Having the room for overnight guests is a great feeling. Whether your guests are staying one night on the way to another destination or their destination is to stay a while at your place just to hang out, space to accommodate both you, your family, and your guests for any length of stay is important. Entertaining guests can become quite the chore if everyone is fighting over bathroom time. Morning showers can be a hassle and brushing teeth in the evening might be frustrating if all parties feel like they are intruding the space of the other. Maintaining relationships with your visitors in such a stressful environment might be difficult and they are less likely to want to come back. If lines to the bathroom are long and bathroom privacy is something your home lacks when guests are over, the fix might just be a guest bathroom.
You can choose between a half or full guest bathroom. Half baths are typically located on the lowest floor of a multi-story house. When house searching, many people take the half bath for granted. After all, why have a bathroom that only includes a toilet and sink? The half bath offers the most common fixtures in a small amount of space and is a good way to provide a bit of privacy without taking up much room or finances. Another option is an additional full-sized bathroom in a more common area of the home. Both types have many benefits. They are excellent for guest use, can make your home accessible to people with disabilities, feel more organized, and can even increase the value of your home. An additional benefit when company is absent is that a guest bath can be a backup if the master bathroom is being used or needs repairing.
Without a guest bathroom, your company will be forced to venture into your private spaces to access the main bathroom. Perhaps you did not do the laundry or clean up the upstairs bedroom before they arrived and you would rather keep that a secret; a guest bathroom available for use lets you keep them out of private areas of the home and eliminate the likely feeling of intrusion they will have. As a good host, you no doubt want visitors to feel right at home. A guest bath is an excellent way to give you and your visitors an extra bit of privacy. Nobody feels at home having to navigate around someone else’s shaving supplies, shampoos, and medications. Sharing a bathroom with people outside of the immediate family can to lead to awkward situations and information about your host and/or guest that is better left classified. Ultimately, the best way to make visitors feel right at home is to give them a clean, private bathroom.
A full home, whether that is due to a large family or visitors, can sometimes feel unorganized and cluttered with only one bathroom. Adding that extra bathroom can create a more peaceful environment for everyone. It might be essential, not just convenient, to have another bathroom. A growing family or family members needing to get out of the door at the same time is a hectic situation. With a guest bath, the time it takes for everyone needing to take a shower, brush their teeth, put makeup on and everything else, can be cut in half.
If any of your family members or potential visitors have a disability they might physically be unable to access a bathroom on higher floors of your home. Having a guest bathroom on the first floor is essential in making your home visit-able to anyone that is confined to a wheelchair or has trouble climbing stairs. A home that you plan on living in permanently will benefit from a first floor guest bath as well. Having an easily accessible bathroom will come in handy if a new baby is on board and needs to be changed quickly. On the other hand, growing old can reduce one’s ability to control bodily functions or traverse a staircase.
Thinking more long-term, the guest bath can also increase the value of your home by about 10%. Since additional bathrooms do have the benefits above, they are highly desirable features for future homeowners and it is hard to go wrong in having a guest bathroom. Additionally, creating a designer guest bathroom can make your home even more attractive to potential buyers. Designing or remodeling a bathroom can be fun. A standalone bathroom lends itself well to bold colors and distinct fixtures such as exotic granite countertop colors. A bathroom connected to the guest room can be designed to have a look similar to that of the guest room. A unique guest bathroom will give your visitors just another incentive to keep coming back to your home again and again.