A few years ago, my husband video-called me from a hotel while he was away on a business trip. He wasn’t calling to show me the view or the room. He turned the camera toward the bathroom because he’d found a design choice he hadn’t expected at all and wanted me to see it.
Two years ago, we encountered something related ourselves. My husband, our son and I were driving to Munich and stayed for one night at a four-star hotel in Romania, then returned to the same hotel for another night on our way home. What we found in the room could have made sharing it as a family rather awkward, although the hotel had added one simple feature that changed the experience completely.
I thought about both stays again this week after seeing another traveler filming inside a hotel bathroom. He was annoyed enough to demonstrate what bothered him, and the more I looked into the subject, the more I found: another hotel shower debate with thousands of reactions, a viral video about bathroom privacy, a Reddit discussion with more than 12,000 upvotes, an entire database created by a traveler who became fed up with hotel bathroom doors, and research based on almost 69,000 hotel reviews.
ID 77244154 ©Elnur | Dreamstime.com
He Stepped Into the Shower Fully Dressed to Show Hotels What Was Wrong
The newest incident involves Raeon, who posts as @raeonartez. I saw this in an article on BoardingArea – he was staying at a Residence Inn by Marriott when he filmed a message aimed at hotels. He doesn’t name the hotel in the video, but confirms it in a later comment after someone identifies it.
His shower had a fixed pane of glass covering only part of the opening. Raeon stepped inside fully dressed, positioned himself behind the panel and showed how much of the shower remained exposed. Then he turned on the water – the video has over 191k views, 31k likes and over 850 comments.
@raeonartez Letting in a draft anyway #houseofthedragon ♬ A WIN IS A WIN – Clifford Taylor IV
Viewers Had Plenty to Say About the Shower
Raeon’s demonstration drew recognition from people who had encountered similar showers. The same complaints came up repeatedly: water on the floor, cold air, awkward controls and feeling hot and cold at the same time.
The Cold Air Was a Big Complaint
“HATE IT!!! Water be everywhere. The cold air hitting you. It’s such a lazy concept.”
“And whatever side ain’t under the water is freezing 😂”
“yup. they all like this. irked tf outta me during my stay cause how I’m hot AND cold at the same time in this shower? 🙄”
“and they’re hella cold! I don’t want a breeze while I’m in the shower”
“I hate it because I’m always so cold. Let me guess this was a man’s idea…..”
“can’t even enjoy my shower cause i’m halfway freezing 🙄”
Then There’s the Problem of Turning the Shower On
One viewer raised another issue that comes up with fixed glass panels when the controls are positioned farther inside the shower:
“And how I’m I supposed to turn it on and not get my hair wet”
A commenter comparing similar setups in Europe and the UK described an even more awkward version:
“In EU/UK, the glass is about that size but you have to climb into a tub that is 3ft high with nothing to hold on to. Sometimes the glass dividers swing in and out. You have to hold on to dear life getting out of those deep slippery tubs on to a completely wet floor. Why can’t they just use a full curtain?”
A Marriott Employee Said Guests Complained About It Too
One commenter who said they had worked at a Marriott front desk recognized the complaint immediately:
“Working front desk for Marriott, this was the #1 complaint I always got 🤣”
Barn-Style Bathroom Doors Didn’t Escape the Criticism
The shower discussion soon moved to another hotel design choice that appears repeatedly in traveler complaints:
“The barn doors on the bathrooms too. Hate it!”
Another traveler said previous experiences had changed the way they book hotels altogether:
“While we are at it, NO BaRN doors! Gave me a freaking door. I’ve had so many bad experiences that before I book a hotel i research all the photos of the bathrooms and read reviews like a psycho. None of this”
One Viewer Had a Very Different Theory About Why Hotels Use Them
A few people speculated about whether the design might encourage guests to spend less time in the shower. One commenter went much further and claimed to have discussed exactly that with a hotel company years ago:
“That specific design is used to save money on construction and encourage shorter showers. I attended a very high profile meeting with a popular hotel brand back in 2014 about THAT.” This claim came from an individual commenter and wasn’t accompanied by evidence.
Another viewer made the same shorter-shower argument much more jokingly: “It’s so your maximum uncomfortable and take a quick shower so u don’t run up their water bill.”
Another Hotel Shower Debate Drew Thousands of Reactions
In June 2025, Fox News reported on a Reddit post from a woman tired of hotel showers with controls behind a fixed glass panel. To turn the water on, she had to reach into the shower or step inside before it had warmed up. She explained that she didn’t wash her hair every day and didn’t want cold water hitting her head simply because she needed to turn the shower on. The thread had more than 6,000 reactions and many comments – they are locked now.
