Why do most public toilet doors open inwards? | Hacker News Reader

Why do most public toilet doors open inwards?

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53 pointslaurent12345659 comments

It is interesting how the oddest topics sometimes make the HN front page.

I think the real question here isn't why bathroom doors open in or out. The question should be: Why aren't hand washing facilities just outside the bathroom?

Wouldn't you feel better if you actually saw the cook at the restaurant washing his hands when exiting the bathroom? Also, social pressure would probably cause more people to clean-up.

Just one of those "outside the box" thoughts.

So..I wipe, touch the door handle and then wash my hands?

Why would there have to be a door handle?

Wipe, wash hands, dry hands with paper towel, keep towel to grab door handle with, exit, discard outside.

Seen way too many disgusting people who don't wash their hands after going to the bathroom.

You're replying to a comment that is a reply to the idea of having the wash basin outside the door.

It's noisy and means having more rooms with plumbing, tile floors, drains. It also means you have to take your soiled hands into public. And the bathroom will be dirtier.

I'd say most bathrooms in China are designed this way. The only drawback I see is that the washing area is usually shared between men and women. I believe that can make some people uncomfortable especially if they are using the mirror to put on make up, fix their hair, etc.

At my workplace in China, the bathroom has no door at all - problem solved!

Seriously though, this is by far the best solution if you have the space. Just design your bathroom so that you have to round a corner (or place some other obstruction behind the doorway) to move bathroom users out of the line of sight. No outward-swinging door killing people, no outward-swinging door trapping people inside, no germs.

> design your bathroom so that you have to round a corner to move bathroom users out of the line of sight

At my workplace the bathrooms are designed liked this. Works absolutely wonderfully, impossible to see into the bathroom, convenient, no touching the same door handle that-guy-with-suspect-hygiene-practices-just-touched etc.

... and then about 6 months ago, they installed doors on these same bathrooms (without changing anything else). Even worse, they're sort of cheap-n-nasty sliding doors, which have a tendency to bind and get stuck closed!

I have no idea what prompted this, it's rather mystifying, that they do it now, given that it's an old building which has lasted like 60 years without the doors...

That sounds great, but I can see 2 problems:

1) smell 2) signalling that the bathroom is in use

My guess would be that you can wash your hands when you first get into the bathroom. That is when your hands are the dirtiest.

Given what I've seen guys not do at a bathroom, I doubt social pressure would change their hygiene.

I've been to some fancy restaurants that had the sinks for washing your hands outside the bathrooms. Men and women shared the same sinks, so in theory the restaurant could have fewer sinks.

that's pretty common in india, both, as you say, because it saves overall floor space, and because it lets people who want to simply wash their hands not have to vie for space with people who are using the toilets.

if you have a manual misadventure and end up with poo on your finger, do you really want to be dancing out into public with it held out in front of you?

I guess it is better to have both. A sink inside and a sink outside.

I'm guessing the washrooms in your area don't have sanitary paper(toilet paper).

those can run out.

ALWAYS check before you sit down ;)

My other toilet PROTIP:

If you walk into a communal toilet cubicle, and the seat lid is down, ALWAYS do a bonus flush before lifting the lid.

Strongly disagree. One word: Blockage.

I don't mean that it's dripping with poo. I mean that you've wiped it with paper and it still needs a wash. In this case, you're not going to be using your hand normally, picking up your things or putting it in your pocket, are you?

I gotta ask. After you wipe you still have your smartphone in your hands don't you.

I've seen this suggested before as a way to stop the spread of disease in certain african countries. I don't think they went as far as suggesting public sinks, but rather communal sinks shared by the male and female toilets as they felt the social pressure from females would convince the males (who research showed were the source of the problem).

In the UK doors almost always open inwards. From the more public area to the less public area. I always figured this was for safety so you don't hit people in the more public area when opening the door. The comments on the linked site also indicate this could be to stop the possibility of the door being blocked from the outside.

Interestingly, in Finland, in my experience it's the opposite - almost everything opens outwards. Which is surprising considering the much higher probability of being snowed in and not being able to push the door out.

In France, virtually all public areas have doors that open outwards. To the best of my knowledge, there is no law that make this mandatory, but the reasoning is that in case of an event that requires evacuation, doors that open inwards would trap people inside, whereas doors that open outwards would let them go outside.

The european building codes (Euro Code) recommend public areas have doors opening outwards. This is not a (european) binding law, it's a recommendation.

National building codes can make this law.

In Belgium, your building-permit contains a clause you need approval from the city fire-department. They send a fireman that has to check the safety of your building. If it's a public building, your main exit doors must be opening outwards, for evacuation purposes. But they don't care about the toilet door ...

Interesting fact in the same context: in the case of an emergency, your elevator would not be available and you should use the staircase. It is required by the same set of laws that if you follow the staircase all the way down, you have to end up at the ground floor, not in the basement. This is accomplished most of the time by adding another corner or a door to get to the basement level. Additionally, this door MUST open towards the staircase, so confused, scared people don't accidentally go through this door and end up in the basement.

(The fireman check emergency-sings & lightning, exit-routes, if there are fire extinguisher available in accessible places, ... If they find any violations, you get a grace period to fix things. Your building permit is actually revoked if you don't resolve the issues. I'm not sure what the consequences are actually ?)

> Interesting fact in the same context: in the case of an emergency, your elevator would not be available and you should use the staircase. It is required by the same set of laws that if you follow the staircase all the way down, you have to end up at the ground floor, not in the basement. This is accomplished most of the time by adding another corner or a door to get to the basement level. Additionally, this door MUST open towards the staircase, so confused, scared people don't accidentally go through this door and end up in the basement.

