The best bathroom I ever had was in a small, well-designed apartment in Germany. The shower/tub was on the outer well with a window with privacy glass.
The tub had a deep space at the end opposite the faucets and showerhead where my two year old often stood and talked to me while I showered. You could also keep shampoo and such there, though I didn't because I didn't want my kids to poison themselves. I stored everything high up.
The toilet was next to the tub and next to the toilet was a sink with no cabinet under it which helped make it feel spacious. There was built-in storage between the sink and entry door.
This is actually somewhat similar to the house I grew up where the layout was more square with the toilet and sink on one wall and tub on the other and storage outside the bathroom making for a small entry hall to the bathroom.
German bathrooms I have seen somewhat often have a very narrow ledge in the tiled shower which gives space for everyone in the family to have a different shampoo in hardly any square footage in very small rentals. If the shower stall is on the outer wall, you could have a window above such a ledge with privacy glass.
German windows frequently allow for opening for ventilation by tilting it in a little so the window can be opened for ventilation all day even if you leave for the day without being a security issue. Some German windows can do that and also be fully opened in a different direction, like a door swinging in.
In Germany, tubs were large and deep because it's very cold and you would be insane to take a bath in a shallow tub. When I returned to the US, it took me time to mentally adjust to "That's a TUB and not just a shower basin." in rentals here. My mind no longer registered shallow American tubs as proper bathtubs.
On my way back from Germany, we spent one or more nights in a hotel or something and it had a shower stall with a MINI tub just big enough for my two preschool-aged kids to bath in. This might be the ideal scenario for single parents with small children or someone with a pet dog they want to be able to bathe.
In the SRO I lived in, each floor had two public bathrooms, one with shower stall only and one with a tub. There was a handicapped bench you could take into the shower on one floor where the shower was nice and spacious.
Because it was poverty housing and most units had no toilet at all, toilet paper for these shared bathrooms was a chronic issue. This is a potential pain point to consider. Management at one point was supplying toilet paper to units with private baths, presumably to keep toilet paper theft from the shared baths down to a dull roar.
In some of the bathrooms, there were built-in toilet paper dispensers of the type you see in commercial bathrooms and this was a lot of drama. What seemed to work best was a NORMAL residential toilet paper dispenser and a SHELF of normal extra toilet paper rolls above the toilet.
The shared bathrooms did not have a sink or mirror, presumably to prevent people from hogging the bathroom doing their makeup or something. The lack of a sink meant you couldn't immediately wash your hands after using the toilet.
Probably a better answer is a small sink for hand washing with NO MIRROR and NO space for setting down makeup etc. next to the sink.
As someone from what I thought was a "working class background" who grew up in the 'burbs, one of the surprising pain points of being poor is the lack of large, high quality mirrors.
The SRO had a cheap mirror in the middle of one wall in a hallway. It was NOT full-length and it was a traffic zone where I was not comfortable stopping to preen.
I fantasized about adding a full-length mirror to the second unit I lived in but I never had the money and I was concerned that hanging it in the de facto "foyer" of my unit -- a hall-like narrow space created by the closet and bathroom being on either side of the entry door -- would be a privacy issue allowing people to see into my unit via the mirror.
Possibly a good quality, full-length mirror in the public bathrooms instead of a vanity mirror above the sink would resolve this issue, but it potentially conflicts with the goal of discouraging people to spend inordinate amounts of time in the shared bathrooms. And a large, high-quality mirror in every unit conflicts with the desire to keep things affordable.
Maybe a mirror in the landing area between the stairs and elevator would be optimal to keep costs down while providing a smidgen of privacy to check yourself out as you leave the building -- though not on the ground floor which is expected to be glassed in for security reasons and have no privacy. So maybe only on the second floor or maybe on every floor except the ground floor.
More well-heeled residents are free to add mirrors as they see fit in their units but management won't be paying the cost to constantly replace broken mirrors in units and residents with modest incomes will still have access to a good mirror so they can try to look appropriate for job interviews and such.
