I like 2 shared bathrooms because it allows maximum flexibility of usage. Let's say you have 2 kids in 2 bedrooms, and each can use their own hall bath. But when a guest comes, you can shift one kid to the other bath temporarily and allow the guest to have their own bathroom.

If you had one of the baths en suite, and a kid uses that bedroom, when a guest comes they either get the en suite room (kid has to vacate their whole bedroom), or they get the shared bath (kid has to walk through sibling's bedroom to access the bathroom.)

If you have both of the baths en suite, then presumably each kid occupies one and again you have to vacate the whole thing for a guest.

The only thing en suite baths give you is privacy for the user when traveling between bedroom and bathroom, but I know when I'm a guest I don't tend to run around naked or semi-naked, I bring a robe. So I don't think an en suite bath is critical for a guest room. Nice to have, sure, but not mandatory, especially if it messes up your everyday living arrangements.

@weedyacres, thank you your points make sense. I guess we just got biased by all the plans where I almost never see 2 shared baths for 3 bedrooms

In my opinion master has own bath. Guest if possible has own bath. Kids share via hall.

@WestCoast Hopeful, thank you. however we are not sure whether the bedroom upstairs will remain a guestroom .

We have four bedrooms upstairs but three kids. So the two girls have a hallway bath and the boy has his own in his bedroom. It works great for us. If you end up with two kids and one gets hallway and one gets ensuite they still really each have their own bathroom to enjoy and then the office can still use hallway too. That is all assuming you put the guest room on basement with bathroom. We have that too.

I think one shared bathroom for two bedrooms and one ensuite in the third bedroom plus a master bath ensuite.

I think there will be sufficient house buyers who are attracted to the second ensuite whether for use as a guest room or because they have a girl and that kind of ensuite seems to be an attractive feature for the families I know with girls. I guess if there are two girls they will have to fight it out although traditionally it would go to the oldest :-).

In terms of how you intend to use your home do you never envision having guests sleep over? Where would they sleep? Alternatively you could use the second bedroom with ensuite as an office with a pullout for the occasional guest and have the children share the hall bath.

Presumably there is a powder room on the ground floor so the only real conflict would be for showers and most boys don't spend a huge amount of time in the bathroom unless they are Alexander Portnoy :-)

I'm not sure how you could have 2 shared baths for 3 bedrooms. One person isn't going to go to different bathrooms each time. Having two hall bags for 3 bedrooms makes no sense.  So you do one en suite and one shared bath. If you can, make the shared bath a hall access and not a J and J.

@anj_p, by shared I mean hallway bathroom. So why 2 hall baths for 3 bedrooms make no sense?

@Helen, yes we will have guests staying overnight and the debate is how much inconvenience for a guest is to have his/her own bathroom which is in the hall and not ensuite . However we still have to think in terms of market value of our property and appreciate your comment

Might be time to post your actual plans and site plan for feedback. You now have at least three threads going with various questions all connected to the design of the overall house.

@WestCoast Hopeful we do not have any yet. The problem is we will have the first meeting whit an in house architect next week to discuss out design wishes - we are trying to be as prepared as we can

I am not sure "inconvenience" is the term I would use but it is certainly much more gracious for a guest to have an ensuite.

As others have posted, I am not sure what is to be gained by having two hall bathrooms servicing three bedrooms. Why do you think that provides more functionality to your family because in the end you should be designing for yourself.

However I do think most people would have two ensuites and have one hall bathroom shared by two bedrooms. It seems as though it provides you with the functionality for your current and future lifestyle as well as being the configuration that would be most desirable to future home purchasers.

I also am not understanding a situation in which it would be undesirable. The only scenario I can imagine is if you had three children and so one of the children would be getting the more desirable ensuite bedroom.

I wanted to add that I have had an ensuite for almost all my adult life. When I remodeled, I rented an apartment which didn't have an ensuite and I hated having to get up and put on shoes and possibly a bathrobe in order to use the bathroom. I hated having to bring stuff into the bathroom and not have the ability to get dressed moving easily from my bedroom to the bathroom.

@Helen, one reason has been already mentioned by previous posters- if parents want to control how much time the kids use the bathroom. The second reason is -two bedrooms will be occupied by kids and each kid will have his/her bathroom, the third bedroom will be used as an office most of the time and converted to a guestroom when the guest arrive. When the guest comes kids will be sharing a bathroom and the guest will take another bathroom