Observation - Gents Toilet Design (OT)

[John]

Have the guys noticed that 'modesty screening' has become a thing of the past in recent years in gents urinals. Has anyone any idea what started this change. Some are particularly bad with a hand dryer right next to a urinal bowl. What I really dislike is a low child's one right next to a standard height adult one.

Are they now designed more for ease of plumbing than the convenience of the user? Or cost saving?

Contrast this with the USA - where screens are quite large (yet the WC cubicles have low doors or gaps around the door panels - odd)

[<me9]

I've noticed mirrors are getting larger and reducing privacy even more with their placing.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

It's a conspiracy with those spammers who send emails about penis enlargement products.

[dave]

Maybe they are getting ideas from Holland. The "stand-alone" (no pun etc)variety are so high off the ground that the vertically challenged have great fun using them! Reckon you have to be almost 6' as a default height. Well Holland is full of Sunflowers isn't it :-)

[Andy Hall]

This is because the Dutch are, on average, the tallest nation in Europe. At least that's my theory.

[adder1969]

You what? You're lucky to get more than a trough in the UK :-)

The gaps in the US are there to stop, um, alternative activities. Something that should be done in the UK as it seems most cubicles get taken up by drug dealers, drug users and/or people having sex.

[David in Normandy]

You should see some of the urinals here in France, I've been to places where they are just fixed to outside walls in public car parks with no screening at all, so everyone walking past male, female and kids alike all get to look at what you've got!

What irritates me most about public toilets in general is having to pull open the main door by the handle, having just seen some dirty sod come out of a cubicle, not wash their hands and just go out of the door. The best public loos don't have a main door at all, just a bend in the corridor.

[manatbandq]

So long as they're clean and not too smelly, who cares?

MBQ

[Huge]

Me. I'd as soon take a shit in private.

[Dave Liquorice]

Better not visit rural China then. Some public loos consist of 4' sq cubicles with 3 x 3' high walls nothing on the fourth side other than the walkway along the cubicles. Running cross ways through the centre of each cubicle is a trough about 6" wide and 18" deep, with running water in the bottom if you are lucky.

[clot]

I've got that T shirt and it's not too attractive!

[chrisj.doran]

We have one near here where the lighting is a painful purple which means you leave asap. Presumably this is the intended effect.

Whilst on the subject, I've commented here before about the merging of men/women signs into some sort of PC unisex design which is very hard to tell apart, resulting in frequent embarrassment. Seems particularly prevalent at airports.

Chris

[Frank Erskine]

The blue light is intended to make life difficult for people trying to inject themselves by not showing up the blood vessels.

[Clive George]

It's so you can't see veins - I'mm sure you can work the rest out.

cheers, clive

[<me9]

Intended to make it harder for drug users to see where to inject.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Seems to me a strange logic. They *will* inject regardless, so just do it in a public place like a park instead?

[Huge]

I already did.

I "went" in the hotel.

[Dave Liquorice]

All the places I stayed in had squat loos, albeit not quite so communal. Only posh places dealing with upmarket western tourists had our type toilets.

[Andy Hall]

Sounds like France.

[paranoid bob]

That way you don't have to wait as long to get in the toilet. The queue will just be people waiting to "do their business" without people waiting to shoot up too.