I like the classic door the best...

However, for ease of use and cleaning... this certainly has it's place. And it's a great way to turn a small bath into something that seems and functions like a much larger one.

I'd be thrilled to have a bath like this.

Bonus: The room and fixtures are so much easier to keep clean when there's a drain in the floor and a hose/sprayer!

I like it. It feels more open. I've always said if I ever build a house, I will make my kitchen and bath with a drain in the floor. I used to be a bartender, and we just poured a big bucket of water on the floor when we cleaned at night. Sooo easy!

This is a great way to make the bathroom look larger. However, I don't think I'd like it much especially if someone else were in the bathroom while the shower was going on, wouldn't their feet get all wet? Something about it reminds me of a gym shower.

I lived for a year in northern Italy in a flat with a bathroom like this. Luxurious and practical. There was a bench in the shower area that was very comfortable too.

Looks great, but I'm still not convinced.

It would be great if we could see a better picture of the floor -- is it angled at all for better drainage and away from anyone who might be standing in front of the mirror in their socks?

Love it--but I'd miss the tub.

This open bathroom may be an example of universal design. It appears practical for people with ambulatory difficulties and for people who want to "age in place." Regardless, the bathroom does seem larger than it is, and looks unusual in a good way.

So if you're walking to the toilet after someone else has taken a shower, you're tracking soapy water through the house? Am I missing something?

Also, I can't remember the last time I tripped over a bath.

love it and want one, too.

I once stayed at a bare-bones hostel in Lebanon with a similar setup, but without a shower curtain: Toilet, sink, shower head in the ceiling, drain in the floor. Needless to say I didn't spend any more time in there than I needed to, but it's so easy to clean! I definitely see this working for the minimalists among us, or even in a mud room or beach house bathroom.

i lived in an apartment with a bathroom like this for a year and a half. In a way it was luxurious, but it was actually kind of a pain to clean- i was always battling a "tide line" in the shower area where all the soap and hair and gunk would end up. And realistically, you're not gonna just dump a bucket of water all over the room and rinse the whole floor. Oh and how i longed for a bubble bath!

I love it and the slate flooring is the best flooring material I have ever lived with.

The plant looks happy. I remember this house tour its beautiful!

I have an issue though with ugly shampoo bottles. I would pour all your liquid products into simple bottles. This is such a beautiful bathroom and that is the only thing that is an eyesore.
I use these-
http://www.muji.us/store/pet-rectangular-pump-bottle-400ml.html

I lived in a housing project with a drain in the center. What a pain! The toilet seat was always wet. If anyone else had to pee after your shower, the whole house was tracked with muddy footprints.
Try washing a child, without stripping a joining in the wash.
My neighbors did not consider the design "European" but rather just plain slummy.

I like it, but it does remind me of some shady, all concrete central american motels. there's something about not having a division between the wet area where you shower versus water around the sink/toilet.

I could see this working well as long as it drains properly, but down the line if your drain starts to get clogged it might be bad. I'd at least put in a little lip around the area, but that would diminish the minimalist appeal

My apartment in China was like this. I loved it. I have also stayed in inns like this in other countries. I'm not a bath person, though.

Love these showers.

@Uli --

The floor would obviously be sloped towards the drain - otherwise you'd have puddling...
...and one learns to not wear socks in the bath when the floor is wet - same as one wouldn't go outside in just socks.

@ghunt --

How would a blocked drain in a bath like this be any different from a blocked drain in a standard shower or tub?
Hair & schmutz needs to be cleaned out of almost every shower/tub drain periodically - This is no different.

I lived in India for a while and every single apartment, hotel, hostel, and homestay had a bathroom with a similar setup. The shower, though, was toward the back of the room so that access to the sink and toilet is easier. I would love to have something like this in a guest bath or for a pool but not in the master bathroom; a tub is definitely a nice luxury.

This, minus the shower curtain, reminds me of some bathrooms in Korea. I think there were bath slippers (plastic/rubber not cloth) for walking around when the floor was wet. There was more squatting down with a bucket and splashing water over you then standing under a shower head, which I missed. But otherwise I rather liked it.

we have a bathroom like this (we live in europe) and I would do it again in the next house. It is critical though to get the slope towards the drain right. If you do you the water flows to the drain correctly leaving the rest of the batroomfloor dry, if not you end up flooding the place.
It might also ehlp that we have a seperate toilet. So no need to walk through a wet space to do your thing. I do think that placing the toilet behind the shower might be the big problem here........

I'm with sunkissed. Most used items (toilet/sink) should go towards the front of the room. Tracking water all over the house is not cool.

@zoee: I'm pretty fastidious about cleaning the bathroom, so at first i was really excited about the layout because it seemed simpler. I tried a squeegee / swiffer / all manner of devices for a while, but it was still annoying. Perhaps with slate or concrete floors it would work better. We also couldn't have anything on the floor in the room- including furniture or rugs- because they would either get wet or you'd have to mop all around them every day.

I think the real issue was that the landlord had noble intentions, but the execution wasn't thought all the way through. The floor tiles weren't sloped towards the drain absolutely perfectly, so we'd end up with puddles in corners & odd places. If anything blocked the drain in the least little bit, the resulting tide would creep across the room towards the door. And then the water and scum would drip off the curtain and pool on the floor even after you were done. Argh.

