Those doors are often on corridors. You don’t want them unexpectedly opening at speed into passing non-bathroom traffic. Conversely, people approaching the door from the inside will be further away as they have their hand out in readiness to pull, will expect the door to open — it’s generally lower risk.

Inside the bathroom itself, the doors on individual stalls usually open inwards. One pragmatic advantage of this approach is that if the door opens while you are seated, you can push it closed without getting up. Or requiring help from someone else outside. This also drives the use of push-in-pull-out handles.

One major disadvantage of this approach is that if you are coming in with a bulky bag, or more (hauling carry-on luggage in an airport for instance), you have sharply limited space within to maneuver you and your stuff to a position where you can lift your skirts and do what you came here to do. Every time I go to a public bathroom with stall doors that open outward I am delighted.

IIRC the Dallas airport had large selves in the wall behind the toilets for luggage. It was extremely convenient.

You are forgetting about pregnants and bigger people. They usually have a hard time getting into the stalls.

Why don't someone design doors that can be both pushed and pulled, and locked

I guess this exists at some places

Plus a mechanism that prevents the doors from opening too fast outwards (so they won't hit anyone)

The bigger reason is that space is usually tight in bathrooms and you don't want to slam the door into someone waiting outside when leaving the stall.

In the US this is a fire code issue. Doors need to swing inward to avoid people getting trapped inside from outside obstructions.

edit: I seem to be misinformed about firecode. I may also be over extrapolating from what I know about bedroom doors as well. The general idea of obstruction is more valid there. It seems the more common reason bathrooms would not be allowed to swing outward is obstructing the minimum width of hallways.

Huh. In Finland, fire code requires that external doors swing outward. It's intended to make it faster to exit the building since you can just walk forward, and to prevent people getting trapped indoors if a panicked crowd tries to push out through the door.

I believe the post above was only meant to be applied to interior doors. The explanation I've gotten in the past is interior doors open in so they don't block people outside the room, typically in a hallway, from being able to move towards the exit; Exterior doors open out so that the crowd of people rushing towards the exit can leave and you don't have a mass of panicked people stopping those at the front from having room to open the exterior doors.

Same in Sweden.

Not sure where you picked this up, but I don't think it is correct.

From the 2018 international building code (which is what the US building code is based on): https://up.codes/viewer/illinois/ibc-2018/chapter/10/means-o...

FYI the international building code has a deceptive name. It's essentially the US building code.

> it is the International Building Code ... used in multiple locations worldwide, including the 15 countries of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM), Jamaica, and Georgia. Furthermore, the IBC has served as the basis for legislative building codes in Mexico, Abu Dhabi, and Haiti, among other places.

https://blog.ansi.org/?p=8429

Usually that's because the door is in the hallway and you don't want doors swinging out unexpectedly into people walking through a trafficked area.

Here in the United States, doors are generally required to open out towards the nearest exit. Helps prevent panic in case of fire.

> Here in the UK a lot of bathrooms in pubs

Wow! I've never known a pub with a 'bathroom'.

Whist those in the USA use euphemisms such has 'bathroom' (mate, where is the bath?) or 'restroom' (I don't need a rest, I need a shit), here it is perfectly acceptable to ask the butler in Buckingham palace where the toilet is, or the bog for that matter. :-)

Can you use your elbow to push your way out?