Choosing The Perfect Toilet For Your School: A Buyer's Guide

Buyer’s Guide: Choosing the Right Toilets for Your School

Choosing the right toilets for your school is an important (if not especially glamorous) decision;. As with any purchase, it’s worth doing a little research before you take the plunge.

Read on to find out more about different types of toilet and the materials they’re made from - and if you need a little help choosing urinals to go with them, be sure to check out our urinal buyer’s guide, too.

Materials

Generally speaking, toilets are made from one of two materials: stainless steel or vitreous china. Neither is necessarily ‘better’ than the other, and both have their unique advantages and drawbacks.

Stainless steel

Stainless steel is renowned for its extreme toughness. It is far more difficult to break than vitreous china, which makes stainless steel fixtures ideal for schools or colleges where vandalism is a problem.

That said, it does suffer from looking a little clinical - people have even been known to compare stainless steel toilets to the ones you see in prisons! Still, if you’re purchasing for a modern sixth form or college, the sleek, minimalist look of a new stainless steel toilet may be just the ticket.

Vitreous china

The natural warmth of vitreous china makes it an excellent choice for toilets (for obvious reasons). The other benefit of vitreous china toilets is that they look much more similar to the toilets that children use at home. In a preschool or infant school setting this could go a long way towards combating toilet anxiety.

The main drawback of vitreous china is that it is much more prone to breaking than stainless steel, with bowls and tanks in particular prone to cracking under stress.

Types of toilet

Here at School-Toilets.co.uk, we sell five different kinds of toilet: close coupled, wall hung, back-to-wall, low level, and junior height. Read on to find out more about each type and figure out which is most appropriate for your school.

Close coupled toilets

Close coupled toilets combine a toilet pan and cistern into a single unit, which makes them both cost effective and simple to install; consequently, they’re one of the most popular options in schools and homes alike.

Our Sandringham close coupled toilet suite from Armitage Shanks also includes a push-button dual flushing system, so you can be sure your environmental credentials are up to scratch. The downside of close coupled toilets is that they take up a lot of room, and so may not be suitable for school washrooms with a space issue.

Wall hung toilets

Wall hung toilets afford a very modern, minimalist kind of look. Because they are mounted to the wall and serviced by a concealed cistern, wall hung toilets appear to float above the ground. While this can be a great touch in modern sixth forms and colleges, it also makes them less sturdy and more prone to vandalism than other types of toilet. Wall hung toilets allow the floor to be cleaned more thoroughly.

Back-to-wall toilets

If you fit in the short-on-space category, then a back-to-wall toilet could be the answer. As the name might suggest, the pan on these units is mounted to the wall, behind which sits a concealed cistern to provide flushing; all the user sees is the pan. As well as looking smart and minimalist, back-to-wall toilets also save a great deal of space - although the fact that the cistern is mounted in a void behind the wall makes them a fair bit trickier to install.

Low level toilets

The main benefit of low-level toilets, which consist of a floor-mounted toilet pan and a wall-hung cistern, is that they have a very traditional look. The exposed cistern is connected to the toilet pan with a flush pipe; this means that these toilets take up quite a lot of space, although they are also much easier to install than back-to-wall toilets.

Junior height toilets

If you’re purchasing toilets for a junior school, nursery or creche, you may be interested in our range of infant and junior height toilets.The range includes infant and junior height back-to-wall toilets, and infant and junior height close coupled toilets. Installing child-size toilets is a surefire way to dispel the anxiety that many children feel about using the toilet outside of their homes.

If you’re still undecided and could do with more advice, please don’t hesitate to get in touch via the contact page. One of our team will be happy to help.