this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2025
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America? America.
The rest of the world somehow manages to make doors the size of the frame that go pretty much to the floor.
In America, the reason is basically “religion”. There are architectural standards which designers refer to for guidance, and the dude who did the architectural standard for restrooms was super hardcore religious. His standard called for big gaps in all the seams, to prevent people from masturbating in the stalls. Basically, he wanted people to be able to peek into stalls, as a sort of modesty check. And eventually, it just became accepted as normal, even though everyone (including Americans who were born and raised with them as the standard) hates the huge gaps.
In modern day, they’re mostly done to deter drug use. I guess the reasoning is similar, with the large gaps intended to allow people to peek into the stalls and see if someone is doing drugs.
If the goal is to allow observation, what's the point in having doors and cubicles at all?
For what it's worth regardless of how it started, it's now enforced by ADA as an accessibility compliance issue, so that a wheelchair users feet can get under the stall door so they can get close enough to reach the latch. Seems like a stretch to me but I'm not a wheelchair user
I'm not sure what kinda gymnastics the wheelchair user's got to be doing to get on the shitter once they've rolled themselves into a stall backwards... Or why it's only after a shit that they can't use doors
I think ADA also requires handicapped stalls to be larger so they don't have to do this.
Sure that explains the bottom gap, but the side gaps are the issue. I've never made eye contact with a grown man that's crawled under my stall. I have made eye contact with someone walking by the stall door through the door crack.
Oh god, for some reason I just pictured this but in the style of the artwork of Junji Ito. Nightmare fuel.
Yeah that's a really good point, one of the bathrooms at my work is particularly egregious and I'm about to buy and install a privacy thing to cover the gap at this point, there's a legit 2" gap between the wall and the stall, and it's right by the door to the bathroom so it's inevitable that you'll make eye contact with someone as they're walking out, so that stall never gets used and instead the wheelchair accessible stall next to it is always used
If there's a coat hanger on the inside of the door, sometimes hanging a big coat (or something else) can cover the gaps. I've done it unintentionally.
Some stalls are tiny, and in old construction there's not a lot you can do with out major renovations. I'm sure the extra leg room is appreciated by taller folks, or if you can't really bend your lower legs in towards you.
source?
I think it's because it's a modular system that is cost effective, durable and repairable.
You can do the same with dimensions that fit together without gaps
I disagree. If you can manufacture it I can try to install it though.
It's called a "door".
Door? I hardly know her!
Are you saying US-american table saws can't be more precise than 2.5cm (an inch)?
I wouldn't try a table saw on one of those steel panels
Just the USA, not all of America
I think it's meant to stop people from shooting up and/or fucking and/or falling asleep and/or dying in stalls.
It is fucking annoying though.
Just put anti-homeless spikes on the toilet seats
Why not let people fuck though?
Because they invariably never clean up after themselves...
But mostly, in the US, because sex is verboten and more dangerous than literal gun violence.
Yeah, here in Germany we usually have kinda big (30cm or so) openings at the bottom and at the top, but it's impossible to accidentally look through those due to their position.
The side openings of the doors are usually completely closed or it's a very small slit, you definetly cannot look through them.
That's false.
I travel a lot for my job, maybe fifty different countries the past 5 or 6 years, and I've never seen toilet doors as silly and poorly-designed as US ones, except in places where they're just making do with what they have.
I didn't travel as much as you (far from it)
But in every contry I've ever been there were toilet doors reaching the ground and floating ~20cm over it in about equal amounts
Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, France, South Korea, Japan were all essentially private booths. Should be standard.
UK was a bit of a cluster, Philippines had doors sometimes, Italy was almost like America at least around Florence when I was there 20 years ago