Ask anyone who has shared a flat what went wrong and the bathroom comes up before the kitchen, the noise or the dishes. It is also the thing people are most embarrassed to ask about on a viewing, so they sign without asking and find out in week two.
The arithmetic of three
Three people, one bathroom. If everyone needs it between eight and half past, that is a problem. If the three of you start at eight, nine and eleven, it is not a problem at all.
This is why placement here is by schedule and sleeping hours rather than by whichever bed is free. Most bathroom conflict is two people with the same start time who should never have been put in the same suite.
Five people to a bathroom is a different life. A suite here holds three bedrooms and city regulation caps it there.
What to agree in the first week
One conversation, four sentences, while everyone is still being polite:
- Who needs it when on a weekday morning.
- Whether long showers happen in the evening rather than at eight.
- Where each person's things live, so the shelf is not a negotiation.
- Who buys the shared consumables, and how often.
Nobody enjoys having this conversation and it takes five minutes. Having it in week one instead of week six is the whole difference.
If you want more than that
One grade in the range has its own toilet and hand basin inside the room. The shower is still shared, in every grade without exception, and any listing that says otherwise about this address is wrong.
It is the difference between queuing for everything and queuing only for the shower, which for some people is worth the difference in rent and for others is not. The room types page is explicit about which is which.
What the building takes off the bathroom
Less obvious, and it helps: the amenity floors mean people are not all in the suite at the same time. Someone working in the library lounge or at the gym is someone not queuing behind you.
Shared living gets tense when three people are pinned into one apartment all day. Two floors of somewhere else is most of the fix.