The Reddit Thread Turned Into a List of Hotel Bathroom Pet Peeves
The original complaint about reaching the shower controls quickly opened the door to many other hotel bathroom frustrations. Some people were dealing with the same half-glass shower design Raeon later filmed:
“What’s with the showers that only have half a glass wall and no door? Water gets everywhere, I have to mop up after so I don’t feel like a jerk leaving a puddle on the floor, and I get cold! Makes no sense.”
“No open showers. They are cold. I want a door on my shower.”
Others had problems with the controls themselves. One traveler described a hotel shower where a single knob controlled both temperature and water pressure:
“I recently stayed at a hotel in the USA and the shower only had one knob and it was used to control both the amount of water and the temperature. So you could choose a slow cold stream, or a hot jet. You wanted a cold jet, or a slow hot stream? Out of luck.”
Another commenter pointed out that some hotels have already found a way around the problem of reaching past fixed glass:
“I have stayed in multiple Nordic hotels where there is a hole in the glass to pop your hand in and turn on the shower! I wasn’t sure what the hole was for but it was placed in a way that allowed me to do that so I can only assume that was the intention. Loved it.”
The complaints weren’t limited to showers. Small bathroom details came up again and again:
“Another pet peeve is when there’s a bar of soap next to the sink but no soap dish. So I’m supposed to just leave a wet bar of soap on the counter? I usually use a cup for the soap. WTH??”
“Can’t forget those bathroom sinks with nowhere to set your toiletries – love those! 🙃”
“I’m very tall with disproportionately long legs. Please stop putting a wall or door so close in front of the toilet”
One frequent business traveler had accumulated a much longer list:
“Rain showers only, showers with open air concept, frosted glass instead of walls on the bathroom, motion sensor lights that go on in the middle of the night if you have to pee. All things I hate that are becoming more and more prevalent in hotels. And I travel a lot for work.”
Edit: also adding motion, sensor lights under bedside, no exhaust fan in bathrooms, and barn doors on the bathrooms too. I’m looking at you Loft in South Bay.”
Reading threads like this is another reason I now look beyond the first polished images when booking a hotel room. A bathroom can look sleek in one photograph while leaving out the details you’ll notice within minutes of actually using it. And then several people brought up a much more personal problem: how much of the bathroom can be seen from the rest of the room.
“Please stop using transparent glass walls for bathrooms too my wife doesn’t need to roll over in bed and see me taking a dump thanks”
One traveler had encountered an even more extreme version:
“I stayed in a German hotel where there wasn’t any form of wall or door. Just a sort of floor to ceiling island thing but open walkway all round it.”
“They proudly called it their ‘open concept’. I can’t begin to understand how that was ever signed off.”
Glass Bathrooms Create a Different Kind of Problem
ID 471282682 ©Olesya Kuzina | Dreamstime.com
My husband’s business-trip bathroom had glass walls or windows facing the hotel room. He hadn’t expected them, which was exactly why he called me. I still remember him turning the phone toward the bathroom to show me what the room looked like.
When we encountered glass around the bathroom again two years ago, the situation was different because our son was traveling with us. We were staying at a four-star hotel in Romania during our road trip to Munich, and this time the hotel had placed a large fabric drape on the bedroom side of the glass. It wasn’t a shower curtain. It covered the entire glass section from outside the bathroom.
When we wanted the room to feel more open, we left it pulled back. When one of us used the bathroom, we closed it and couldn’t see through the glass at all. Privacy was perfect. We stayed at the same hotel again on the return journey, and I had no problem with the bathroom design because we could control it.
After reading hundreds of complaints about hotel bathroom privacy, I kept thinking about that curtain. The hotel had kept the glass, the light and the more open appearance without forcing three people sharing a room to give up privacy.
What Nearly 69,000 Hotel Reviews Reveal About Privacy
A study published in the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management examined 68,936 reviews written by American travelers staying in hotels in Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Amsterdam and Istanbul. The reviews covered stays from 2006 through 2016, and the researchers analyzed the language guests used when they discussed privacy.
Among room-related concepts associated with privacy concerns, “bathroom” accounted for 17%, followed by “shower” at 8%, “door” at 6% and “bed” at 5%. Privacy concerns varied depending on who was sharing the room as well. Travelers staying with friends recorded the highest levels, followed by people traveling with family, while couples and business travelers had lower levels.
That finding immediately reminded me of our stay with our son. Hotel rooms aren’t shared only by couples. Friends book twin rooms, parents travel with teenagers or adult children, siblings travel together and colleagues sometimes share accommodation. A room can have enough beds for everyone and still have a bathroom setup nobody expected when they booked it.