The tub had a deep space at the end opposite the faucets and showerhead where my two year old often stood and talked to me while I showered. You could also keep shampoo and such there, though I didn't because I didn't want my kids to poison themselves. I stored everything high up.
The toilet was next to the tub and next to the toilet was a sink with no cabinet under it which helped make it feel spacious. There was built-in storage between the sink and entry door.
This is actually somewhat similar to the house I grew up where the layout was more square with the toilet and sink on one wall and tub on the other and storage outside the bathroom making for a small entry hall to the bathroom.
German bathrooms I have seen somewhat often have a very narrow ledge in the tiled shower which gives space for everyone in the family to have a different shampoo in hardly any square footage in very small rentals. If the shower stall is on the outer wall, you could have a window above such a ledge with privacy glass.
German windows frequently allow for opening for ventilation by tilting it in a little so the window can be opened for ventilation all day even if you leave for the day without being a security issue. Some German windows can do that and also be fully opened in a different direction, like a door swinging in.
In Germany, tubs were large and deep because it's very cold and you would be insane to take a bath in a shallow tub. When I returned to the US, it took me time to mentally adjust to "That's a TUB and not just a shower basin." in rentals here. My mind no longer registered shallow American tubs as proper bathtubs.
On my way back from Germany, we spent one or more nights in a hotel or something and it had a shower stall with a MINI tub just big enough for my two preschool-aged kids to bath in. This might be the ideal scenario for single parents with small children or someone with a pet dog they want to be able to bathe.
In the SRO I lived in, each floor had two public bathrooms, one with shower stall only and one with a tub. There was a handicapped bench you could take into the shower on one floor where the shower was nice and spacious.
Because it was poverty housing and most units had no toilet at all, toilet paper for these shared bathrooms was a chronic issue. This is a potential pain point to consider. Management at one point was supplying toilet paper to units with private baths, presumably to keep toilet paper theft from the shared baths down to a dull roar.
In some of the bathrooms, there were built-in toilet paper dispensers of the type you see in commercial bathrooms and this was a lot of drama. What seemed to work best was a NORMAL residential toilet paper dispenser and a SHELF of normal extra toilet paper rolls above the toilet.
The shared bathrooms did not have a sink or mirror, presumably to prevent people from hogging the bathroom doing their makeup or something. The lack of a sink meant you couldn't immediately wash your hands after using the toilet.
Probably a better answer is a small sink for hand washing with NO MIRROR and NO space for setting down makeup etc. next to the sink.
As someone from what I thought was a "working class background" who grew up in the 'burbs, one of the surprising pain points of being poor is the lack of large, high quality mirrors.
The SRO had a cheap mirror in the middle of one wall in a hallway. It was NOT full-length and it was a traffic zone where I was not comfortable stopping to preen.
I fantasized about adding a full-length mirror to the second unit I lived in but I never had the money and I was concerned that hanging it in the de facto "foyer" of my unit -- a hall-like narrow space created by the closet and bathroom being on either side of the entry door -- would be a privacy issue allowing people to see into my unit via the mirror.
Possibly a good quality, full-length mirror in the public bathrooms instead of a vanity mirror above the sink would resolve this issue, but it potentially conflicts with the goal of discouraging people to spend inordinate amounts of time in the shared bathrooms. And a large, high-quality mirror in every unit conflicts with the desire to keep things affordable.
Maybe a mirror in the landing area between the stairs and elevator would be optimal to keep costs down while providing a smidgen of privacy to check yourself out as you leave the building -- though not on the ground floor which is expected to be glassed in for security reasons and have no privacy. So maybe only on the second floor or maybe on every floor except the ground floor.
More well-heeled residents are free to add mirrors as they see fit in their units but management won't be paying the cost to constantly replace broken mirrors in units and residents with modest incomes will still have access to a good mirror so they can try to look appropriate for job interviews and such.