Bathroom taste: When the toilet seat is too ugly even for the toilet
11.4.2025
Translation: machine translated
Pictures: Reto Hunziker
I recently made the bad purchase of my life: a pair of toilet glasses that were far too gaudy. What to do now? Send them back? It's not that easy for an overthinker and people pleaser like me. That's why I opted for the complicated option.
Crap, what have I done? Those were my first thoughts when I opened the packaging. And even when the item was mounted on the bowl (it could have been that everything had changed in the meantime), I just thought: Wow! Crap!
Then the new toilet seat was emblazoned and gleaming on my bowl. Something between bold turquoise and candy green. And I suddenly realised that it was too much - too much bad taste. But that was actually the idea behind it.
I'll explain myself: I moved house just over a year ago. Like the kitchen, the bathroom in the new flat has a 60s or 70s touch with its old-school tiles. I like that, it has a certain charm for me. The tiles in the bathroom are brown and I thought it needed some colour. So I bought a shower curtain - in pastel green. It seemed to me that it would go with the dark retro look and turn my bathroom into a bathroom button bathroom with style (why wouldn't that work?!). In the sense of: if old school, then really old school.
But now it was just a single, colourful counterpoint. I wanted to turn it into an ensemble. Why not combine it with the toilet bowl? Especially as the toilet seat from the previous tenant was okay, but also kind of weird because it had a battery compartment and a built-in light, which very quickly stopped working. However, I didn't need a toilet seat without a light (not even with a light, actually), and I like sitting on my own anyway.
My motto: It fits
I have to say: I'm neither a hardline visionary nor a «interior design» freak or aesthetics ultra, but rather think functionally. I usually work with what I have or what I get and improvise a little. For example, the shower curtain doesn't «go round the corner», but only covers the length of the bathtub. It also only reaches just over the edge of the bath (it's no use if there's so much of it stuck in the bath). Not ideal, not super stylish, but it works.
In addition, complaining is too much effort for me (already People Pleaser). I have to feel really uncomfortable in order to exchange something. But now, when I saw the brightly coloured toilet lid, which had matched the shower curtain so well online, in the overall context of the bath button bathroom, I got a tingling sensation. Just like when I was a child and accidentally knocked my mum's vase off its pedestal with a tennis ball.
Or when I wanted to hoist a shelf I had just bought, which I had specially measured (or at least thought I had), onto my wardrobe and couldn't quite get it under the ceiling. The shelf ended up somewhere else.
But toilet seats can't go anywhere else, they belong exclusively on the toilet (although I'm happy to accept alternatives and suggestions for repurposing).
From confirmation bias to avoidance tactics
And a lot of things were right - actually most of them: The function of the toilet seat was unrestricted. Just the colour! So eccentric, so pretentious. It screams: «Wow, look at me! Yes, I deliberately look like this. My owner has put a lot of thought into it.» And I think: «What was I thinking?»
In principle, I should have realised when I unpacked it. Then I could have sent it back straight away. I already felt it when I first saw it: «Didn't it look completely different on my laptop?» But then I fell victim to my own confirmation bias: Surely this must fit. I couldn't have made a mistake. I need to see this now «on sale».
And when I unscrewed the lid, the «sunk cost fallacy» materialised: Now I've already ordered, paid for and fitted it. If I return it, I'll have to do it all over again. And I've already sat on it too.
Faced with this dilemma, I adopted the avoidance tactic: I'll just wait and see. Maybe I'll like it more and more over time (yes, I know I'm lying to myself). Or maybe the colour will lighten, who knows. Maybe the bathroom will magically adopt the lid and everything will be harmonious and good.
Spoiler: It didn't. Days and weeks passed. The toilet seat did what it had to do. But every time I opened the bathroom door, this garish piece reminded me that it was out of place - just in terms of colour. To be more precise: on its own, the toilet seat is very out of place in terms of colour. But in combination with the shower curtain, it would have taken very little to make it fit.
Or was it just my perception? After all, I had already imagined on the screen that it would be a great combination. I asked for second opinions and hoped for some encouragement. «Oh, I don't think it's that bad» - something like this. Instead, I received the devastating confirmation: «Not at all» - just like that.
For sale: working toilet seat
So I said to myself «Fuck it!» - in the truest sense of the word (well, I don't really give a shit, but I do) - let it sit for a while until I really couldn't take it anymore - and ordered a pair of beige toilet seats from the same brand (functionally, there's nothing to complain about).
Now I have what I consider to be a harmonious old-school bathroom with an inconspicuous toilet lid - and an additional toilet seat on speed (I guess if toilet seats could take drugs, mine would probably be on speed), which I no longer need. And because I'm anything but happy about this and I've spread it around here, I'd like to give these toilet seats a proper send-off - and give them away with great fanfare.
Therefore: call out!
If you would like my garishly pretentious toilet seat, little used, almost new, very functional and neatly cleaned, please get in touch with me. It would be nice if you could write me a mini-motivation letter (one or two sentences will suffice) explaining why you, of all people, need this toilet seat and can give it a harmonious home. Because this is important to me: my toilet seat, which has been a lance in my eye but has served me faithfully, should have a nice home - nicer than mine.
Header image: Reto Hunziker
I'm a freelance journalist, communications manager and versatile writer. I prefer to write about topics that fall somewhere between drivel and social relevance.
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