If it seems like something has gone wrong in hotel rooms recently - you’re not imagining it. The Wall Street Journal points to a particularly troubling trend: The quiet disappearance of regular, solid bathroom doors in hotel rooms. In their place appear barn-style sliding doors, curtains, “strategic” walls - and sometimes much less creative solutions.
And, as it turns out, it only gets worse. In some hotels, sinks and showers have been moved directly into the bedroom space, while the toilet itself is hidden behind frosted glass - or worse, placed in a partially open alcove. “Some hotels simply dismantled the bathroom and integrated it into the room,” says Bjorn Henson from the Jonathan M. Tisch Center for Hospitality at New York University.
Nothing says romance quite like trying to do your business quietly inside a glass box while your partner turns up the TV and pretends not to hear a thing. Comedian Bekah Harris put it perfectly when facing a half-hearted sliding door: “This door will either strengthen your relationship - or destroy it.”
One woman described a particularly chilling experience: “You don’t see the small details, but you see everything else. I love my husband, but I don’t want to watch him use the toilet.”
And if you’re sharing a room with a coworker? Better just book two rooms.
So why is this happening?
It turns out that in the eyes of CFOs, a bathroom door is a “money pit.” A door requires maintenance, handles, hinges, cleaning, bulb replacements - and all of that costs money. No doubt those managers have bathroom doors at home, but in a hotel? There, the bottom line rules.
Not all guests are horrified. “If the toilet is in the middle of the room - I don’t really care,” said one guest with a somewhat nihilistic attitude. Personal taste, apparently. But for many others, it’s a red line.
Enter the Bring Back Doors website - a genuine civic initiative. The site ranks hotels worldwide based on the level of privacy in the bathroom: From “Door Approved” to “Zero Privacy: No door, no wall, or a wall with a window.” An essential resource for anyone who believes that privacy is not a luxury.
The site is run by Sadie Lowell, a digital marketer who experienced a minor trauma on a hotel trip with her father in 2024 - a shared room, without a bathroom door. “It wasn’t just a slight inconvenience like other times,” she writes on the site. “I was just angry.”
Bottom line: In the name of savings and design, many hotels have given up one of the most basic components of comfort - privacy. But it turns out there is a limit to innovation, and in this case, that limit comes right at the door.