Also really hated that wet sock surprise in the morning : /

It would definitely be a lot to get used to, but I really like it. Think of the money you would save by not having to buy a tub. Is this an easy one to keep clean?

Hi all--this bathroom's current owner here. It does look great, but the renovation could have been better thought out. Inside the shower area, there is a slight slope toward the shower drain, but it is too slight to keep water from finding the grout lines around the rough slate and flowing out to the outer edges of the room beyond the shower curtain. So when you are done showering, you have to dry off the floor so that you can come and go from the sink and toilet with dry feet. It can be annoying. (That brush you see hanging there is for quick post-shower water sweeping.) I've figured out the tricks to keep the water mostly contained to the shower area, but when a guest showers, water inevitably ends up everywhere. The obvious, better design solution would have been to put the shower area at the far end of the room, beyond the sink and toilet. But clearly, the renovators decided against moving the original toilet and sink plumbing. I'm not sure why they cut that corner, since they didn't mind moving the tub plumbing, and the renovation was already so radical.

hate.

I loved this open shower solution that I encountered while traveling in Thailand. As others have mentioned, plastic slippers were the norm so you could trek in and out without worrying about wet feet. Especially staying in guest houses with shared bathrooms, I appreciated this design. Cleaners would come in with hoses, brushes, and buckets of water several times a day. Sometimes, the ceilings were even tiled and there was no wood in the bathroom so that the whole entire room could be sprayed down. Incredibly clean and tidy!

Yes, I'm all for non-trad baths. ie: we have an outdoor hot/cold water shower that looks onto our city park and in Maine we have two bathtubs outside that we soak in with running water. It's awesome to be in nature and soaking out there!

Am wondering the same - is this typical European?

Anyway, like the idea of a drain in the floor and an easy entry into the shower, but would like it even more if there was an extra toilet - so one (bath/)shower-room with sink and one toilet-room with sink.

It has a nice look overall.

I dunno. There's such a low lip at the door. Even a short shower pan would give you some room for error in the case of a plumbing backup. (I live in an early 1970s house with plumbing starting to throw quarterly fits, so my Plumbing PTSD is giving me visions of a surprise, undetected-for-a-little-while sewage flow out in this hallway, but that's probably more the fault of my plumbing than of the open-shower concept.)

In short, I prefer the security blanket of having a divider between shower and floor, and bathroom and hallway. Also have two large hairy dogs, and...blargh. Not so much with the wet floor, dumping socks at the door, etc. Seems an even trade in ease of use.

When I lived in Finland our house had bathrooms similar to this. One was a shower with a drain, next to the sink, and the toilet on the far side, all in a row. It was set up properly, so even if someone had just used the shower the only water outside the shower curtain was whatever was on their feet or dripped off when they came out. But a little rug fixes that.

The other bathroom had a floor drain AND a tub! It was a open-style tub, like a clawfoot without the fancy feet. (water could drain under it) Cleaning it was SO easy. I sprayed cleaning solution on all the dirty stuff and using the tub sprayer, hosed down the entire bathroom. Then I would leave the window open so it would dry out by itself.

It was awesome.

I can only see it working well in a large bathroom with a very well-designed floor & drain, so the entire bathroom floor doesn't get wet. It's annoying having to put on plastic shoes every time you need to go into the bathroom. But it does look good, especially if you dispense with the shower curtain.

I realize that Americans have more bathrooms than ever before--but this design would be impractical for a busy household, or an expanding household with small children. I grew up as one of 3 kids sharing 1 bathroom and I can't tell you how many times it was "can I just brush my teeth" or "I need to grab my comb" etc when someone was in the shower on a busy morning getting ready for whatever.Thank goodness for heavy shower curtains!

With this design, that sort of space-sharing is impossible.

It's pretty, but I wouldn't be able to live with all the water everywhere.

Why is it called "European style"?
I lived so far in four European countries and I've seen such a set up a part from very cheap B&B/Hostels, unless we are talking about something like
this or this . And they are a quite modern development.
With the soapy water I would have no problem since I rinse myself so I never get soap left in the shower.

Where I grew up we had an open style solution like this (i hate how small showers seem now in comparison), however to stop water getting all over the floor there was a 10cm raised area around the 'shower' which also made a convenient place to put shampoo and soap on.

I miss showering without feeling boxed in by shower curtains or glass walls.

I also disagree with the post about it being impossible for space sharing, as one of 4 children in the previously mentioned house... We had the toilet in a separate space, which eliminated most of the issues you'd encounter, as for brushing teeth people were usually happy to wait the 10 minutes, and we'd get dressed in our bedrooms rather than the bathroom which cut down on time. Plus there was plenty of "get your stuff out before I have my shower!" yelling going on.

My travels through Crete and Morocco found many similar bathrooms. I don't know how people kept from soaking the TP, but other than that, I really liked it. I considered a similar set up for my house (remodel ongoing), but opted instead for heavy european style glass doors. But seeing this bathroom made me want to reconsider my choice...

I like the bathroom, but I don't think is very practical because I imagine the floor will get quite wet. But maybe it is the best choice to make it more spacious. Beautiful plant.