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EspañaA wash down closet isn’t just a polite euphemism for a bathroom. This separate room or compartment for someone to use the toilet privately is among the top 5 most wanted bathroom features, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).
65% of recent or potential home buyers listed this amenity as a desirable or essential feature in the master bath, according to the 2019 edition of NAHB’s What Home Buyers Want report.
Water closets, which may strike some buyers as the stalls in upscale public restrooms, are more prevalent in residential homes overseas. But they’re gaining traction in certain segments of the U.S. housing market.
The toilet has a curious history, evolving from a “motley collection of communal outhouses, chamber pots and holes in the ground,” according to Smithsonian magazine.
Eleventh-century castles incorporated early bathrooms with toilets—essentially, vertical niches to the ground—into their architecture, calling these small rooms that protruded from castle walls “garderobes.”
Historians say the word “garderobe” is a euphemism for a closet as well as advice to “guard one’s robes” by hanging clothing in this toilet shaft to kill fleas.
Sir John Harrington, godson to Queen Elizabeth I, is credited with inventing the first “water closet” or flush toilet in 1596, which he called “necessary.” Roughly 200 years later, in 1777, another Englishman, Samuel Prosser, received a patent for a “plunger closet,” which further evolved the toilet’s design.
To builders nowadays, a water closet refers to a room with just a toilet, although some companies, such as Richmond American Homes, will include water closets in the same category as a powder room or a half bath—a room with a toilet plus a sink. A three-quarter bath is a water closet plus a sink and a shower whereas a bathroom includes a sink, a toilet, and a bathtub with a shower.
Travelers abroad will notice signs for a “washroom” or “W.C.” for a “water closet” when signifying a bathroom in English-speaking countries. Strope said she saw water closets often when traveling through Europe, perhaps both because of the older architecture and retrofitting older buildings with bathroom space.
Although some designers in the luxury sphere are creating bathrooms with a view, others have embraced the water closet as a modern bathroom layout. A 2018 survey from NAHB listed a water closet among the top 15 features most likely to be in a newly built home.
Its main appeal is privacy, especially in a master bath where spouses or partners may be sharing the space at the same time. Depending on the bathroom’s design, this compartment can be enclosed with a regular door or pocket doors, which slide into the adjacent wall and need no room for hinges.
Whether you find a water closet to be a bathroom perk or total waste of space is a personal question and a matter of preference. Even if a wash down closet and ceramic vanity basins aren't on your wish list, you might find a property that has just the right layout to convert one—or redo an existing water closet into something that suits your style.
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