Beyond Aesthetics: How Strategic Restroom Design Impacts Educational Facilities

Design professionals, facility managers and administrators share a common goal: to create a complete, exceptional and uniform experience for their visitors, students and faculty. From entryways and lobbies to shared areas, offices, classrooms and lecture halls, the singular personality and unique values of the institution should be represented. Restrooms are no exception to that standard.

User perceptions of a restroom can affect the overall perception of your institution to a surprising degree. A restroom that is clean, well maintained and carries the institution’s aesthetic through to its décor elevates the user’s experience and displays a commitment on behalf of the institution to maintaining its identity, even in the smallest detail. These days, restrooms also serve as opportunities to display a commitment to ecological responsibility. Choices in materials and fixtures can contribute significantly to an institution’s climate goals, including high-profile certifications like LEED and WELL.

Achieving this level of quality and consistency requires focus from the ground up. Elevated and branded look-and-feel depends heavily on decisions made at the design stage, but so too does effective maintenance and perceptions of cleanliness and hygiene. Energy efficiency will depend on clear, upfront clarification of the institution’s goals for the designer, architect or specifier. From fixtures to hardware and materials, energy efficiency and carbon footprint reduction needs to be built into every choice and decision.

CLEANLINESS IS ABOUT MORE THAN PERCEPTION.

According to a recent global survey focusing on commercial restrooms post pandemic¹, the majority (58%) of US consumers find that a dirty restroom makes them think much less of an establishment. Specifiers polled in the same survey place hygiene and cleanliness among their top considerations when planning a restroom. But what makes a restroom appear “dirty”? Primarily paper towels on the floor, according to 92% of facility managers surveyed. That’s not to mention overflowing wastebaskets and toilets clogged with improperly discarded paper towels.

That places a huge burden on facilities to choose the “right” hand-drying solution. It’s imperative to weigh the impact of a given option on perception of cleanliness while also focusing on hygiene. The public is far more sensitive to the topic of hygiene since the start of the COVID pandemic, and the more claims an institution can make regarding hygiene, the better. But in searching for data, we find that much of the science to this point has been muddy, to put it mildly. Hundreds of studies have been funded to determine the hygienic benefits of various hand-drying methods, but not all studies are created equal, and results have varied—sometimes wildly. To bring some cohesion to the data, in 2020, University of Arizona researchers published a review² of the available material.

“Some of the top-ranking articles in our Google search were white papers authored or sponsored by paper companies,” said Dr. Kelly Reynolds, the director of the university’s Environment, Exposure Science & Risk Assessment Center. “Additionally, media reports frequently used sensationalized headlines. While such headlines may increase traffic, they sometimes overgeneralize or exaggerate research results. Consumers may only read the headlines, which can influence public opinion toward biased or erroneous conclusions. From a health and safety perspective, we found no empirical data to support one hand-drying method [hand dryers vs paper towels] over another.”

Starting on this relatively equal footing, a hand dryer with an electrostatic HEPA filtration system delivers clean, filtered, purified air fast and efficiently, and is proven to remove 99.999% of viruses from the airstream³. Installing an antimicrobial wall guard with a wall-mounted dryer will further contribute toward reducing viral transmission. There are additional hidden risks to paper towels, as well. Studies have shown that even unused paper towels made from recycled fibers can contain germs including E. coli⁴. Overflowing receptacles, waste on the counters and floor, and clogged toilets increase the risk of viral transmission.