Today you have the bidets you can install on your toilet, but traditionally they were a thing on its own, that required about as much space as a toilet and all the extra pipework associated with it.

In some European/ Mediterranean countries (I suspect France may have started the trend) this caught on well, and bidets were a must have in most houses that had toilets as part of their main architectural structure. Most people in South America had bidets this way, it’s rare to see a house without at least one bidet, and this comes from the culture inherited from colonial times .

Now, things are different in othe parts of the world. England seems to traditionally have the toilet separate from the house and for some reason the bidet trend never caught on. This is in turn reflected both in USA and Australia. I don’t know about bidet popularity across all of Europe, but this is definitely a cultural thing and I suspect distance and language may have kept UK without bidets until relatively recently. And as you know, old habits die hard, so… Yeah in Australia I use the shower.

Americans voted for him though

I once read a book where this particular bathroom appliance was very intimately connected with prostitutes throughout history and that association created a big push against having it in every house. It was an interesting read.

In my country in particular, it became mandatory in every newly built house starting around the 50s and later it became mandatory to have one bidet and one bathtub in every house.

This was pushed to enforce a notion of hygiene that was lacking, as the country was very poor at the time. Paradoxically, it was easier to have higher standards of hygiene in the country, where access to water was easier and the field labour demanded a minimal cleanliness to be at the table and socially than in the growing cities, where poor living conditions made very difficult for the poor to access running water.

With my bathroom, the answer is simple. I would have to nail the bidet to the wall because of the lack of floor space, which would make it’s use rather awkward.