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caroline94535

Swing direction for bathroom door???

18 years ago

Our main bathroom is 7' x 9'. The door is in the center of a 7' wall.

We're remodeling and have the opportunity to move the door, but only to the right on this one wall. The linen closet fills the area to the left.

Every bathroom I remember had the door swinging into the bathroom. If this door could swing out into the 6-ft. wide hallway, navigation in the bathroom would be so much easier.

Is there a "rule" or a reason why a bathroom door cannot swing outward into a wide hallway?

Comments (10)

  • 18 years ago

    I believe the rule is to swing into a room but if it works best for your situation and you've got such a wide hall, I don't see a problem :)
    ps...just thinking here....my parents have double doors into their large laundry room (oh how I covet that laundry room!). Due to a fridge on one side and washer to the other side of the door, their double doors swing OUT into the hall.
    Monica

  • 18 years ago

    OK, I'm going to guess you've already thought of this... could you fit in a pocket door?

  • 18 years ago

    I think the main reason is so that when the door's open it's not taking up any space or blocking traffic. I don't think there's any safety/code reason.

  • 18 years ago

    I think that the main reason that the door should not swing into the hallway, is that when someone is leaving the bathroom they don't know if someone is walking in the hallway and could smack them with the door.

  • 18 years ago

    For the most part it is a traffic flow thing...you don't want someone opening a door into a hallway as someone else is walking by. Kaboom!

    That said, you also don't want a door opening into a small powder room. If someone were to become incapacitated and fall to the floor, their body would block the door from swinging inward.

    That said...one of the bathrooms on the first floor of my house had an in-swinging door, because that's the way it's supposed to be for "traffic". After some time it became apparent that an outswinging door would be better, so I flipped the door around so it now swings out of the bathroom and into the traffic pattern.

    I changed it several years ago...maybe 5 or 6 years ago? No black eyes or bloody noses to date!

    Mongo

  • 8 years ago

    I am facing the same design dilemma now for a new build. This was supposed to be a private bath for our daughter, but thought it would be good idea to put a door from the hallway as well, so that it is accessible from the hallway. One end of the hallway is a bonus - hangout room, where kids might have friends.

    Originally, we had it planned for the door to swing inside the bathroom (right hand in-swing). But, the builder said that, the in-swing direction would interfere with the ability to reach the switch (red box), so is recommending it to make it out-swing door.

    Even though this door will rarely be used, it would interfere with hallway traffic. Door is already ordered. Need to decide quickly. I guess the main problem is that I have a biased for bathroom doors to swing inwards. There is a possibility to get a new left-hand in swing door, but could hit the vanity, but would work.


    Unrelated note, my wife is leaning towards not putting the door there, keep the bathroom private for daughter and open son's bathroom from the hallway (too late for that due to plumbing)


  • 8 years ago
    last modified: 8 years ago

    Can you switch to a pocket door? That is too major of a hallway to have an outswing door. I have only done it for bathrooms that open to the bedroom. So with bath 3 I would probably do outswing. I might do outswing for the bedroom 2 entrance to the bath. Keep in mind if you need to do forced entry into the bath it will be much more difficult to kick in an outswing door.

  • 8 years ago

    This is a 10 year old post. I would start a new thread you will get more of a response.

  • 8 years ago
    last modified: 8 years ago

    ok LOL I didnt read the post. Agreed a light switch should be by the vanity anyway. But the two doors conflict which I would find annoying. There should be two switches