No one likes a dark, damp bathroom with bad circulation — it’s no fun spending time in a space like that. If you’re building or relocating a bathroom, try to site it on an outside wall with windows.

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I once worked on a large remodel for which the existing design had a bathroom in the dining room — seems kind of like a conflict of interests, right? Whenever possible, avoid locating the bathroom directly off one of the home’s public rooms — like the kitchen, living room or dining room.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to put in a long hallway, but create some sort of formal separation to break up the line of sight. The last thing you want is to be sitting in the living room with a glass of wine and looking straight into the bathroom at the toilet.

That leads me to my next blunder: Avoid making the toilet the first thing you see in the bathroom, and avoid any sightlines to it from adjacent rooms. I like to put the toilet and shower in their own room while keeping the sink separate. This allows someone to take a shower while someone else gets ready at the sink. In the bathroom floor plan here, the wall between the two rooms adds only a couple of inches to the overall size of the bathroom but doubles the room’s functionality.

A curbless shower makes a bathroom feel bigger and look cleaner — plus, it’s very practical for aging-in-place homeowners, since it adheres to universal design principles.

This look is fairly easy to achieve in a new bathroom or a remodel — just make sure you mention it to your architect or contractor prior to construction.