Why don't the French use shower curtains
 

I know from experience that some French hotels do have shower curtains but others don't. A friend who has returned from his first trip to Paris raised the question. Any ideas why?

Because they never use the shower. OK, cheap joke.

I have seen no shower curtain in a number of countries and I have seen the shower head placed in various odd spots including over the commode.

In many countries the bathroom is tiled with slightly sloping floors to a drain and no need for a curtain. The first time I saw such an arrangement was in a friend's home in Denmark and I think it's a great solution. I think, from time to time, about redoing my own bathroom in just that way. I hate shower curtains, especially when they stick to you while imagining all the previous occupants. Big ick!

But a sloping floor doesn't solve the problem of water spraying everywhere while you take a shower. Maybe it would work if you had the showerhead permanently fixed up over your head, but I really hate that.

At home I have a small shower enclosure with frosted glass doors. That solves most problems, except that it's difficult to keep the glass clean.

I don't care if the water goes "everywhere" if the room is tiled. What possible difference does it make?

Mmeperdu, is the toilet in your desired bathroom? If so, how do you keep the toilet paper dry? I haven't had a lot of success with those little metal bonnets I've seen in Europe when the shower head drenches the room. Thanks!

Also some of us have the clothes we're going to get dressed in in the room as well as the dry towel, so it does kind of matter that the water doesn't go everywhere.

Plus there's the issue of goosebumps when you're shaving. If there's a shower curtain or doors there's a little sauna effect that keeps that from happening. Without the shower curtain, goosebumps, and I cut the heck out of myself.

When the shower is over the commode, I like to think of it as multi-taking.

This must be a cultural divide as I think Americans prefer a segregated shower with a curtain.

IMdone, hope your commode is a combo toilet/bidet! ;-)

I use the bidet for my traveling gold fish.

I think the Fodor's gerbil died, their system is slower than usual.

The open tiled room only works well if the room is large enough for distance between the shower and the rest. If the room is small then a barrier of some kind becomes necessary. But even in a smallish room, a tiled wall can be the barrier, rather than a curtain. It's the curtain I dislike even though I'm stuck with one now. My last home had a glass enclosure and I didn't like that very much either. And yes, the room must be warm. I have heaters in my bathrooms, very important.

Bathrooms large enough?? Our 3 bathrooms are quite small and tiled; however, why would I want my bathing water splashing into a larger area than necessary? Also, the shampoo & conditioner,and body wash or soap gobs in the shower/tub, why do I want that on other walls or floor? My son's house has 6 bathrooms, three w/ glass doors and three w shower curtains. I need the following dry: floor so I do not slip and fall , the rug on the floor, towels, my robe or underwear, the toilet tissue, Kleenex dispenser. Yes, there are some lovely showers w 'walk in' style lined w/ tile that separates bathing shower from rest of room, but most of us in the good ol U.S. of A. do not have them. I change the liner curtain in my home every few months regardless, and do not come in contact with ones in hotels -- thankfully I am not that wide. My glass door at home is not that hard to clean, I use a squeegee and spray it. I also find annoying hand-held showers in tubs with no curtain; I have amusing memories of such shower at the Esmeralda in Paris many years ago.

"...why would I want my bathing water splashing into a larger area than necessary?"

Apparently, alice, you wouldn't. I'm not suggesting you do. I speak only for myself in this regard and admit my homes reflect my own somewhat deviant tastes. I'm not concerned with what anyone else likes and I'm happy for you that yours is how you like it, too.

Lots of places in France have shower curtains but I think that most hotels avoid them since they are hard to keep clean.

I have a shower curtain and when I bought it, I was perplexed by the zillion models that were available.

It isn't just France, few hotels anywhere have shower curtains because they get moldy and gross. Most hotels with showers in any country I've been in either have a regular shower stall, or sliding glass doors attached, or if neither of those exist, they have that half-door on the tub that is better than nothing but lots of water may still get onto the floor.

