If you’ve ever watched an episode of Grand Designs on Channel 4, you’d be forgiven for thinking the main bugbear of presenter Kevin McCloud is when renovators go wildly over budget (a common occurrence), or else when homeowners fail to be “sympathetic” to their new home’s surroundings (a phrase he uses a lot). But no. In a recent interview with Radio Times, McCloud revealed that one of his biggest peeves is the proliferation of bathrooms in modern projects. “Houses with more toilets than physical occupants,” he spluttered when asked what design choices angered him most. “Why do people judge the status of a house by how many toilets you can offer your guests? It’s absurd.”
It’s true that expectations now appear to be skirting American levels among the super-rich when it comes to the number of bathrooms a home should have (in the US, more bathrooms than bedrooms is common in your average McMansion). “Our customers have always asked for an en suite in every bedroom,” says Staffan Tollgard, an interior designer and the founder of Tollgard Studio, who regularly works on expansive projects around west London and beyond. “Large, walk-in showers and free-standing bathtubs (preferably by the window and with a view) are high on the wish list, as are enclosed WCs (in their own room within the en suite). Though I do agree with McCloud,” he adds. “To me, this is all a question of space. Do you have lots? In which case, you can afford to have en suite bathrooms for everyone. But if you lack space, you have to think differently.”
London-based interior designer Enass Mahmoud of Studio Enass takes a more moderate approach. “I think two bathrooms is the perfect number,” she says. “If you have a big family or tend to host a lot, then you don’t really want to share your personal bathroom. Instead, if possible, have a well-decorated secondary bathroom that’s just for your guests.”
Minnie Kemp, the design director of Kit Kemp Studio, says it’s not the quantity of bathrooms but their location that’s key. “It’s so important to have a bathroom on the ground floor connected to your kitchen, dining and sitting room,” she says. “I love going into someone’s bedroom to use the bathroom because I’m nosy, but really it’s not ideal. You can stuff a tiny toilet under the stairs and it will at least preserve some mystery as to what’s behind your bedroom door.”
There is, perhaps, a more compelling argument for upping your bathroom quota than just privacy, and it’s how they can add to a home’s resale value. “I think McCloud is being a bit mean,” says Marc von Grundherr, the director of lettings at the premium estate agency Benham and Reeves. “In fact, I’ve advised three separate clients this morning to up their number of bathrooms.”
His view is that you can’t have too many: “If you manage not to compromise on space then I think it’s the more bathrooms the merrier, and you’re likely to add about 150 per cent of the cost of each new bathroom to the home’s value.” His general rule is to offer one shower per bedroom plus one extra guest lavatory, though many of the larger properties on his books have even more than that. “I’ve got a five-bed house in Hampstead with seven bathrooms, as they added a shower room to their basement too,” he says. “They got tired of their kids traipsing mud through the house and wanted to be able to hose them off down there.”
Von Grundherr says people go wrong when they shoehorn bathrooms in and compromise the space in other rooms. “If McCloud had said he had an issue with architects cramming in bathrooms for the sake of it, I’d have agreed with him,” he says. “The worst thing you can do is compromise an existing bedroom and make it so small there’s no room for bedside tables, just so that it has an en suite. Or worse, turn a double bedroom into a single. But in most traditional terraced houses it’s amazing what you can do – there is usually one bedroom that is a bit too large and has massive cabinets taking up one wall. Slim down those cupboards and you can add a shower room at least.”
Contrary to popular belief, von Grundherr says it could even be worth losing a bedroom to accommodate an extra bathroom – though he caveats that this won’t be the case every time. “In my own home I had four bedrooms and one bathroom, but one of the bedrooms was tiny,” he says. “We turned that into a bathroom, leaving us only three bedrooms, and sold it for more than our next door neighbour, who had kept the original four-bedroom layout. People really do want those extra bathrooms.”
You may not actually need as much space as you might imagine. “Bathrooms typically are only given 5 to 10 per cent of a home’s floorspace,” says Calum Pringle, the co-founder of Reno, an app that helps renovators plan their refurbishments. “The average bathroom planned on Reno is just 4.45m²,” he adds. His advice is to aim for about one bathroom for every two to three people.
Of course, if you’re not planning to reconfigure your floorplan but still want to make a splash in the existing rooms you have, there are options. “I am told that the secret to a long, happy marriage is having two separate bathrooms to one primary bedroom, but if you can’t go the whole hog, then simply try to install two sinks in the bathroom,” says Kemp.
So can you have too many? Ultimately, while McCloud doesn’t like extra bathrooms, it seems that most buyers do. “Why not at least try to optimise the space you have, and give everyone a room of their own?” says von Grundherr. “The better any floorplan is configured, the better the premium you can command.”
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