Inside the Evolving Hotel Bathroom I check into a lot of hotels - and one of the first things I check out is the guest-room bathroom. From no-frills to cushy, cramped to roomy, a hotel bathroom can be an oasis or an eyesore. There are those that are cheap and cheerful, and those that appear to be lit for police interrogations. Others are as slick and dark as nightclubs, more conducive to Do Not Disturb-sign passion than makeup application. Yet bathrooms are being scrutinized not just by me, but also by millions of travelers now accustomed to using websites and social media to voice their opinions. After all, the hotel bathroom is more than a place to freshen up. It's considered an indicator of how upscale, current and clean a hotel is, an extension of its identity. So how do travelers feel about them? TrustYou - a reputation-management company that parses hundreds of thousands of guest reviews from more than 250 websites like TripAdvisor, Twitter and Yelp and then shares that information with hotels and other hospitality companies - says that "bathrooms are failing" even though a 2013 J. D. Power North America report shows that over-all hotel guest satisfaction is at its highest level in seven years. But what travelers don't often think about while tearing open the miniature soap is that everything in the bathroom, be it the shower or its humble curtain, is the result of a designer's careful choices in an effort to balance desires, space and money. What are some of those desires? What new features might be coming? Which are going? Hint: Enjoy those bathtubs while you still have them. I asked designers and researchers at some of the world's leading hotel brands to talk showers, vanities and everything in between. Most online comments about hotel bathrooms are about size or cleanliness, TrustYou said, with complaints about the latter up 5 percent from last year - though germaphobes take heart; that doesn't necessarily mean bathrooms are grimier. It could simply mean that more people are complaining. Also, that figure doesn't account for the vast number of travelers who don't write online reviews. Drew Shepard, senior director of consumer insights for Marriott Hotels, spends copious amounts of time listening to travelers: in 2010 and 2011 combined he interviewed more than 7,000 hotel guests in person or through surveys to inform the renovations now underway at Marriott. "The bathroom is a really important signal for a bunch of things," he said. You hope it's a little aspirational, a little better than what you have at home. A little fun. And it's the little things, he said, that add up, which is why Marriott is not only renovating but also investing in things like thicker towels and a new amenity brand (from a Thai company called Thann). It's also considering - attention, fellow longhaired travelers - more powerful hair dryers. An internal study of more than 6,000 guests last year found that seven in 10 women use a hair dryer when at a Marriott and, when asked, everybody requested higher wattage. When it comes to bathroom light wattage, TrustYou said it's not something people usually mention in their reviews, but if they do, the biggest complaint is that it's too dark. I've encountered this, not in monasteries, motels or bed-and-breakfasts but in a class of painfully hip boutique hotels that seem to think travelers want to shower in a space lit like Hernando's Hideaway. Stephani Robson, a senior lecturer at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration who specializes in design psychology, said that's not surprising given that a lot of boutique hotels are an adaptive reuse of other types of buildings. "They're very limited in what they can do," she said. So they go with the sexy lighting. Ideally, hotel rooms would have mirrors worthy of silver screen sirens. "The best lighting is the Hollywood mirror," said George Scammell, vice president of global design for Wyndham Worldwide, which manages the Planet Hollywood hotels chain. The company used a makeup consultant to help select the mirrors, great for makeup application because they provide a lot of light from many angles.