And I sure care if the water goes everywhere, everything in the room would get wet including your clothes, toilet paper and the extra towels. Not to mention, how would it dry? A guest shouldn't be spending their time swabbing down bathrooms. I've never been in a hotel in Europe that didn't have at least that half-door on the tub, if not a real shower stall, that isn't common in any country I've been in.

>>It isn't just France, few hotels anywhere have shower curtains because they get moldy and gross. <<

I assume you mean in Europe when you say "anywhere." Most of the hotels I've stayed at there have shower stalls of varying size. Lots of hotels in the US have shower curtains. The cleaning people there must have figured out the secret, because I can't recall ever seeing on that was moldy and/or gross.

I'm with you Mme Perdu. Much prefer a wet room with no shower curtain - the curtains always try and stick to you. If the room is fully tiled, or lined with something like limestone or marble I can't see the problem.

No shower curtain conserves water as it encourages people to turn off the water when they are rubbing themselves, as opposed to rinsing.

i simply can't abide shower curtains, and would rather have nothing at all than one of those.
but I agree that you need some way of preventing the rest of the room and your slippers and dressing-gown, [not to mention the towels] getting wet.

However, even with shower screens this is not a given, often because little or no thought has been given to the positioning of the shower itself. So often you can't get to the controls without getting wet and if the shower head points outwards into the room, the room gets wet as well while you are adjusting the temperature etc. ideally the controls need to be positioned so that you can reach them with the door open with the shower head at 90 degrees to the door.

I can't say that the french are any better or worse at bathroom design than anyone else.

Seems as though many here have high water pressure if you can't control water flying over an entire bathroom. Does the shower head fly around like a garden hose?

Can I assume no one has the little hand held sprayer for their kitchen sinks as well, due to the water getting all over the kitchen too?

Agree that to americans this is one of the mysteries of life. May have something to do with showering and washing hair every day - and needing to keep the rest of the bathroom dry (towels, robes, all of the toiletries and toothbrush/paste over the sink or on counters - as well as TP).

I know some showers are movable rather than fixed - but this makes it very difficult to wash hair - for which you need 2 hands.

Obviously this somehow works for europeans - but I don't know how.

While my first experience with a wet room was in Europe, my long experience now is in Asia and where I've come to love them. I love the feeling of not being enclosed, not unlike the pure joy of swimming nude or showering in the woods. If you've never done any of those then maybe it's time. After years of showering in the various Asian permutations of unenclosed showers I've never had the experience of getting anything wet that wasn't designed to be wet, including the tp and towels and whatever is hanging on a hook at the far end of the room in my Asian guest houses. Maybe some of the unbelievers here need to get out a bit more, go native and give it a try.

<Agree that to americans this is one of the mysteries of life. >
Me, too. I have a friend who swore he couldn't figure out how to get "really clean" in a bathtub with handheld shower head. Given that he wasn't exactly digging ditches, I have no idea what he meant! Not to mention that many Europeans think showers aren't properly cleansing on their own. Customs vary.

<but this makes it very difficult to wash hair - for which you need 2 hands.>
Why? Use the shower head to wet your hair. Put it down. Lather up with two hands, scrub away, then take the shower head and rinse your hair. Easy, I think, no?

Go native in Asia? right..go ahead, stand over that hole in the floor.

Just got back from a restaurant here in Paris with that <hole in the flloor>, and it wasn't Asian, and it wasn't a take out joint either...I just couldn't make myself use it, and had a very uncomfortable 20 minute walk to our hotel! But I'm in Paris, so it's all good!

Our home in the Netherlands had no shower enclosure, but the toilet was in a separate little closet. The room was large enough that you could hang your clothes well out of the line of spray.

I've seen a few hotels in Italy where the entire (rather small) bathroom was a shower stall, and I've sometimes had to remove the toilet paper to the bedroom to keep it dry. In those cases, I dress and undress in the bedroom.

Here's another burning question: why do Americans think the bidet is French, when hardly any hotels in France have one? I've never seen an Italian hotel without a bidet. Even the toilets in restaurants often have a bidet.

If I ever move back to the US, I'll have to have a bidet installed. I couldn't live without one now.

