraints.
Search ‘Doc M Pack wc’ or similar if its of interest and you will see that most commercial fittings for acc. toilets are sold as a standardised pack of parts. You’ll probably see just how expensive the nice stuff can be too.
The floor is an anti-slip vinyl type, basically a layer of special rubber, it will have a high spec durability and will be designed to not be slippery when wet, it typically requires a specialist to install depending on what you want done with the edges. All this tends to limit colour pallettes options. Altro ‘Pisces’ or ‘Aquarius’ (cant remember which) would show you how limited and blegh the options can be.
The wall panels are very solid chunks of varying materials and are primarily designed for durability, there is a fair bit of variety here but its not normally worth the effort / cost in a domestic setting where the bathroom is only used a few times a day. While it may not seem like a big deal, those panels can be fairly thick, almost structural to a degree, which takes up that little extra room which could make a difference in some settings. Panels have to be more precisely installed, its just simpler to slap tiles on as needed and call it day really.
I knew a youngish lady with MS, her home had council funded adaptations and her downstairs shower/toilet/wet room looked just like this. In a domestic setting it was very jarring. But also exactly what she needed.
I’ve been in a house where the downstairs loo had a cubicle for sitting down to do your business and a wall-fitted urinal for guys to quickly deal with theirs.
Emergency pull cord is a bit of a giveaway
It’s expensive , shower valves alone start at £300, baths and shower trays are very much thicker with zero movement in them, and a price to match the quality, having spent that sort of money on fittings you’re certainly not going to be hanging it on stud walls with shitty plasterboard covered with a mildly less shitty tile backing board, when cement board exists, the plumbing needs to be absolutely perfect, a good wet room starts with a stable floor that’s strong enough to remain stable despite the increased weight, if it’s tiled cracks in tiles or grouting won’t let water through to the fabric of the building.
The other reason is that many people feel the urge to change things every few years for nothing more than aesthetics, which is fine if everything in your bathroom was cheap, with easy to remove walls, most bathrooms can be stripped out fully and re tiled and refitted in a few days, doing it properly to last 25 years or more takes much longer and adds further costs.
Pull the cord
I bought a house from someone who had been moved into a nursing home when his health deteriorated quicker than expected. I am so pleased he moved out before he could refit the bathroom with a wet room (his plan had been spend his money keeping himself as independent as possible for as long as possible, but he thought he had five years not two) because I hate the things – I’ve stayed in places that have one and you just end up with everything wet, and the feel of the floor is unpleasant to me. I can live with the lower than usual kitchen worktops, in fact they’re even a bit helpful for me because of joint problems making it harder for me to keep my arms up, but if there had been a wet room that would have put me off of buying the house.
I have similar at home but I am disabled, plaster and painted walls would be the only real difference.
Had a wet room at uni halls. It was completely tiled and it sucked.
Water always seeped out from the “bathroom”, and if you needed the loo for any point later in the day you felt like you’d slip off the loo.
Plus it’s just ugly.
Probably a site worker and pinched most of it 😝😝
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