The Bathroom Is Always the Test

Every hotel bathroom is a test of how much the property trusted its own judgment.

The lobby makes its argument to a hundred people at once. The bathroom makes its argument to one person, alone, with no staff nearby and no reason to perform appreciation. What a guest thinks of a bathroom is what they think of it in private, which means it is probably the most honest review a hotel ever receives and the one it will never read.

Budget tends to concentrate where guests spend the least time: the entrance, the bar, the restaurant. The bathroom is where the same money, spent or withheld, becomes most legible. A stone ledge with a candle and a carved object beside the bath is not the result of an increased budget. It is the result of a decision made about what kind of room this would be, before any guest had ever used it.

A bathroom that has been thought about feels immediately different from one that has simply been equipped. The difference is rarely dramatic. It is the weight of a towel. The height of a hook. The decision not to install a television screen above the mirror. Each of these is a small thing. Together they produce either a room that asks something of the person standing in it, or one that simply offers them facilities and asks nothing at all.

The best hotel bathrooms succeed because they were designed for the minute after the door closes, not for the photograph taken before it opens.