Glass and unusual doors appear repeatedly in reviews for a reason. A frosted panel may obscure details but still show a silhouette. A sliding barn door can cover the entrance while leaving gaps around the sides. Some bathroom doors don’t lock, and light can pass through glass into the sleeping area at night.
Why Hotels Use Glass in the First Place
Cornell University’s Interior Archetypes Research and Teaching Project has documented a hotel design approach called “Naked”, where the traditional separation between bedroom and bathroom is reduced or removed. Transparent and translucent partitions can make smaller rooms appear larger, carry daylight farther into the space and preserve views that would otherwise be blocked by a solid wall.
The Cornell project includes hotel rooms where bathtubs become part of the bedroom and others where glass exposes much more of the bathroom than many guests would expect. In some examples, even the toilet remains visible from the sleeping area.
Cost and space play a role too. When the Wall Street Journal looked at the growing backlash over hotel bathroom doors in January 2026, industry experts discussed construction, maintenance and the space required for different types of doors. The Guardian examined the same debate shortly afterward.
I can understand why a hotel would want more natural light or a room that feels larger. Our Romanian hotel had clearly made the same calculation. The difference was that someone had thought about what happens when a family actually checks in and uses the bathroom, and also considered that some people might really like their privacy.
One Traveler Started Keeping Track of Hotel Bathroom Doors
Sadie Lowell created Bring Back Doors after repeatedly encountering hotel bathrooms that didn’t provide the privacy she expected. One trip with her father pushed her to act. According to her account on Bring Back Doors, they had booked a room with twin beds in London, only to arrive and discover that the bathroom didn’t have a conventional door.
She eventually built a crowdsourced hotel bathroom database. Properties are categorized according to the amount of privacy reported by guests, including rooms with no door, walls with windows, glass doors, sliding doors, slatted doors and barn-style doors.
Because the database relies on submissions and Lowell’s own research, its numbers can’t tell us what percentage of hotels worldwide have these designs. It does show how much demand exists for information hotels rarely highlight in room descriptions. Better Homes & Gardens reported in February 2026 that Lowell had already identified more than 1,000 hotels worldwide with doorless or inadequate bathroom arrangements through the project and guest submissions.
@bring_back_doors Hotel Name 👇👇👇 W Bellevue Bellevue, Washington, USA I swear, I’m not reposting hotels. It’s just that these hotels are using the same awful designs across their brands. I can’t stand that hotels are doing this, and that we are somehow just allowing it? It’s made even worse by the fact that this seems to be a goal for some chains, like the W, which supposedly offer 4 star accommodations with 1 star privacy. Find hotels with proper doors, visit BringBackDoors.com Photo submitted by @jennaezarik Submit your own bad hotels by sending me a DM with the hotel name, location, and door type (none, glass, or sliding). If you have a photo I’ll (try to) post it, but either way it will be added to the website. #hotel #bathroom #hoteldesignfail ♬ original sound – Bring Back Bathroom Doors
A Frosted Glass Door Went Viral Too
Lowell later filmed another example at the Alexander Hotel in Noordwijk aan Zee in the Netherlands. The bathroom had a frosted glass door, and she stood behind it to show how much another person in the room could still see.
By the time the Daily Dot covered the video in October 2025, it had more than 234,000 views. Her demonstration focused on the silhouette visible through the glass, while the discussion around the video expanded to gaps around sliding doors and how much bathroom light passes through frosted glass at night.
Light is one of those details that’s hard to judge from hotel photographs. Frosted glass may look private enough during the day, but someone turning on the bathroom light at 3 a.m. can brighten part of the sleeping area even if you can’t clearly see the person inside.
More Than 12,000 People Upvoted One Hotel Bathroom Complaint
A December 2025 discussion in Reddit’s r/travel community asked why Hilton and Marriott properties were using frosted bathroom windows, barn doors and partial shower panels. The post had more than 12,000 upvotes when I checked it.
People talked about waking partners with bathroom lights, doors that didn’t block sound, large gaps around sliding panels, showers that left the floor wet and bathrooms where they felt they had almost no separation from the rest of the room.
Another discussion appeared in the Marriott community in August 2026, this time about bathroom doors that don’t lock and frosted glass. Several people mentioned family travel, which is where these designs can become much harder to ignore.
A Bathroom Door Is About More Than Visibility
A solid bathroom door blocks light, sound and smells as well as the view. It gives someone a private place to change, allows a person to use the bathroom while somebody else sleeps and, if it locks properly, removes any question about whether the room is occupied.
