We Almost Pulled Out The Bidet That Came With Our House. A Year Later, We'd Never Live Without It.
Credit: Homeowner.ca
The bidet came with the house. It was already sitting there on our primary-bathroom toilet the day we did the walkthrough, a Moen seat with a side panel of buttons, quietly attached like it had always belonged. Our realtor didn't mention it. The seller's disclosure didn't mention it. It was just there, the way a dishwasher or a garage-door opener is there. A fixture. A thing to decide about later.
I'll be honest: my first thought was do we actually want to keep this? Not because I had a principled objection to bidets. I just hadn't thought about them. Nobody in my family had one. None of my friends did. It felt a little bit like inheriting a wine fridge when you don't really drink wine — a nice feature, probably, but maybe not our feature.
We gave it a year. That's roughly how long it took us to stop debating whether the Moen was staying. By the end of that year, I was the one defending it at dinner parties. Our kids had figured out the controls. Toilet paper lasted noticeably longer. And when we travelled and stayed in hotels without one, we noticed — in the way you notice a kitchen that doesn't have a dishwasher.
I'm a Canadian homeowner writing this from the bathroom where that Moen still lives. If you're thinking about adding a bidet to your own bathroom and you're not sure whether it's worth it, I want to tell you what the last few years have actually taught us. Not the glossy version. The version where I was a little skeptical, a little squeamish, and then quietly won over.
For the first few months, we used the bidet the way you use a new appliance you don't entirely trust. Tentatively. With the manual still in a drawer. One of us would try a setting, report back, and the rest of the household would file it under interesting, not required.
The hesitation was partly about the obvious thing — it was new and unfamiliar and felt a little bit personal in a way that made us self-conscious. But it was also about the small domestic calculus: was this a feature we'd actually use, or was it a fancy seat we were keeping out of inertia? If we took it off, we'd have a regular toilet and one fewer thing plugged into the wall. There's something clean about that — and I'll admit I spent more time than I'd care to share wondering whether a bidet falls onto the long list of home upgrades that quietly hurt resale value rather than helping it.
What changed our minds wasn't a single moment. It was the accumulation of small, quiet preferences. Our kids discovered the warm-water setting and treated it as delightful technology. The laundry count on washcloths for post-workout cleanups dropped. We bought toilet paper less often.
Somewhere in there, we stopped talking about whether to remove it and started talking about whether we'd want one if we moved. That's when I knew the Moen was staying.
Warm water, adjustable pressure, a gentle pat dry with a bit of toilet paper — you finish feeling the way you'd feel after a quick shower rather than the way you feel after a tissue. Most modern bidet seats sold in Canada, including our Moen, let you tune the spray position, pressure, and sometimes oscillation, which sounds clinical on a product page but just means you get it dialled to what works for you and then stop thinking about it.
Nobody told me a bidet would be useful for parenting, and I probably wouldn't have believed them if they had. But it has been. Our kids love it. The warm water, the buttons, the small sense of control over their own bathroom routine — they're into all of it. More importantly, it's been a quietly excellent tool for making sure they're actually clean after using the bathroom. Kids, especially younger ones, are famously inconsistent wipers. A bidet makes thorough cleanup something the water does for them, which means fewer reminders to wash their hands and try again.
I don't want to overclaim this — it's not a miracle hygiene device for children. But in a household where "did you clean up properly?" has come up more times than I can count, having a bidet has taken a small parenting annoyance and quietly made it go away. That's the kind of unsung benefit that doesn't make it onto product pages but absolutely shapes daily life.
I won't pretend I tracked this with a spreadsheet, but our toilet paper consumption has obviously fallen. We buy it less often. The big Costco pack lasts measurably longer. We unclog things almost never — less toilet paper going down the bowl means fewer occasions for the running-toilet or partial-clog nuisance that most homeowners deal with a few times a year.
Some advocacy groups like the NRDC suggest bidet users can cut their toilet paper consumption by 75 percent or more, which would have struck me as implausible before we owned one. Now I can see how they get there. You still use a little, but a "little" is very different from "a lot."
There's also the pandemic memory, which I suspect is part of why I even became willing to consider the bidet on its merits. When toilet paper became the thing nobody could find in spring of 2020, we weren't panicking about it. We had the Moen. That quiet feeling of we're fine, we have options was genuinely reassuring, and it's stuck with me.
And there's the climate side, which I mention gently because I don't think anyone wants to be lectured about their bathroom habits. A meaningful share of the trees cut for global tissue demand come from Canada's own boreal forest — one of the quieter environmental stories sitting inside a grocery-store toilet paper aisle. If you're the kind of person who likes knowing the downstream effect of a household choice, using less of it is a quietly nice one to have made.
The most Canadian-specific thing I can tell you about our bidet: the warm-water function is not a luxury here. It's the feature. Cold tap water in a Canadian house in January is actively cold — the kind of cold that wakes you up more than coffee does. A basic cold-water-only attachment is fine in July and rough in February. Our Moen does warm water and a heated seat, and in the middle of a February morning, that is genuinely pleasant in a way that's hard to overstate. It's the difference between using the bidet daily, year-round, and using it mostly in summer. If you're a Canadian homeowner considering one, I'd weight warm-water capability heavily. It's not a frill. It's the thing that gets you through six months of winter.