One of the previous places I worked, we had a fireman talk us through the emergency procedures for the building at one point, and he recounted how it was relatively common for them to find dead people immediately inside exits that were locked, but where the key was in the door, or that opened the wrong way, or in other situations where anyone would've trivially gotten out in seconds in normal conditions, as a way of illustrating just how confusion and fear or carbon monoxide/lack of oxygen would sometimes make people totally unable to overcome even the most basic obstacles during a fire.

Which applies to large areas, but is counterproductive to things like bathrooms and offices; such a door opening into a hallway will get in the way of people outside trying to evacuate.

I remember hearing that this is because there was once a fire in a church and almost everyone inside were killed. This was caused by inward opening doors getting blocked from opening due masses of people trying to push their way out in panic.

I'm disappointed. I thought this was going to be about why stall doors always open toward the actual toilet. And I thought the accepted answer was going to be so the user can hold the broken door closed with his foot.

From the headline I thought that might be the topic, also.

Your theory is good, but I suspect the main reason for stall-doors to open-in is to prevent the door swinging-out to collide with other people, as with the dominant explanation for the full-bathroom door. This is likely an even bigger concern in typically cramped bathrooms than the entry hallways.

Also, to the extent that stall walls/doors are often generic hardware, reused in many cramped spaces, having the doors open inward may give designers more confidence that the swinging of the door is not obstructed by local constraints. (Allocating the rectangle footprint for the stall ensures entry works, as opposed to allocating the rectangle-plus-outward-swinging-door-semicircle).

Another lesser consideration might be that an inward-swinging door makes occupancy by more than one person somewhat more difficult.

As an architect, the confidence and speed with which these 'UI'-people put forward half-baked (and mostly-incorrect) ideas is both heartening and disheartening.

A better question which I'm yet to find a good answer for - why do American's feel the need to fill their toilets to the brim with water as opposed to everywhere else in the world?

I think the German "Poo Shelf" toilets are weirder [1] [2]. I heard this was because of the large quantites of Pork consumed, and the need to check for worms.

No wonder Veronica Moser (NSFW!!) is so popular in Germany.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flush_toilet#Reverse_bowl_desig... [2] http://www.spiegel.de/international/hold-your-nose-toilet-sh...

Hah, there was a toilet like that in our hotel in Budapest, and I was wondering what that's for! It seems like nobody knows of a reason, other than "to gross you out".

Brim? The toilets are generally about a quarter full of water.

While it's not the main problem he's talking about, I think Marco Arment blogged a related solution for this. Here's the link, http://www.marco.org/2012/02/25/right-vs-pragmatic. It's a great post guys, I encourage you to read it. :)

This has already been solved to the satisfaction of germaphobes in virtually all US airports. It is also the norm in public sports venues.

...no doors.

I prefer public toilets that have no door at all.

I don't know how to take this (joke, irony or genuine) but that's a good example of thinking outside the box vs focusing too much on the apparent cause of the problem. Designing the restroom so that there's a corner obscuring the view solves all problems.

but without a door, you can't guarentee that the stall is private, and anyone could just walk in while you do your business - a rather unpleasant thought.

I think they're talking about the big room containing all the stalls, not the individual stalls themselves.

The two most recently built public toilets I regularly visit (a cinema and a shopping mall) both use this design, so I think it's the future.

You would enjoy rural Uganda then (and, I presume, other similar areas). It's a little uncomfortable being watched by 15 kids when called by nature. Some of them have never seen a mzungu go to the toilet, I guess.

The hand-washing bit is a problem, though. You'll notice that no-one eats using their left hand in such areas. :-O

Er, why?

The Toepener lets you open the door with your foot - http://www.toepener.com/ .

Brilliant, all that's left is to install the device on the door before entering the bathroom, then remove it when leaving. Just make sure you bring a drill and some screws when going to the bathroom.

Bathroom doors are lockable so that the bathroom can be closed; ordinary single doors that can be locked swing away from the locked-out side so that the jamb and hinges are on the correct side.

I usually avoid using the handle and open the door by pulling on the top of the door. Even when I open a door, I try to pick a place that's least likely to be used by other people.

What if everyone all thinks like that and pick the same spot as you.

What if you are, in doing that, picking the place that is most likely to be neglected by cleaning staff?

for toilet, people usually hurry in, but not so hurry out.

What I have always wondered is why USA toilet stalls are so lacking in privacy with massive gaps round the doors where you can see the occupants.

In the UK you usually can't be observed without someone sticking their head over/under the partition.

People in my office hang toilet paper down like crepe streamers to cover the "gap". It's a little disconcerting sometimes, I'm not sure why that's a design choice. Perhaps to get a glimpse of whether someone's in there or not without actually seeing what's going on?

What interests me more is: Why are the free/occupied indicators on those doors always so small?

Especially since the light in rest rooms are usually insufficiently bright to distinguish between red and green.

I can't say I've ever noticed difficulty distinguishing green and red in anything short of "full moon" light levels. Is it possible that you are partially colorblind? It is fairly common among men, which really should make us wonder why we use red/green at all...

In Finland it's usually red/white. I'm sure I'm speaking on behalf of all the red-green colorblind people when I say I'm very pleased by this.

It's because of fire safety codes. When doors open outwards it is easier to evacuate the building of panicking people

They are generally easier to kick in if they open inwards. Might be part of the reason.

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