Concurrents – Environmental Psychology: Designing Bathrooms That Work

Workplace bathroom design and maintenance remain hot topics, for good reason.

On October 18 I spoke at Workplace Trends: The Changing Nature of Work in London. The conference was chock full of insightful, provocative and compelling presentations, the kind that make a trip to London very worthwhile.

At the conference the topic of bathroom design and maintenance was raised because bathrooms have an important influence on workplace performance for more than the obvious reasons.

Bathrooms are the places in every workplace where it is possible for workers to find some respite from what can be crushing workloads. Even if spa-like experiences aren’t designed in, bathrooms are regularly painted in relaxing colors, for example. And they do provide some privacy in the midst of open offices.

People sometimes retreat to bathroom stalls just for that privacy. We all need some time when we don’t have visual or acoustic contact with others – during those periods we can make sense of what’s been happening in our lives recently, for example. Although bathrooms are not perfect in terms of providing visual and acoustic isolation, they are the most private places that many can find in open workplaces.

After people found they had privacy in bathroom stalls, they started to do work there – not because they were private but because for the most part being in a stall minimized distractions while working. Conversations at the London conference indicated that in-bathroom work seems here to stay. That raises interesting design issues, beyond the fact that it seems inhumane to drive people into bathroom stalls to think because the design of the workplace at large does not support their needs. Moving beyond the conclusion that maybe the spaces between the bathroom doors and the front door of the workplace should be changed, designers can, and apparently should, design stalls as workplaces. For starters, it seems stalls should provide some sort of work surface. Another example, people making phone calls from stalls or attending audio conferences from there would probably appreciate toilets that flush silently and echo dampening surfaces.

Even before people started to do professional work in bathrooms, research showed that workers “read” the design and maintenance of these spaces to determine what management thought about them. Marble isn’t necessary to indicate that workers are prized, but thoughtful, well-maintained, clean facilities are. Materials used in bathrooms must communicate users are valued now and in the future so cleanability and maintainability are key. What do different employee groups prize in bathrooms? This question can easily be answered during the design research process and information gathered confirmed by visits to restrooms of clients with workers who generally seem positive about their workplace experiences. And common sense.

Even when bathrooms are not under the management of an organization, managers can make sure that they’re pleasant places to be by adding light, fresh scents and desirable soaps and hand moisturizers, for example.

Bathroom design has always had an important effect on workplace experience, and bathrooms’ role in encouraging workplace wellbeing and performance seems likely to continue to expand in the years ahead.

Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.