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Comment by meisel | Hacker News Reader

While we’re at it, bring back shower doors/curtains. It’s such a pain having this huge puddle outside the shower just because they decided it shouldn’t have one. It’s not so common to be missing one in US hotels, but it’s common internationally.

Edit: apparently the virus has spread, and some US hotels now don’t have them

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I was talking about this with my wife the other day: Newer hotel showers are "Hostile Architecture" disguised as modern design. They add those little annoying details with the intention of lowering their water bill. They want showering to be slightly discomfort, so you shower faster without noticing. It's a feature, not a bug.

Some years ago I stayed in a hotel outside London, and they apparently had a policy of saving as much as possible on soap bars.. so they used some horrible high-pH soap, very cheap looking. But it was nearly impossible to rinse it off.. took me fifteen minutes of hot water usage after I was, or should have been done with the shower. Whatever they saved in soap they lost many times over in water and even more in energy use.

And in a tourist place on an island farther south the room had an information binder which also asked that you shouldn't waste water as there weren't many natural resources for water there. However, the hot water came from the far end of the narrow, rectangular-shaped long hotel, and the pipes were outside and weren't insulated, they were completely bare. Whenever you turned off the hot water for a few minutes it would take some five minutes to get it back, water running, as the pipes got cold right away (there are many other usages for hot water than just using the shower - the rooms had kitchens). So of course all the guests used many times more water than they would have needed, not to mention the wasted heat. Totally baffling.

Also they probably save on cleaning costs.

A more widespread piece of hostile hotel shower architecture is unlabelled controls. You need trial and error to work out which way is more water, and more heat.

I first thought this is nonsense, but then it made a lot sense. It might be an exception to the rule "never attribute to malice, that which can be explained by stupidity."

> never attribute to malice, that which can be explained by stupidity

This maxim fails as soon as the malicious realise people will apply it to them.

Denmark loves their 'wet' bathrooms in hotels, no shower door and a drain in the center of the room. I spent a lot of time in CPH and would stay at the Marriott because it was one of the few with American style bathrooms.

Europeans are good at building a lot of things, but I will never understand the "cosplay a small flood" style bathrooms.

It's just... inefficient? Why wouldn't we want to catch the water closest to where it comes out?

It's to save money and labor time so housekeeping can just mop it all down easier and faster without having to clean a separate bathtub and no having to clean any shower doors.

See also: washing machines. If you have three pairs of underwear and all day, Europe’s washing machines have you covered. Otherwise, you’re SOL.

I've never really run into capacity problems with European washing machines, but the run times are definitely real. Most of them have a well-hidden faster mode. Still not as fast as a US machine on fast mode, but not the mandatory-default-by-law three-hour program.

Which would be even longer than 3h if some EU bureaucrat didn't realize that making the default unacceptably long for everyone will result in nobody using it.

> Most of them have a well-hidden faster mode

My shiny new (2025) Bosch washing machine has a big button on the front which switches from the default 3 hour programme (for 40 degree wash) to 1hr 30m. Like, it's not very _well_ hidden :)

Interestingly, the 3 hour programme isn't really a 3 hour programme. If you use it, the timer will generally start at 3 hours and drop to an hour or so after 20 minutes. I have no idea what the heuristic is, and the manual is silent on the matter.

Isn’t this mostly drying time and the fact that hardly any driers in Europe are vented (so either heat pump based or condensation)? Or is this the uses less water type washing machines? Europe tends to have higher rates on water and electricity to make efficiency worth while.

My Bosch dishwasher takes 3 hours I guess due to efficiency, it seems reasonable. I didn’t go with a European washer dryer combo though (my laundry room has a vent and I’ve heard that heat pump tech still isn’t good enough).

> my laundry room has a vent and I’ve heard that heat pump tech still isn’t good enough

Heat pump dryers are in a slightly weird place in that they're boring old tech in Europe (they've been common for over a decade), and exciting new tech in the US. This means that dryers made for US preferences (physically larger, either three phase or <1500W, etc) are generally first or second models (and thus unreliable) while those made for European preferences are mature designs (and thus reliable).

I thought Europe used condensation and heat pump tech was still a new thing? Ok, 1997 with wide adoption around 2007 according to Google. I really wanted to give it a try, but with a vent right there it just didn’t seem worth it.

Really depends on how expensive your electricity is; a modern heat pump dryer consumes about 1kWh to dry an 8kg load, vs 2-3kWh for either vented or conventional condenser. Though, also depends on what's available to you and at what cost; my impression is that decent heat pump dryers are still very expensive in the US. My fairly high end Bosch one cost about 550eur this year; looking at Bosch's US website the roughly equivalent US model seems to cost $1500, somehow. That's around what they cost here 10-15 years ago.

The other advantage of heat pump dryers is that they operate at lower temperatures than the other types (so damage clothes less); on the negative side, they're slower.

Electricity is cheap here, 12 cents/KwH. I more liked the not ruining clothes aspect and not using the vent means I can get the unit closer to the wall. But I was worried about the smell complaints, my wife is really strict on that, also we have a combo so we can’t pipeline loads anymore. The drawback is that only Samsung makes a vented combo, an Samsung doesn’t have the best reputation. Heat pump was cheaper than vented in a combo at least, but only by 1-2 hundred bucks.

Ah, right. After having had a washer-dryer for about 15 years (they're very common in apartments and small houses in Ireland), would never have one again; when the existing one finally died I replaced with a separate washer and dryer.

I'm somewhat surprised anyone makes a vented washer-dryer at all.

I really like the extra space and not needing to transfer clothes when drying. To each their own though. Only Samsung is making a vented combo so far, and it’s a beast to install and drag up three stories of stairs.

