Use an all-glass bathroom? You can see why I’d refuse

My friend purchased a new apartment. When I asked to use the bathroom, I was directed towards an all-glass room, visible to anyone who gazed in my direction. He’s proud of his glass bathroom. How do I tell him that I find this perverse?

R.B., Taree, NSW

I have friends who renovated their house and got a modern, ultra-designer ensuite bathroom with no door because they’re open-minded, open-plan types with nothing to hide from each other. And after about a month of living with their modern, ultra-designer, doorless, ensuite bathroom, they both started using the other bathroom on the other side of the house. The old, unrenovated one with the lockable door and the very noisy exhaust fan.

If a doorless bathroom is horrible, I can only imagine how much more horrible an all-glass bathroom would be. Sure, it’d look stylish and sleek and shiny, as long as nobody was inside, using the toilet or plucking their nose-hairs or washing their hands – or, even worse, not washing their hands.

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And it’d be horrible for the bathroom-users: guests would have to drape themselves in towels or wallpaper the walls with wet toilet paper or hide their modesty behind one of those oversized architectural magazines (the kind with cover articles on all-glass bathrooms).

And it’d be horrible for the homeowners: they’d have to wipe down all those glass walls several times a day, using sprays and squeegees and scrapers to scrape off remnants of dried-on toilet-paper wallpaper after all the guests had left.

But what can you say to this friend? Nothing. He loves his glass bathroom. All you can do is use your own toilet before you visit, or bring along a portable pop-up privacy booth. And if it’s a dinner party and he’s cooking curry, say you’re busy that night.

guru@goodweekend.com.au