If you’ve stayed at a hotel in the past few years, you’ve probably had the experience. You go to take your first shower in the room and the shower setup is just…weird.
There’s no shower curtain.
There are no sliding doors.
If it’s a standalone shower, there may not even be an actual hinged shower door, period.
Instead, you have a shower stall with just a glass or plexiglass panel filling in part of the space where a traditional curtain or sliding door would be.
If you’re lucky, it’ll cover about half of the shower opening. But I’ve been in a shower or two where this clear “wall” was less than half the width of the shower space.
The design admittedly looks nicer and aesthetically cleaner than the traditional options, but it also pretty much guarantees a chilly shower stall, a wet bathroom floor, or possibly both.
Oh, and if you want to turn on the shower and let the water warm up before you step in? Depending on where the glass panel is in relation to the controls, you may be out of luck unless you’re willing to get an armful of cold water.
I hate that aspect of them.
When Did This Start?
People aren’t entirely sure where the half-door shower trend began.
Some say it originated in Japan, where minimalist, spa-inspired design has long been popular. Others, including Condé Nast Traveler, have suggested the trend came from Europe in the 1980s.
Boutique hotel designer Tom Parker offered the magazine a much more practical explanation:
“A lot of it comes down to people trying to design hotel rooms with limited space. It’s about the swing of the shower door, because it has to open outward for safety reasons, like [if] someone falls in the shower. You have to figure out where the door swing’s going to go, make sure it’s not [hitting] the main door. It’s just about clearances.”
During my searching, I found people complaining about them, at least in Europe, as far back as the early 2000s.
They seemed to start getting more of a foothold here in the U.S. about 10 or 15 years ago.
And now they’re everywhere.
OK, But WHY?????
There isn’t just one reason hotels keep installing these things. There are several.
Lower Costs
If you’re a hotelier and have to choose between a full two-panel sliding door—which has tracks that need to be cleaned and moving parts that may eventually need maintenance—and a single stationary piece of glass, guess which one’s going to be cheaper?
The half-wall design costs less to install and has fewer components to maintain or replace.
And lower costs are always preferable to hoteliers.
Aesthetics
As we said earlier, the design has a “cleaner” look. It’s sleek, makes the bathroom appear less cluttered and can even make a relatively small bathroom look larger.
And let’s face it: almost anything looks nicer than a shower curtain, LOL!
Easier & Faster To Clean
A single stationary pane of glass is going to be faster and easier to clean than two panes of glass, tracks, handles and all the other nooks and crannies that come with sliding shower doors.
And when housekeeping is cleaning room after room after room, shaving even a little time off each bathroom can add up.
Shower Curtains Are Nasty
A hotelier is probably never going to say this part out loud, but let’s face it, shower curtains are nasty.
They’re constantly getting wet. They can trap soap scum, mildew and bacteria. And unless they’re being cleaned or replaced regularly, I don’t even want to think about what’s lingering on them from all the previous guests doing who knows what.
And THEN they blow inward while you’re showering and stick to your wet body.
Ew.
So from a hotel’s perspective, getting rid of the curtain altogether has some obvious advantages.
But What About The Guests?
And therein lies the problem.
All of those advantages make plenty of sense for the hotel.
The guest, meanwhile, may be standing there freezing because half the shower is open to the bathroom, trying not to spray water all over the floor and figuring out how to turn the water on without getting blasted with ice-cold water in the process.
But hey, the bathroom looks sleek. 😉
Will They Take Over?
Hopefully (and, for those of us who aren’t fans, happily) not entirely.
The one thing traditional all-in-one tub/shower combinations have going for them is that they’re relatively inexpensive. So we’re probably still going to see plenty of those, particularly at lower-priced hotels, for a long, long time.
But at higher-end hotels, and potentially even more mid-range properties? Yeah, we’re probably going to continue seeing these half-door showers.
Yuck.
Hotels Love Them. Guests? Not So Much.
Ultimately, the reason these showers keep showing up isn’t because somebody decided hotel guests desperately wanted more opportunities to flood the bathroom floor.
From the hotel’s perspective, they check a whole lot of boxes: they’re modern-looking, relatively simple, easier to clean, have fewer moving parts and can work well in bathrooms where there isn’t enough room for a traditional swinging door.
From the guest’s perspective?
Well, all those advantages are great right up until you’re standing naked in a draft, trying to reach around a sheet of glass to turn on the water without getting blasted with freezing-cold spray.
But at least the bathroom looks nice, right? 😉
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