"It isn't just France, few hotels anywhere have shower curtains because they get moldy and gross."

I must live in an alternate universe, where almost all the hotels I stay in in the US have shower curtains and where few if any are moldy and gross.

Some hotels use tightly woven canvas shower curtains which they launder when the guest leaves.

"...I'll have to have a bidet installed."

About half the planet has water available alongside the toilet, hole in the floor and otherwise, so that's another possibility, instead of another fixture.

If some posts above are any indication, you know the ones, it would seem one can have too much experience, apparently a bad thing. I would not, however, trade places.

Wet rooms are very fashionable. http://bit.ly/1Dad20o

No not at all easy to wash your ahir that way for a woman with fairly long hair. You need to

1) wet all the hair
2) apply shampoo and suds using both hands
3) rinse hair - using one hand to shield your eyes and the other to fluff the water through the air
4) apply cream rinse and wring through hair
5) repeat step 3

Doing all this while continually turning the water on and off - and figuring if you have the right temp (or laying the sprayer down in the tub and the water going who knows where) just really doesn't work.

At home we have high ceilings so the shower head is about 9 feet in the air - and gives you a wonderful quick wash and rinse - doing it per steps 1 through 5 above would take about 3 times as long to get first all of the shampoo and then all the cream rinse out of the hair.

Now I have been coping with these weird showers for more than 30 years - and thankfully they are becoming much less common - as more and more showers have glass doors - or some even curtains - or perhaps I'm just going to better hotels..

This is a very entertaining post. Sugarmaple, was it Polidor in Paris? We go there every time we visit for nostalgic reasons. Further, when we were in Austria some years ago, they used the napkin pigeonholes that Polidor has (or had) and we only got one napkin for the week. It's called adaptation, which we humans do fairly well. I will make a point of checking out shower curtains when travelling but usually they are not gross or I'd put it outside the tub area. Our travels are not determined by shower-curtain-status.

I think I will travel with a shower curtain from now on and a duvet, once my wife explains to me again what that is. It sound French but it sold in every mall.

It's a hilarious thread! Oh, the poor dears--European showers are so weird, and Americans, it seems, so uncoordinated!! :-D

About half the planet has water available alongside the toilet, hole in the floor and otherwise, so that's another possibility, instead of another fixture.>>

we first encountered the hand-held shower attachment next to the toilet arrangement in Sri Lanka, MmePerdue. It was only on the way home on the plane that it emerged in conversation with DH that he thought it was for cleaning the lavatory.

What kerouac said is true - bathrooms are not well-ventilated, mold grows overnight, and the water in Paris is so hard that you would have to wash the shower curtain every 2 days, to keep it clean. Since most washers here are small and take a couple of hours to do a small load, this is simply not convenient for most residents, so we either learn to do without a curtain, or spend a fortune and install one of those glass panels - which have to be cleaned and dried after each use. Most people have busy lives, so learn to shower correctly.

The main issue is water pressure - don't turn the water on full force, and it won't splash all over the place. Keep the showerhead close to your body, or stand as close to the wall as possible. It's not as invigorating as what you're used to, but you won't have to mop the floor. Also, don't stand in there all day - the less water you run, the better.

Hotels send out their laundry, for the most part, but changing the curtain every two days or between guests would add extra cleaning time and cost - which would be passed on to the clients. The glass panels are much easier to clean, but most cleaning services use a toxic chemical that disinfects and removes calcium deposits. I would much rather deal with a little water than inhale that stuff.

I have visited Paris numerous times and did not realize it was in the middle of a swamp. What could otherwise account the rampant mold and mildew. We have always had a shower curtain and mold and mildew, can easily be taken care of with something called cleaning.

We go in the shower to clean ourselves yet the shower curtain then requires cleaning? Non-sensical. Just toss some shampoo on it and rinse. You'll hear the shower curtain singing.

>>The main issue is water pressure - don't turn the water on full force<<

A low-pressure shower is like kissing your sister. It meets the definition of the word, but offers none of the joy.