Why Isn’t There a Bidet in Every House?

The bidet is a bathroom appliance designed to keep you cleaner, and allows you to clean yourself more conveniently. It has a remarkable number of objective advantages, making it plainly superior to toilet paper.

So why don’t more households have access to this potentially life-changing device? And what can be done to spread the word about it?

The Benefits of Bidets

Despite the many benefits of bidets, millions of people in the U.S. have never even tried using one. At some point, you would expect that the benefits of bidets are so enormous and so recognizable that most people in the country would at least be willing to try these devices. But this is not so.

Bidets have always been a superior method of bathroom-related personal cleaning. You can clean yourself much more effectively with a jet of water than you can with a piece of paper. The experience is also regarded as less effective and more pleasant, ultimately leading to a much more comfortable experience and reducing the possibility of health complications like hemorrhoids. On top of that, bidets allow you to save money on toilet paper, since you won’t be using nearly as much of it. And bidets use far less water than most people think.

Sweetening the pot even further, modern bidets are easy to install and they come in countless varieties – so you don’t need to undergo any major bathroom renovations or plumbing changes to install one. In fact, you may be able to install a bidet toilet seat or attachment instead of a standalone unit.

So why do so many people resist the possibility of trying a bidet?

The Troubled History of Bidets

There are a few factors that have prevented bidets from “catching on” in the United States.

For example:

• Association with brothels. In the early history of bidets, many Americans associated them with brothels. This unfairly branded the bathroom devices as being associated only with people who are perceived as having worse personal hygiene or lower overall standards.
• Lack of plumbing support.Most bidets in Europe and around the world function as totally standalone units, and they have a separate line of plumbing attached to them in bathrooms. Many people in the United States who don’t realize modern bidets are generally installed as a seat or an attachment are reluctant to pursue this bathroom device altogether because they don’t want to make any expensive bathroom renovations.
• Long-standing traditions. Some people are rigidly adherent to long-standing traditions. They’ve been using toilet paper their whole life, which could be 50 years or longer, and they don’t like the idea of changing their entire bathroom routine now, for the sake of some potential benefits.
• Reluctance to openly discuss.Finally, it’s worth noting that many people aren’t aware of the benefits of using bidets simply because bathroom hygiene isn’t a common or universally accepted topic of polite conversation. If you never openly discuss your bathroom habits, and if you never make a concentrated effort to consider or improve them, you may not even know that bidets are seeing a resurgence of popularity.

Hope for the Future?

You’ve likely noticed, in your own life, that people are using and talking about bidets more than ever. And it’s true that public interest has exploded in recent years. There are a few major reasons for this:

• New models and styles. First, there are new models and styles available. New bidet models come in countless varieties, with different attachments, luxury features, and fit styles, so they can meet all of your needs and fit almost any conceivable toilet or bathroom. They’re much more accessible than they used to be.
• Efficiency breakthroughs.There are also major efficiency breakthroughs in play. Modern bidets use far less water than their older counterparts, making them both economically viable and environmentally friendly, and thus more appealing to most customers.
• Toilet paper shortages.Toilet paper shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic also marked a turning point in the popularity of bidets; when a preferred resource is no longer available, people have no choice but to try the alternative. If that alternative is superior, they may never go back.
• Recursive popularity improvements.The popularity of bidets makes people more open to trying them, leading to further popularity increases.

Does this represent a major shift in the momentum of public sentiment toward bidets? Quite possibly. While it’s hard to imagine any time in the near future when most people have bidets in their house or have tried these bathroom devices, public acceptance is increasing, and that trajectory is unlikely to fade anytime soon.

In the next 10 years, most people in the United States will probably still be using toilet paper. But in the next 20 or 30 years, who knows?