A sliding panel or frosted door can handle part of that job without handling all of it. Large gaps around barn-style doors allow sound through easily. Glass can transmit light. A bathroom opening that can’t be locked may be fine for one traveler and uncomfortable for another sharing the room with children, relatives or friends.
Hotel descriptions rarely go into this level of detail. You’ll see the number of beds, room size, coffee machine and perhaps the brand of toiletries long before you’ll see a sentence explaining exactly what separates the toilet from the bed.
I Look at Bathroom Photos More Carefully Than I Used To
I already spend time comparing hotels before a trip because small details can have a disproportionate effect once you’re staying somewhere for several nights. When we’re traveling by car, I check parking. I look at air conditioning, breakfast, location and room type, and after seeing enough strange hotel-room discoveries, I pay much more attention to guest photos and recent reviews.
Bathroom privacy has gradually joined that list. If we’re traveling as a family, I want to know whether the bathroom has a normal door or whether another arrangement still gives everyone enough privacy. Traveler-uploaded photos can reveal angles that don’t appear in the main hotel gallery, while searching reviews for words such as “bathroom,” “door,” “glass,” “privacy,” “frosted” and “shower” often brings the relevant details to the surface.
I do another hotel-room check when we arrive, before unpacking everything. Locks, room condition and anything that needs to be reported are easier to deal with immediately. I’ve also written about real hotel privacy and safety cases that made me pay even more attention to what I check once we enter a room.
I wouldn’t reject a hotel simply because the bathroom has glass. I’d happily stay again at the Romanian hotel from our Munich road trip. We could leave the curtain open when nobody needed the bathroom and close it completely when someone did. It gave the hotel the design it wanted and gave us the privacy we wanted.
Conclusion
Raeon’s Residence Inn video is funny because he demonstrates his frustration while standing in the shower fully dressed, but the discussion around hotel bathrooms goes much further than one fixed glass panel. Travelers have complained about getting soaked while reaching for shower controls, water ending up on floors, bathrooms visible through frosted glass, doors that don’t lock and rooms where turning on the bathroom light wakes everyone else.
Thousands of people have reacted to those complaints online, one traveler built an entire database around bathroom privacy, and researchers examining 68,936 hotel reviews found bathrooms appearing more often than any other room feature in privacy-related discussions.
After my husband’s unexpected video call and our own experience traveling with our son, I pay much more attention to bathroom photos than I did a few years ago. Sometimes the arrangement is easy to spot. Sometimes one photograph, one line in a guest review or one very well-placed curtain tells you much more about the room than the hotel’s description does.
And when it’s time to leave, the bathroom is already one of the places I check carefully in my hotel checkout routine. Looking at it just as carefully before booking makes sense too.
Hotel Bathroom Privacy – Frequently Asked Questions
Why do hotels have glass bathroom walls?
Glass can make smaller hotel rooms appear larger, allow natural light to reach the bathroom and preserve views that would otherwise be blocked by a solid wall. Some hotels use transparent or translucent partitions as part of a more open room design.
Why do some hotel showers have only half a glass panel?
Many walk-in showers use fixed glass panels instead of full doors or curtains. Depending on the layout, guests can end up dealing with water reaching the floor, cooler air entering the shower or controls that are difficult to reach without stepping underneath the water.
Do hotel guests care about bathroom privacy?
A study of 68,936 reviews written by American hotel guests found bathrooms were the room feature most frequently associated with privacy concerns. Those concerns were highest among travelers staying with friends, followed by people traveling with family.
How can you tell whether a hotel bathroom has a proper door?
Check photos for the exact room category you’re considering, then look at guest-uploaded images and recent reviews. Searching for terms such as “bathroom door,” “glass bathroom,” “privacy,” “barn door,” “frosted glass” and “shower” can help identify details that aren’t mentioned in the room description.
Are frosted glass bathroom doors private?
Frosted glass obscures details, but silhouettes may still be visible depending on lighting, distance and the type of glass. Bathroom light can pass through it as well, which can be noticeable when someone uses the bathroom while another person is sleeping.
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Violeta-Loredana Pascal is a communications expert, business mentor, and the founder of Earth’s Attractions and PRwave INTERNATIONAL. A pioneer in the Romanian digital PR landscape since 2005, she holds a degree in Communication and Social Sciences from SNSPA Bucharest. Violeta is a senior trainer at AcademiadeAfaceri.ro, where she leverages over 20 years of experience to teach professional courses in PR strategy and workplace productivity. By blending high-level business consulting with a passion for holistic travel and wellness, she empowers solopreneurs to overcome procrastination, build profitable brands, and design a life of purposeful adventure.
