Digital marketer Sadie Lowell recently had a horrifying experience like this when traveling with her elderly father earlier in 2024. Their first week at the hospital, they were put up in a hotel room with no bathroom door. This specific experience opened my eyes to an accelerating movement in hotel space. Many guests now understandably feel naked and unsafe as a result. Her story, like so many others, now featured on “Bring Back Doors,” illuminates the harm this policy caused. This user-shared website documents hotel bathroom door experiences from cities across the globe.
Unlike most hotels, Lowell’s hotel room did not have a door on the bathroom. This atypical arrangement challenged her to speak out publicly beyond the four walls of her library. Now I was actually up against more than an annoying inconvenience. This new experience really resonated, bringing out feelings I hadn’t felt in all the other no doors already encountered. The website “Bring Back Doors” allows users to share their experiences and rate hotel bathroom doors, with ratings ranging from “confirmed bathroom door” to “Zero privacy: no door, no wall, or wall with a window.”
The trend of removing traditional bathroom doors has quickly been adopted by hotel brands. Some establishments have relocated sinks and showers into the main bedroom area, while others have enclosed toilets in glass cubicles or cubby-like spaces. Bjorn Hanson, an expert from New York University’s Jonathan M Tisch Center of Hospitality, points out the most important trend. In doing so, this simple design choice is dramatically changing the hotel experience. Other hotel chains are completely rethinking their design model by relocating the sink and shower into the main bedroom. They frequently shutter the toilet behind glass or put it in a cubby-hole like niche.
The growing trend of open and transparent bathrooms have raised controversy. A subset of hotel guests adopt a nihilistic posture, like the people who say things like, “If the toilet’s in the middle of the room who cares.” On the other hand, some are shocked by the lack of privacy. The design decisions made or seen through the years have sparked a very broad spectrum of thoughts about what should be acceptable in a bathroom experience.
The website focuses on industry trends beyond just bathroom doors. It highlights “door heroes” and “door villains,” placing hotels that respect privacy next to those that don’t make the cut. Becca Herries, one of the site’s contributors, described the human cost of this planning. She explained, “This door is intended to take your relationship to the next stage or get you out of it.”
The rising popularity of sliding barn doors and glass enclosures has raised questions about privacy and comfort in modern hotel rooms. As one victim of a frosted glass door shared her experience, “You couldn’t see the finer details, but you could see just about everything else.” Indeed, their comment is a testament to the unease that these design decisions can cause.