How much useful extra space do you really get? You can stack separate washers and dryers on top of each other without issues.

> How much useful extra space do you really get? You can stack separate washers and dryers on top of each other without issues.

Stacking still takes up usable space; in rooms designed for unstacked washers and/or dryers the space above is frequently used for cabinets

Enough space for me, but you are right stacking would provide similar benefits. Don’t undervalue not needing to transfer clothes to your drier, and you never have to worry about mold and mildew in your washer.

No, this is just about washing machines, not washer-dryers or doing both in sequence.

Due to ecodesign legislation, I would assume that all machines that can be legally sold in the EU would count as "uses less water" in the US.

The dishwashers are another can of worms. My last one had an EU and a non-EU program, and you quickly learned to pick the "non-efficient" one if you actually wanted clean dishes.

My experience with dishwashers is that there are bad and good ones regardless of country. I had terrible and great dishwashers in the US, Australia, and Europe (basically in all countries there). The same with washing machines.

My Bosch is slow but the results are always good. I rarely resort to the quick program.

Thankfully it is just a matter of choosing the "Cotton" program on the dial, not the "Cotton (eco)" one.

What do you mean?

EU ecodesign rules require washing machines to meet certain low energy/water consumption standards in the "default" program. Washing machine designers implement this by making these programs ridiculously long. The EU has now capped them at 3h because they realized that if these programs grow even longer nobody will use them.

Even regular programs in front-loading machines (at least in the European countries I've been to, these make up the absolute vast majority of machines) are longer than typical top loaders. Top loaders are faster but put more wear on the clothes and use more energy and water. A regular, "non-EU" cycle will typically take around 2h. The EU one will typically max out the 3h limit.

> Denmark loves their 'wet' bathrooms in hotels, no shower door and a drain in the center of the room.

If you're renting an apartment in Shanghai, a cheap one will have a door to the bathroom, but the shower won't be a separate fixture. The entire bathroom functions as the shower (the hose or fixed piping is mounted on a wall), and there's a drain in the floor.

A more recent apartment will have a shower installation that is, say, separate from the toilet.

Higher end apartments will. Even newer apartments in Beijing will have wet rooms at some price point. Remember that the apartments are built in China unrenovated, and even new owners of second-hand properties are expected to redo everything from a concrete box, so it is 100% up to the landlord/owner on how the bathroom is done, and I’ve seen it done many many different ways.

This is standard in all of southeast Asia and often the middle east.

The drain should be within the shower area, with all the bathroom floor draining that way.

If it's in the centre of the room it's been done very badly. I've never seen this in Denmark, even in some very old apartment buildings.

I’ve lived in a newish apartment where the wet room drain was in the center. It didn’t seem weird at all. There wasn’t much separation between the shower and toilet and sink, though.

I’ve never understood this - it’s maddening. I grew up in the US and the bare minimum was always at least a shower curtain (inner and outer), and if not that, a proper door.

Why on earth did this half-pane of glass become standard in so many places. It’s completely ineffective and ends up with water everywhere.

The bathroom needs to be destined properly.

My shower in Denmark has no door, and no curtain, but the splashes don't reach very far away, and aren't in the way of anywhere I'd want to walk after showering anyway.

I've often seen hotel bathrooms in other countries that get this wrong. In the worst case, splashed water from the open shower runs all across the bathroom, and in one case (a Grand Hyatt!) into the main room carpet.

Did the designers not know water flows down?

The half pane of glass is appropriate in warm parts of the world where you want the heat to be removed as quickly as possible. I suspect some hotel executive thought it looked cool in Miami, then made it the standard for the whole chain.

It's not even appropriate there. Ventilation should be determined by the fan, not the aperture.

Even in Miami, I don't want the entire bathroom floor flooded, and I want to be able to close the curtain/door and increase the humidity in the shower.

i hate it when the set up the half-pane in such a way that you can't adjust the water temp/pressure without being directly under the shower head.

when dealing with a new set of shower controls, i like to stand to the side and figure out what's happening and whether i need to let it warm up rather than stepping into the firing lane and taking whatever it throws at me

Turn head to wall.

Every single place I’ve stayed in Europe had no shower door, and nothing to prevent the water from spilling out. Occasionally I get lucky and the floor is constructed sufficiently concave so at least the water flows into the drain

it has become unfortunately common in marriott hotels in the (western) US, specifically the current generation of residence inn; and i think i've seen it in new towneplace suites as well. it's entirely a form over function decision: you end up with cool air wafting in while you shower, and you end up with a wet bathroom floor (including a soaked floormat).

the same hotels have a kitchen sink tap which has hot/cold selected on the vertical axis, with no indication of which direction is hot/cold.

form over function. so annoying.

This is one reason I'm staying at more Hilton hotels than Marriott brands these days. Having a wet bathroom floor is high on my list of pet peeves, enough so that I'll abandon lifetime elite status with Marriott to stay at hotels with doors on the showers.

Shower curtains are very much a North American thing (well, US and Canada at least). It's a cultural difference you're seeing not a weird hotel trend.

That's an overly broad generalization. Shower curtains are pretty common in Norway, and I've found them in hotels all over Europe and even one in Japan.

I assume curtains are just far more labor to keep clean? They build up soap scum on a daily basis, and you can't just quickly wipe them down like tile or glass. A glass shower door just feels so much more hygienic.

But I'm with you about the confusion around showers that don't even have a door. Never seen that in the US. But abroad, I truly don't get it.

But before that, for the love of god, solve the automatic slamming door problem. I understand we need heavy doors for fire safety but please implement soft close with dampers.

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