Space Saving Bathroom Ideas for Your Commercial Washroom

Space is often limited in commercial washrooms. Faced with pressures to make the working environment as productive as possible and retail environments as profitable as possible, architects seldom allocate more room to WCs than is necessary, resulting in a small bathroom. As a result, the interiors can sometimes feel compact, and users may feel uncomfortable when sharing facilities with others.

In this article, we’ll look at how washrooms can be equipped to maximise the small space and how you can create a comfortable, inviting, and accessible washroom that promotes efficiency and cleanliness, whilst adhering to legislation.

The Benefits of Maximising Space in Small Washrooms

There are three key benefits of maximising space in small washrooms: functionality, health and safety, and appearance.

Functionality

Maximising the space in a small bathroom can enable you to provide all the necessary amenities without overcrowding the space, making it easier for users to move around and access the facilities. Optimising the space can also allow you to include additional features such as baby changing stations to make it more versatile and accommodate different needs.

Health and Safety

While an overcrowded, cramped, cluttered washroom can be uncomfortable to use, it can also pose certain safety hazards, such as tripping over obstructions. This can make the washroom difficult for people with mobility issues or disabilities to access and navigate. Optimising the available space allows you to create a functional, accessible and spacious washroom clear of obstructions so all users can move around the floor space comfortably and safely.

Appearance

Maximising available space in a small bathroom can significantly enhance its appearance and improve the overall user experience. Optimising the layout and using space-saving fixtures along with natural lighting, can create a more open and spacious environment that feels less cluttered and cramped and more inviting and comfortable to use. A well-designed and attractive washroom can also help create a positive image of the company, reflecting its commitment to quality and the comfort and convenience of its employees and visitors.

5 Ways to Optimise Space in Your Company Washroom

1. Avoid Protruding Dispensers

In a washroom where space is limited, the ideal washroom dispensers would not protrude at all into the room itself. This is entirely possible in cases where the surrounding walls have sufficiently deep cavities to accommodate recessed washroom products such as paper towel dispensers, hand dryers and bins.

Recessing these units in the walls means that they sit flush with the wall décor and, therefore, do not obtrude into the main part of the room. This helps to maximise floor space and elbow room, improving the flow of people around the washroom, particularly in high-traffic, commercial spaces.

1. ‘Behind the Mirror’ Soap Dispenser

The ‘Behind the Mirror’ Soap Dispenser allows you to streamline your washroom by concealing your soap dispensers behind the mirror. The stainless-steel dispenser is easy to refill and maintain. The touch-free dispensers are kept secure behind the lockable mirror door to protect them from contamination or tampering. They can be positioned where needed within the cabinet, depending on the layout of your basins.

2. Maximise Floor Space

Often, washrooms will feature mirrors over hand basins. Since most basins will inevitably encroach into the floor space, the space over them is generally ‘dead’, so dispensers can be mounted here without further impingement on the flow of foot traffic.

A particularly effective, multi-functional approach is to place key items such as soap dispensers, hand dryers and paper towel dispensers behind the mirrors, rather than beneath or between them. Besides giving the room, a sleeker, more minimal appearance, this also helps to keep dispensers well protected against accidental knocks and scratches.

Benefits for the Floor Space

A further benefit of this approach is that each basin area then becomes effectively self-contained, so users don’t have to move around one another, share dispensers or take turns waiting to use key items. Again, this improves speed, efficiency, and flow. This is particularly true of paper towel dispensers and hand dryers; when placed behind the mirror, they remove the need for users to queue to use hand dryers, which might typically be mounted at the end of the row of basins or on a separate wall space, and often at door entry and exit points, which can impact the flow of washroom traffic.

One other benefit of drying hands at the point of use is the reduction of water drips on the floor created as users with wet hands move around the washroom.  These drips on hard floors are a potential cause of slips and falls.

3. Identify Effective Bathroom Storage Solutions

Commercial washrooms need to be kept well-stocked with consumables, but storing the various products can put further demands on floor space. Installing lockable cabinets beneath basins can be one simple solution. Another is to choose a behind-the-mirror cabinet, which performs the dual function of storage space for consumables and housing a choice of dispensers.

4. Avoid Blocking Doorways

In a compact space, conventional floor-standing bins can reduce available floor space and create bottlenecks near to doorways. One option is to equip the room with electric hand dryers rather than paper towels, which reduces the need for waste disposal facilities. Another is to install recessed slimline waste bins, which protrude less into the room.

Some slimline bins can also be wall-mounted, by lifting them up which makes floor-cleaning quicker and easier.

5. Use Natural Light and Neutral Colours

Whilst these measures can help to maximise the physical space in a washroom, there are other steps that can be taken to improve a room’s appearance and to minimise any feelings of being cramped. Installing plenty of mirrors is a well-proven technique for giving the impression of more space. Similarly, the use of natural light and pale, neutral colours can also help areas feel more spacious.

Download Your Free Washroom Guide

The Dudley Industries Washroom Guide provides product specification advice for different washroom environments. It sets out the ratio of basins and cubicles to employee numbers, and a host of other regulatory requirements.

Get in touch with the team at Dudley Industries to start a conversation on how we can maximise the space in your commercial washroom.