When It’s Actually a Good Idea to Remove a Bathroom

More bathrooms isn't always better, despite what we've been told.

Bathrooms have slowly become one of the most important rooms in our homes. Once a small, single space that people didn’t particularly want to spend a lot of time in, modern bathrooms are luxurious and spacious—and they're multiplying. While the basic modern standard is about two baths for every three bedrooms, we’re living in an era of “toilet inflation,” and it’s increasingly common to have as many bathrooms as bedrooms—or more. Fifty years ago, there were on average two people for every bathroom in a house; today it’s closer to one person per bathroom.

One reason for this is changing layouts: Once en suite bathrooms off of primary bedrooms became common, people needed to add an extra bathroom for guests or other residents. Another is the value a bathroom adds to a house: Although the return on investment (ROI) on an added bathroom is just over 50%, real estate professionals will tell you time and again that more bathrooms mean a higher sale price and more offers when you decide to sell your house.

But the opposite can also be true, believe it or not. While adding a second bathroom or an en suite bathroom in your home probably always makes sense (in terms of lifestyle and ROI), there are some scenarios when it’s actually smarter to remove a bathroom in your house.

Too many baths

You might not have a bathroom-to-bedroom ratio of 16-to-9 like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, but you can still have too many bathrooms. While house hunters are generally delighted to find plenty of bathrooms in a house, there is actually a point where the number of bathrooms in your home can become a detriment instead of an asset. Each bathroom in your home—whether it’s a half-bath, a spa bath, or lavish suite all its own, represents a portion of cleaning, maintenance, and potential water damage in the home. Even bathrooms that aren’t used regularly have to be cleaned, and not only will you not enjoy cleaning a bathroom you never use, potential buyers won’t like the idea either.

If your home isn’t particularly large, squeezing extra bathrooms into that small space can be counter-productive as well, as it simply underscores the small size of the place, and can result in rooms that feel too small. Having a third bath won’t do you much good if it’s the size of an airplane bathroom—and it could make the adjoining bedroom too small to fit a queen-sized bed.

Awkward locations

If you’ve ever watched a TV show about folks hunting for a new home, you’ve probably seen a few moments when folks discover a bathroom in an odd place and react negatively. If you have an extra bathroom right off the kitchen, for example, where guests will be using the facilities three feet away from where the cooking happens, that may be more of a downside than a positive. Removing an awkwardly located bathroom can improve the flow of the house and prevent an immediate bad impression.

Value elsewhere

Finally, if you have more bathrooms than you need, it’s possible that you could get more value out of your home by removing a bathroom and transforming it into something else that increases the utility, comfort, and value of your home:

• That weird powder room off the kitchen might be space better used as a pantry—or making a tiny kitchen larger; in a recent survey, 80% of first-time home buyers considered a walk-in pantry to be “essential or desirable.”

• A half-bath located near the entrance that no one ever uses (seriously, how many people are in such a rush they have to dash into a bathroom immediately upon entry?) might be better used as a coat closet

• If you have more bathrooms than bedrooms, converting one of the baths to an additional bedroom might make sense. Extra bedrooms add slightly more value to a home than bathrooms, so if your bathroom-to-bedroom ratio is a confusing number like 4-3, changing it to a more comprehensible 3-4 makes a lot of sense.

The take-away is simple: While it might be counter-intuitive, if you have more than enough bathrooms, getting rid of one of them can benefit you in terms of how much you enjoy your home—and how much it’s ultimately worth.