Many hotels – including the most luxurious ones – feature bathrooms made with glass walls, allowing visibility from both inside and outside. Why is that?
If you are a frequent traveler, you may have experienced the strange and somewhat frustrating feeling regarding the bathrooms in some hotels. They are transparent rooms, meaning that you can see out from inside and others can see in from outside.
In fact, many hotels have such unusual bathroom designs, ranging from 4-5 star establishments to budget hostels. Some places even go so far as to skip the glass installation altogether.
Transparent bathroom, meaning you can see out from inside and others can see in from outside.
But why do they have such strange designs? Many people believe this design is specifically for couples. While that is partly true, the reason is not entirely so.
1. Space-saving
This question has been raised on the world-famous Q&A forum Quora. One of the reasons given is to make the room appear more spacious.
In reality, whether luxurious or not, hotels always aim to maximize the utilization of space within the building. Therefore, they look for ways to minimize the size of the room while still ensuring comfort and convenience for guests.
Building a bathroom with glass walls creates a more spacious and “floating” feel.
Thus, constructing bathrooms with glass walls is a rather good choice. Glass walls clearly take up less space compared to traditional brick walls, so they definitely help save space.
Moreover, using glass walls also creates a clean and spacious feel for the room, based on the visual effect they provide. Traditional brick walls certainly take up less space than glass walls.
2. An effective form of energy saving
Using a glass bathroom is also a way to take advantage of sunlight. During the day, light shining on the glass can reflect back, making the room brighter without needing electric lights.
When guests do not use lights, it means the hotel saves a significant amount of money each year.
3. To ensure safety (?!)
This sounds a bit off, doesn’t it? A place that should be extremely private is now “exposed” and yet considered safe?
Transparent bathroom, you’ll notice any disturbances in the room.
However, this reasoning makes a lot of sense. According to Trey Echo, a former employee of the Dutch travel group GM PA, many hotel guests are business travelers who often travel alone. Meanwhile, the sound of water while showering can be quite loud, drowning out any noise from outside the room at that moment.
So what if someone unfortunate were to enter the room with ill intentions? Don’t even mention the issue of keys, because once someone has bad intentions, anything can happen.
Of course, if you want privacy, there are still curtains.
With a transparent bathroom, you will notice any disturbances in the room, giving you extra time in a critical situation.
