Paruresis Friendly Venues

Public venues

There are a number of well designed paruresis friendly public venues across the UK (and elsewhere) - but paruresis sufferers tend to avoid all public toilets, not realising that some are much better than others. These can have a lot more space and choice than you might have expected, and are often found in the newer, larger public locations like:

* Motorway Service Stations
* Large anonymous shopping centres
* Airports

It is worth visiting facilites like these (without the need to use them) in order to get familiar with the layout, options, busy times, etc. Thay can also be useful for desensing (either alone or with a buddy) as they will usually have a cafe or 2 and shops nearby.

Paruresis friendly venues

We would like to develop this section as a useful resource. Please email your 'friendly' venues to us, and include the following:

venue region
venue type (e.g. pub, cinema, gallery etc.)
venue name
venue address
venue website, if available
your comments on the venue

London

Brewdog - Pub/Restaurant
Unit G, Waterloo Station, 01 The Sidings,London SE1 7BH, this is off off the main concourse in Waterloo Station.
Toilets on each of the two floors, go through the WC door left to ladies, right to gents and a few unisex, all identical cubicles with toilet, sink and hand dryer.

Scooterworks Cafe
132 Lower Marsh, London SE1 7AE (Behind Waterloo Station)
Retro bar/cafe, one cubicle.

The Royal Academy
Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J0BD
The gents urinals at the Royal Academy are an unusual discreet hybrid-cubicle.

Rose and Crown
47 Colombo Street London SE1 8DP (Just off Blackfriars Road on South Bank)
Pub, has urinals but the cubicle area is adjacent and separated by a door and has its own entrance. So if you situate yourself at that end of the bar you can go to the toilets and nip in to the cubicle.

The Music Bar
144 Brixton Hill Place London, Greater London SW2 1SD
Not that great a pub but no urinals.

Zizzi restaurant
Level 2, O2 Centre (not the O2 Arena) Finchley Road, London. 020 7433 8259
Single rooms with pan and wash basin. Probably all Zizzi are like this.

Euston Tap and the Cider Tap
190 Euston Road, London, NW1 2EF
Single male cubicle, no urinals.

O2 Brixton Academy
In the upstairs venue there are 4 closed cubicles on the left as you walk in before reaching the urinals or sinks.

Royal Albert Hall
4 single occupancy unisex loos on the ground floor (level 0) near the cafe. Some queuing at busy times.

London Charing Cross Railway Station
The toilets are downstairs and seem to be blocks of cubicles with recesses for the urinals, there is a modern mural running down the block and across the cubicle doors making them very discrete.

Cote Brassiere Restaurant
St. Katherines Dock, 1 St. Katherines Way, E1W 1UN
Toilets are at the rear of the restaurant, go through the door and there is a row of separate rooms each having a toilet and basin.

Home counties

Zizzi's Italian Restaurant
in Camberley
Single rooms. They also have branches in Guildford, Henley and Chiswick – these may be the same but have not been checked.

Hampshire

The Pig

High class hotel in Beaulieu Road Brockenhurst SO42 7QL
The gents toilet has cubicles only, no urinals

Fairweathers garden centre (Steff’s kitchen)
Good quality restaurant in High Street, Beaulieu, Brockenhurst, SO42 7YB
The gents toilet has cubicles only, no urinals

Carluccio's Restaurant
West Quay Shopping Centre, Southampton SO15 1QF
Like many upmarket Italian chain restaurants this gents toilet has cubicles only, no urinals.

Brighton Centre
The main gents in the lobby has 10 cubicles in a separate recess to the urinal area. No queues even when the venue is full to capacity with drinkers. There is also at least one single occupency "gender neutral" loo.

Southend Cliffs Pavilion
The gents on the lower level has 4 cubicles and is less busy than the gents adjacent to the auditorium, which has 2 cubicles.

Cambridge Corn Exchange
3 cubicles in both gents, plus a single occupancy unisex loo on the way to the cloakroom just past the upstairs gents.

Caffè Nero
84 Above Bar Street
Southampton
Hampshire
SO14 7DT

Two toilets at the rear of the premises both single rooms with a toilet, sink and hand dryer in each.

Manchester and the north
Blackpool Winter Gardens

Large "communal toilet" (i.e. unisex) with up to 20 cubicles situated under the main concourse, in addition to the standard gents around the complex.

National

The J D Wetherspoon chain of pubs. The chain's policy is to have deep urinal dividers in all toilets. Sampling has shown that cubicles have no gaps in the walls and only minimal ones under the doors. Some even put urinals out of sight of wash basins.

Motorway Services

Many people with paruresis say that they find motorway service stations quite paruresis-friendly. They are usually quite busy, and therefore noisy, with people focussed on using the facilities and getting back on with their journey. Even if there are queues, there are often a lot of cubicles so the queue moves quickly and no-one notices who is in which cubicle.

Fleet Services southbound have newly refurbished toilets (as at October 2018). The gents has the usual bank of urinals, but every alternate one is situated in its own recessed alcove affording a good deal of privacy.

Leicester Forest East southbound is similar and very user-friendly.