Commercial Restroom Design Trends

EVOLVING

COMMERCIAL

RESTROOM

DESIGN TRENDS

For more information about Sloan, please visit sloan.com or call 800.982.5839.

2 of 10

Evolving Commercial Restroom Design Trends

Executive Summary

Public restrooms in commercial buildings are undergoing a major shift due to a number of societal, health-related,

and technological factors. While touchless ﬁxtures in restrooms are not new, the COVID-19 pandemic has generated

greater interest in these products alongside a desire for an entirely hands-free experience in public restrooms.

Additionally, public discourse around gender inclusivity is changing the way interior designers approach the design

of these facilities, as reﬂected in changes to international building codes, as well as the rise in more all-gender/ family

style restrooms in commercial buildings.

Sustainability and wellness continue to be a high priority among most designers. Demand for LEED- and

WELL-certiﬁed projects is relatively low, with many clients opting to apply sustainable design principles without

incurring the additional costs of third-party certiﬁcation. Still, as hygiene is tied to health and wellness, there is an

increased awareness of the importance of handwashing in a post-COVID world.

This report analyzes current industry trends; highlights relevant content from magazine articles about the design of

commercial restrooms today; explores in-depth focus groups with a number of interior designers; captures the

opinions of hundreds of design and building industry professionals about touchless technologies; and oers

recommendations in response to the data collected.

Discovery: What the Market is Saying About Commercial Restrooms Today

There is a wealth of information on the design of commercial restrooms in the market, particularly as it relates to

changes stemming from the pandemic, perceptions, and practices around hand hygiene, as well as all-gender

restroom considerations.

Industry data from various sources speculate on the ways in which the design of restrooms will change in the near

future; how handwashing and personal hygiene have ﬂuctuated during the early and later stages of the pandemic;

gender-related design considerations that need to be taken into account when planning public restrooms; and the

role of touchless technologies in a post-pandemic world.

Several of Sloan’s products are also included to provide a glimpse of the types of hands-free solutions that are being

oered to the design community at large.

Following is a summary of the data pulled from these various sources that provide insight into what the market can

tell us about commercial restrooms and key issues interior designers are facing today.

INDUSTRY SNAPSHOT

After mining existing data on commercial restroom trends, four key areas of consideration emerged:

1. Design and Space Planning

COVID-19 has made a permanent mark on the perception, functionality, and design of commercial restrooms. “Just

as 9/11 changed air travel and the iPod transformed how we listen to music, the coronavirus pandemic will forever

change public restroom design and how people perceive—and respond to—restroom cleanliness and safety,” wrote

Kris Alderson in an article on post-pandemic restroom design trends. “While cleanliness has always been a goal in

designing restrooms,” Alderson continued, “coronavirus has increased the need and expectation for creating

hygienic, sterile, and safe environments.”

For more information about Sloan, please visit sloan.com or call 800.982.5839.

3 of 10

The design of most existing commercial restrooms in the U.S. are rife with problems around privacy, cleanliness, and

comfort. Toilets without lids, for example, can spread germs into the atmosphere and clothing when ﬂushing (known

as “toilet plume.”), rendering handwashing ineective. Adding lids to public toilets, utilizing touchless ﬁxtures and

faucets, and closing o stalls may be able to address some of these issues.

As a result, there’s been an uptick in requests for materials that allow for cleaning with more intense chemicals or

those that inherently resist dirt. Non-porous, solid-surface counters and sinks, for example, perform well in these

environments without sacriﬁcing aesthetics.

Antimicrobial ﬁnishes and materials are being considered more frequently, particularly those that have inherent

antimicrobial properties such as copper. There is a growing concern among design practitioners about antimicrobial

treatments that may contribute to more resistant strains of bacteria, possibly rendering those treatments ineective

at best and problematic at worst. Hence, antimicrobial materials and ﬁnishes can provide germ-resistant surfaces

while helping limit the concern around bacterial resistance.

The layout of commercial restrooms also needs to be reconsidered but reinventing the wheel isn’t necessary.

Design elements like eliminating doors, adding S-curved and automated doors, and widening doorways are also

gaining traction.

Wet ﬂoors continue to be another problem encountered regularly in commercial restrooms that needs to be

addressed during design conception. Wet ﬂoors can breed bacteria and cause slips and falls. To avoid wet ﬂoors,

Kempen suggested locating soap and drying options close to sinks so people needn’t move from the sink with wet

hands. “I see a big opportunity for sleek all-in-one hand washing ﬁxtures that have the soap, faucet, and dryer all in

one unit to contain water,” she said.

Fortunately for designers, those all-in-one solutions are already available for speciﬁcation. Sloan’s AER-DEC®

Integrated Sink, for example, is an ideal innovation for any high-end washroom. With the soap dispenser, faucet,

hand dryer, and sink basin all designed to work together as one elegant, touch-free system, the AER-DEC Integrated

Sink saves space and allows for a cleaner design by moving soap and hand dryer to the deck.

