What are the drawbacks to having the bathtub on a different floor from the bedrooms

bathtub

We are buying a 2-floor house, and are thinking about the layout of the rooms and common spaces. The building company, by default, puts a bathtub on the second floor (where the bedrooms are), while putting a shower in the bathroom on the first floor (where the kitchen and the living room are). Unfortunately, the bathroom on the second floor is smaller than the one downstairs. Hence, we are thinking to ask the company placing the bathtub on the first floor instead.

We have not decided yet, but when looking at the houses around, we've noticed that they all have bathtubs on the second floor and a shower on the first floor. So there might be some reason for that which we do not grasp.

Can anyone help us understand what can be some potential pitfalls of having a bathtub downstairs?

Thanks in advance!

Best Answer

If you plan to stay in the house until you are old, consider what amenities you'd like to have when stairs become difficult, impossible, or risky for your aging self to use. Stair lifts have their limits, and having to move out of your house due to factors you built into it is annoying, if you would otherwise prefer to stay. In some cases this may lead you to choose to build a single-story house rather than a two-story house.

If you don't have long-term plans, make your choices as you will.

There are many "common things" that either never made sense, made sense only in the age of "hired help" or "roving bandits," or that only are "common" in one part of the world and not others. Try to look at them with a fresh eye when you get to build the house, rather than following "the norm" blindly.

To wit:

  • Bedrooms on the second floor - harder to get out in the case of a fire, which you are already at disadvantage for from being asleep. Second floor views are generally better for the living spaces. Bands of marauding peasants breaking in downstairs and being held off at the stairwell by sword-wielding inhabitants is a bit outdated as reasons go, but there you are.
  • "Laundry in the basement" = sure, when it goes down the chute you can't now have for fire regulations to the laundress you don't employ who gets to carry it back upstairs. The bulk of laundry is generated at and used in bedrooms, and the laundry processing should be near those and the bathroom(s) near them for efficient plumbing and not dragging most of the laundry around the house needlessly. In my area second floor bedrooms and basement laundry are the norm. It's nuts. Quiet machines, sound insulation, and/or scheduling use deal with the "noise of the machines while I'm sleeping" reason sometimes trotted out for locating them inconveniently. In other places, laundry in the bathroom is the norm.
  • Who the heck decreed that shower/tub must share the room that the toilet/WC is in? They are both plumbing, and plumbing inside the house is a relatively new concept that humans are very slowly adapting to, so they got thrown in together when running those new-fangled pipe things into the existing house. Then that carried over into new houses. They are not the same, and making use of one block the other is at times VERY inconvenient. The privy/outhouse did not have a bathtub in it...
  • No doubt other things that are not coming to mind at the moment...
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