Bathrooms are an integral part of the modern house, but this wasn’t always the case. Contemporary bathroom suites for instance, are a relatively modern invention. In fact, it’s possible to argue that the bathroom itself is a relatively modern idea, although the concept dates back thousands of years. Read on to find out more about how bathrooms have developed throughout the generations.
In the past, baths often used to be located in public places, and evidence of baths has been found as far back as 3000BC. Toilets and sewers were also used in some parts of the world, although they were a far cry from what we know today and were limited in their distribution. Interestingly, a bath found in Knossos on Crete that dates back to around 1700BC is actually fairly similar to the baths we know and use today – showing that Roman-style public baths were not used everywhere.
The popularity of baths and other bathroom furniture continued over the centuries. However, the arrival of the Renaissance also bought with it a fear of disease being carried by water. This led to a decline in bathing and so it was largely replaced with heavy perfumes for a while. It was between the 16th and 18th centuries that private spaces began to more heavily used for bathing, suggesting the advent of modern bathrooms.
It wasn’t for some time, however, until the majority of homes actually had a bathroom of their own. For a long time, they were seen as the preserve of the rich and, even though the flushing toilet was invented in the 1500s, it wasn’t widely used for centuries as very few people had running water. Things started to change in Victorian times, especially for the wealthy and more private bathrooms started to come into use, partly helped by the fact that running water was becoming more common and plumbing and sewage systems had greatly improved.
Showers also started to be used more frequently around this time, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, laying the way for the bathrooms we use today. Gradually, outside toilets started to move indoors and a previous trend for using a tin bath in the kitchen gradually receded as people began to dedicate rooms to their ablutions. This laid the way for bathroom suites and other bathroom furniture, such as cabinets and cupboards that allowed for the storage of more items in bathrooms.
Bathroom designs have obviously changed over the past century and beyond; bathroom suites have become more popular, and showers have also massively grown in popularity. In the 1950s and 1960s, many people had bathroom suites installed in a range of different colours, but this trend has largely died away now and many people tend to opt for neutral colours for their bathroom.
Today, the bathroom furniture collection is pretty much set: a toilet, a sink, a bath and/or shower, and sometimes a bidet. Add in a cabinet or a cupboard, plus a mirror, and you have the modern bathroom. The design has certainly come a long way since 3000BC but the purpose of the bathroom will forever remain the same.
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