According to Rick Marencic, design principal and studio leader for JCJ Architecture, the future of public restroom

design will be determined through a combination of processes: analyzing user needs; applying state-of-the-art

technology to address resource conservation, safety, and cleanliness; and ecient planning with regards to

privacy, accessibility, and inclusivity. “When combined with a considered use of materials and ﬁxtures for

appearance retention and cleanability, these factors will deeply improve the customer experience across market

sectors,” he said.

2. Touchless

Recent studies have found that the majority of Americans prefer to have touchless ﬁxtures in public bathrooms to

avoid touching handles and other high-trac surfaces. Taking evasive measures to avoid germs is fairly common

today, and people actually prefer to frequent businesses with cleaner bathrooms and touch-free experiences than

those that don’t.

When it comes to which ﬁxtures Americans prefer to be touchless, the toilet or ﬂushometer handle, faucets, and

entrance doors top the list, with hand dryers, paper towel dispensers, soap dispensers, and stall doors following them.

Evolving Commercial Restroom Design Trends

For more information about Sloan, please visit sloan.com or call 800.982.5839.

4 of 10

“Sloan has placed a high priority on touch-free restroom

products ever since it debuted the ﬁrst hands-free sensor faucet

in 1974, and sensor ﬂushometer in 1980,” said Morgan Kish,

Sloan’s senior product line manager for faucets, soap dispensers,

and hand dryers. “Now, nearly 50 years later, we have carried

that same approach to every product we develop across the

entire restroom, while also taking innovation a step further. For

example, new products like Sloan’s BASYS® Guided Handwashing

Faucet are not only touchless, but come equipped with an LED

screen which provides self-guided instruction for users to follow

a CDC-approved hand-washing process.”

Making the commercial restroom a touch-free experience is no

longer a “nice to have” option—it is becoming a must for public

health and safety to help reduce the risk of spreading germs,

and architects, designers, and facility managers alike should

certainly reconsider their current selections.

According to a recent FacilitiesNet article, “Coronavirus Has

Made Touchless Restrooms a Must”, the demand for a

touchless experience “will fundamentally alter the way

materials are chosen for commercial restrooms. As such,

solutions that require little or no contact should take priority

when re-evaluating the way a restroom is outﬁtted in the

pre-vaccine world.”

Given the profound impact of the pandemic on every industry, it stands to reason that building codes in the future

may require touchless restroom features. “There are not any such requirements now, but cities are moving toward

requiring touchless in all public restrooms,” the article said.

3. Hygiene

“Hygiene is the new gold standard in restrooms,” Alderson noted. The

general public, which has become accustomed to the expectation for

enhanced cleaning protocol in facilities, will likely continue to judge

buildings and businesses by this elevated cleanliness standard.

A number of surveys on public perceptions of hygiene and

handwashing habits since the onset of the pandemic reveal that

attitudes and etiquette around hygiene are important to a majority

of respondents, although there is a disparity between perception

and practice in many cases. Following are statistics gathered from

several recent surveys.

In spite of the fact that handwashing is known to help reduce the spread of outbreak-related pathogens and can

reduce acute respiratory infections by 20%, the American Cleaning Institute (ACI) reported a 14-percentage point

Evolving Commercial Restroom Design Trends

For more information about Sloan, please visit sloan.com or call 800.982.5839.

5 of 10

decline in frequent hand-washing since the start of the pandemic, according to a new national survey. In contrast to

the decrease in handwashing, use of hand sanitizer has surged since the beginning of the pandemic (62% in

September vs. 46% in March). Only 10% of Americans say that they have not made any changes to their hand

hygiene practices since the spread of COVID-19.

Interestingly, a new survey of interior designers from Sloan found that respondents indicated hygiene and safety

were an important factor when specifying commercial restroom products, scoring an average of 7.3 out of 10 points.

Further, 45% of respondents expect the number of requests for handwashing stations outside of the restroom to

increase in the next three years.

The relaxed approach to handwashing is in stark contrast to the vast majority of Americans (81%) who say they are

concerned about contracting COVID-19, with just 53% of respondents indicating they wash their hands after

returning from a trip outside the home, down from 67% last April.

4. Gender/Inclusivity

While many state legislatures have debated “bathroom bills” in recent years to more clearly deﬁne access to public

restrooms by gender or transgender identity, it’s not the ﬁrst time bathrooms have been at the center of political

debates. Racial segregation stemming from Jim Crow era laws extended into the 1960s before African-Americans

were welcome in public restrooms.

“But for as long as restrooms have been instruments of exclusion, their conception as being intrinsically tied to

gender is relatively short,” said Ben Garbow, designer at Payette in an online article

. “In fact, public restrooms have

only been separated by gender since the mid-1800s.”

