Bradley Company’s 2025 Healthy Handwashing Survey results confirm a powerful truth: restrooms aren’t just functional spaces, they’re a mirror of a facility’s management, brand, and values. Whether restrooms fall short or exceed expectations, their impact on customer perception, loyalty, and spending is immediate.

The annual survey reflects responses from a nationally representative sample of over 1,000 Americans. Since 2009, it has tracked attitudes and habits around handwashing, hygiene, and restroom perceptions in U.S. public facilities.

Among the opinions of this year’s survey respondents:

• 84% say an unclean or poorly stocked restroom damages a business’s image.
• 75% will think twice about returning to a business after a bad restroom experience.
• 71% are more likely to return—and spend more—at businesses with clean, well-maintained restrooms.

Every year, Bradley’s handwashing survey has consistently identified the several top frustrations: clogged or unflushed toilets, unpleasant odors, and restrooms that look outdated, dirty, or unkempt. These issues don’t just create discomfort; they signal to customers that restroom cleanliness and care aren’t priorities for a business.

Restroom preferences represent a permanent shift in public expectations. Over the past 10 years, and especially in the wake of COVID-19, the importance of restroom cleanliness has surged, with the most dramatic gains between 2020 and 2022. Today, cleanliness, hygiene, and convenience are no longer extras; they’re the baseline for earning customer trust.

Bradley’s ongoing surveys also identify which restroom design and maintenance tactics drive business results. Key features for meeting rising restroom expectations include:

• Designs prioritizing hygiene and maintenance, such as sleek, seamless surfaces and fingerprint-resistant finishes that improve restroom appearance and cleanability.
• No-touch fixtures, such as faucets and towel dispensers, that improve user convenience and ease of cleaning.
• Integrated handwashing systems offer all-in-one, sensor-activated soap, water, and drying features to improve user traffic flow and reduce water mess.
• Smart monitoring systems include maintenance indicators and top-fill, multi-feed soap systems that cut downtime and labor.

New Mexico moved to ban further consumer products that contain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), otherwise known as “forever chemicals,” this September, following the passage of House Bill 212 earlier this year.

H.B. 212 will institute the gradual phasing out of intentionally added PFAS in everyday items. Lawmakers also passed a second bill, House Bill 140, to allow the New Mexico Environment Department to regulate and manage cleanup for firefighting foams containing PFAS on military bases, which have caused contamination in groundwater statewide.

The state will also require manufacturers to label products containing PFAS, establish a process for companies to receive an exemption if needed, and develop fines for companies violating the ban.

New Mexico is the third state to push legislation around the use of PFAS in consumer products, joining Maine and Minnesota. This class of manmade chemicals is often used in waterproofing and can withstand breaking down in water, oil, and sunlight. As a result, PFAS can be found across a range of products, including cleaning supplies, menstrual products, textiles, and upholstered furniture.

But exposure through contaminated water and soil, as well as through plants and animals, causes PFAS to build up in the human body. While still being studied, PFAS exposure is linked to increased cancer risks, fertility issues, low birth weights or fetal development issues, hormonal imbalances, and limiting vaccine effectiveness.

Once approved, New Mexico’s PFAS ban would roll out in phases, starting with cookware, food packaging, firefighting foams, dental floss, and juvenile products by January 2027. Additional items would follow, such as cosmetics, period hygiene products, textiles, carpeting, furniture, and ski wax. Exceptions to the ban include medical devices, pharmaceuticals, electronics, and cars.

Meanwhile, The Hill reported provisions in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate annual Defense authorization bills reduce restrictions on the PFAS. In the House, one such provision is generating pushback.

Additionally, with the Environmental Protection Agency planning to rescind national standards for PFAS in drinking water, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the states called on the federal government to fund cleanup and remediation. Since 2023, 26 states have adopted over 100 policies relating to PFAS and PFAS contamination, according to NCSL.