To what extent do you believe that performance is

an important factor in terms of touchless/sensor-

based products becoming more widely adopted in

commercial restrooms?

Please rate the level of importance of touchless or

doorless entry and exit capabilities.

180

160

140

120

100

NOT AT ALL

IMPORTANT

163

3 4 5

VERY

IMPORTANT

100

NOT AT ALL

IMPORTANT

3 4 5

VERY

IMPORTANT

SOURCE: 2021 SLOAN INTERIOR DESIGN SURVEY

Evolving Commercial Restroom Design Trends

For more information about Sloan, please visit sloan.com or call 800.982.5839.

6 of 10

With the movement for trans rights and evolving conceptions of gender reaching

the mainstream, gender-coded spaces are being rethought in design-centric

terms for the ﬁrst time, Garbow noted.

One of the challenges with creating inclusive and safe public restrooms for all

genders and identities is building codes. In 2018 the International Building and

Plumbing Codes (IPC) were updated to include gender-neutral restrooms as

proposed by the American Institute of Architects (AIA); however, regulator codes

demand a speciﬁc ratio of male/female ratios for restroom design, and there is no

“one size ﬁts all” approach to gender-neutral restrooms or how many should be

included within a building.

All-gender or “family restrooms” that are ADA-compliant have become

increasingly popular in high-trac environments like airports and highway rest

areas, which solve many of the gender-sensitive challenges we face today.

“Separate and private ADA or family rooms are the closest thing that comes to mind when considering the ‘how’ in

accommodating these sensibilities,” said Angie Lee, partner and design director of Interiors at FXCollaborative

. Lee

noted that providing additional toilet facilities to meet the needs of people who simply don’t feel comfortable

sharing the same space as a colleague of the opposite sex doesn’t necessarily need to be a “deal breaker.”

However, these facilities can be dicult to scale where space is at a premium and can add additional expenses to a

project budget. Fortunately, a new multi-user, all-gender template is emerging that can foster a greater sense of

dignity and inclusion for all types of people. One way to create a practical, trans-friendly restroom is to divide each

stall into a separate chamber using full doors for increased privacy, said Lisa Selin Davis in an online article.

“In the ideal all-gender restroom (and the most ﬂexible budget), some stalls will have it all: a urinal, a toilet, a shelf

for your phone ... a nursing chair, a mirror, and ﬁxtures for wheelchair accessibility,” she pointed out. “Larger

establishments should be able to oer a mix of multi-user restrooms and some stand-alone rooms. Urinals can be

kept in the larger all-gender restroom, but cordoned o to one side, perhaps with a privacy wall.”

Garbow argues that language and signage are an important element in the inclusivity equation. “Passive terms like

‘gender-neutral’ or ‘unisex’ can be read as being dismissive of gender. ‘All-gender’ is explicitly armational and

inclusive of all gender identities,” he said. “It is also, increasingly, the terminology adopted at institutions (like

universities) that have made a point of adding these facilities.”

Recent examples of all-gender restroom signage range from comical (with pictures of aliens and mermaids, for

example) to confusing (split male/female icon) that, while well intentioned, should be avoided. Many advocates and

LGBTQ+ users have raised valid concerns that it plays into problematic stereotypes about trans people and, again,

reinforces the gender binary, according to Garbow.

The solution is incredibly simple: a picture of a toilet. “Users understand what a sign with a toilet communicates: it’s

what you encounter in a restroom,” Garbow explained. “Men’s restrooms can include an icon of a urinal to accurately

reﬂect what speciﬁc ﬁxtures users can expect to encounter. The toilet sign is such a bluntly elegant design solution

that seems obvious in retrospect, but it requires a subtle and important shift in thinking—that signage should place

emphasis not on who can use a restroom, but what is in a restroom.”

Evolving Commercial Restroom Design Trends

For more information about Sloan, please visit sloan.com or call 800.982.5839.

7 of 10

When designing inclusive, public commercial restrooms, the Seven Principles of Universal Design can be very helpful

in ensuring the needs of all users are considered:

1. Equitable Use

2. Flexibility in Use

3. Simple & Intuitive Use

4. Perceptible Information

5. Tolerance for Error

6. Size & Space for Approach and Use

7. Low Physical Eort

Focus Group Findings:

What Interior Designers are Saying—7 Trends to Watch

As noted in earlier sections, the design of commercial restrooms and the importance of hand hygiene are seeing signiﬁcant

shifts. Interestingly, these changes are not necessarily the result of the pandemic but are being underscored by it.

Societal shifts around gender identiﬁcation are also shaping the way designers view and plan public restrooms

today, but a number of questions remains as to the best path toward inclusivity in the physical environment.

In recent focus group discussion that interiors + sources held with interior designers, seven key trends were

identiﬁed:

1. Touchless/sensor-based products are becoming the new normal—but there are deterrents preventing more

widespread adoption. These obstacles include performance, maintenance, costs, and design. Designers noted that

they, along with facility sta, prefer hardwired over battery-operated ﬁxtures due to the amount of maintenance

required, especially in larger facilities with multiple restrooms and ﬁxtures.

2. All-gender restrooms are a growing trend. Requests from clients are primarily for all-gender restrooms, and

space dictates if they can be accommodated. International building codes are making it easier to design for all-

gender restrooms. However, there is not yet a consensus as to what an integrated and inclusive public restroom

model that supports the needs of all persons regardless of gender identity might look like. Focus group

participants were undecided as to whether urinals are needed in these spaces or not.

3. Partitions may expand to full height for increased privacy and to elevate the stall experience. COVID has

accentuated the need for greater privacy in the restroom, and ﬂoor-to-ceiling stalls help elevate the stall

experience while providing all-gender options as well.

4. Where all-gender is not possible or not speciﬁed, touchless or doorless entry/exit will be important, as seen in

the design of most commercial restrooms in airports.

5. Sustainability is important to designers but requests from clients to pursue LEED/WELL are not very signiﬁcant.

Upfront and certiﬁcation costs are the biggest deterrents to clients for pursuing these certiﬁcations. However,

focus group participants noted that many clients will design toward LEED, but they may not pay for certiﬁcation

Evolving Commercial Restroom Design Trends

For more information about Sloan, please visit sloan.com or call 800.982.5839.

8 of 10

and that they will implement sustainable design strategies and products whenever possible. Environmental

Product Declarations (EPDs) and Health Product Declarations (HPDs) are helpful for many designers but not

necessarily a requirement for speciﬁcation.

6. Due to greater awareness of the importance of hand hygiene, handwashing outside the restroom will become

more commonplace—but design must improve. Mobile hand-washing stations lack aesthetics to complement

design schemes. Dining rooms, corporate cafeterias, break rooms, and stadiums were identiﬁed as environments

in which handwashing stations outside of the restroom are becoming more commonplace. Additionally, automatic

hand-drying solutions are being supplemented with (or even replaced by) touchless paper dispensers due to

hygiene concerns.

7. Desire for a well-designed suite of restroom ﬁxtures is high. This includes faucets, soap dispensers, hand dryers,

and trash receptacles that match or complement each other. Designers are seeking products with a variety of

ﬁnish selections that match, but which are often lacking.

Quantitative Research: What the Data is Saying

Stamats conducted an online survey using its interiors + sources audience database to help Sloan develop a better

understanding of:

• What manufacturers can provide to make designers’ jobs easier as well as how designers prefer to ﬁnd product

information

• Important attributes and forecast trends related to commercial restrooms and handwashing stations

• Perceived growth industries for sensor-based products

• The extent to which end clients pursue various types of certiﬁcations and prefer sustainable solutions

Key Findings:

• Detailed technical speciﬁcations, local representatives

with technical expertise, and reference images were the

top three selections in terms of what can make designers’

jobs easier. Websites were the most preferred means of

ﬁnding product information.

• Performance and design options were the most important

attributes in terms of touchless/sensor-based products

becoming more widely adopted in commercial restrooms.

• Healthcare was viewed as the industry with the highest

growth potential for sensor products.

• Sustainability was somewhat important to end clients,

while very few of them pursue LEED and/or WELL

certiﬁcations.

• Sloan’s highest rating pertained to its performance.

84%

Extremely important to

wash your hands after

using a public restroom

PUBLIC RESTROOM HYGIENE

48%

Extremely important to

dry your hands after

using a public restroom

Evolving Commercial Restroom Design Trends

For more information about Sloan, please visit sloan.com or call 800.982.5839.

9 of 10

Trends in Touchless Technology for Commercial Restrooms

Stamats conducted an online survey (N = 890) using its BUILDINGS audience database to help develop a better

understanding related to:

• The current and projected usage of touchless products in commercial restrooms

• The types of touchless products most appealing to facility professionals

• The biggest challenges to implementing touchless technologies in restrooms

Key Findings:

• Most facilities professionals are not currently implementing new touchless technologies into their existing

buildings because the majority of respondents indicate their current restrooms are already completely touchless;

but there is clear interest in increasing touchless products into restrooms that currently don’t feature them within

the next 24 months.

• Faucets for hand washing and hand drying products are the most common touchless technologies in existing

commercial restrooms.

• Cleanliness, a better user experience, and energy eciencies are cited as the top three reasons for interest in

touchless technologies.

• Cost is by far the biggest challenge to implementing a completely touchless restroom, followed by a lack of

information on the correct solutions.