Since our bidet was already installed when we bought the house, I can't give you a first-hand install story. What I can tell you is that most bidet seats sold in Canada are designed around a standard ½-inch toilet water supply connection — the kind of connection already present on essentially every modern Canadian toilet. A look at bidet seat spec sheets on Home Depot Canada shows the typical hookup: a T-valve splits the existing toilet supply line, sending water to both the tank and the new seat, with a flexible hose connecting the two. For most standard toilets, it's closer to swapping a seat than re-plumbing a bathroom.
Electric models also need an outlet nearby, which is the piece most Canadian homeowners forget when they start looking. Older homes often don't have one within reach of the toilet, and running a new one is the kind of thing that pushes a DIY install into plumber-and-electrician territory. If you're already planning a broader refresh, this is the kind of detail worth folding into a small bathroom renovation plan rather than bolting on later. If you're just adding a seat, check your outlet situation first.
Prices vary a lot, and in a helpful way. On the entry end, simple cold-water bidet attachments and basic seats run roughly in the low-to-mid hundreds of dollars. On the other end, fully featured electronic seats — the kind with warm water, heated seats, warm-air dryers, and remote controls — sit closer to the higher hundreds. As a real-world Canadian reference point, the Moen 5-Series Premium Electronic Bidet Seat at Home Depot Canada lists around $799 for a feature set similar to what we have (adjustable water temperature and pressure, heated seat, warm air dryer, self-cleaning nozzles).
If you're weighing whether to splurge on the electric model, my Canadian-winter heuristic is: if you'll only use cold water nine months a year, you'll probably end up wishing you'd gone warm. Heating matters here.
Bidet seats and smart-bidet toilets show up in mainstream bathroom categories now, not novelty corners. Home Depot Canada carries multiple Moen electronic seats. Costco Canada stocks smart-bidet toilets alongside conventional fixtures. Canadian Tire and Amazon.ca carry attachments across the price spectrum. The fact that you can compare bidet options in the same place you buy everything else for your bathroom is itself a quiet sign of how normal this upgrade has become.
I'd be lying if I said there's nothing to consider on the minus side. Our Moen has been trouble-free for the years it's been in service — no maintenance issues, nothing broken, nothing replaced — but I'm aware that isn't universal, so let me fairly flag what other owners mention.
Nozzle cleaning is the most common concern people raise before buying, and it's a fair one. Most modern seats sold in Canada, including ours, have self-cleaning nozzle cycles, and the manuals walk you through periodic manual cleaning if you want to be more thorough. It's a small maintenance habit, not a horror story.
There's also a learning curve. Water temperature, pressure, spray angle — it takes a few tries to find your settings, and the first round or two tend to be memorable. If you have house guests, you'll eventually have the slightly funny conversation where they ask how it works. We treat that as part of the charm now. And if you're buying an electric seat, remember that outlet check I mentioned earlier. More than one new owner has brought home a fancy bidet seat and realized they have no power within reach.
Yes, with a few caveats. I'd recommend it especially if you have kids, if you live somewhere cold enough that warm water matters, or if you've ever thought there has to be a better way to do this. For homes with aging-in-place in mind, a bidet seat belongs in the same conversation as accessibility-focused bathroom upgrades — it's a meaningful comfort improvement at a fraction of the cost of a full renovation. I'd recommend spending for the warm-water, heated-seat version if you can — in a Canadian winter, that's the line between a nice feature and a daily comfort.
And I'd say this specifically to anyone who, like us, is buying a house with a bidet already installed: don't rip it out before you've tried it. Give yourself a few weeks. Read the manual. Let everyone in the house find their setting. You might find, as we did, that the thing you assumed you didn't need turns out to be something you don't want to be without.
For the price of a decent faucet upgrade, you get a bathroom that feels more considered, a household that buys less toilet paper, and — if you have kids — one small daily annoyance that quietly disappears. That's a good trade.
Basic cold-water bidet attachments and simple seats typically run in the low-to-mid hundreds of dollars in Canada, while fully featured electronic seats with warm water, heated seats, and dryers generally sit closer to the high hundreds. A representative premium example at Home Depot Canada is currently around the $800 mark.
In most cases, yes. Bidet seats sold in Canada are designed around standard ½-inch toilet water supply connections and round or elongated bowl shapes. Check your toilet's bowl shape (round vs. elongated) and confirm the seat model matches before buying.
For many standard toilets, no — the typical install uses a T-valve on the existing water supply line and a flexible hose to the seat, which a handy homeowner can do. Electric models also need a nearby outlet, and that's the part most likely to require professional help in older Canadian homes.
In our household, toilet paper consumption dropped noticeably once everyone was using the bidet regularly. Advocacy analyses have suggested bidet users can reduce toilet paper use by 75 percent or more, which squares with our lived experience once we adjusted to patting dry with a little paper rather than wiping with a lot.
Bidet seats are designed around shared use. Most modern seats, including those widely sold in Canada, feature self-cleaning nozzles and easy-to-follow manual cleaning routines. Treat it like any bathroom fixture — keep it clean, and it stays clean.
In our house, our kids use ours and love it. It's been a surprisingly helpful tool for making sure younger kids actually clean themselves properly. Supervise young children with the water pressure setting until they get the hang of it, and keep the settings at a gentle level.
Cold inlet water in a Canadian bathroom in January is genuinely cold. A basic cold-water-only bidet attachment will feel uncomfortably chilly for a stretch of the year. If you're buying for year-round Canadian use, a warm-water model with a heated seat is, in my view, the meaningful upgrade.
Honestly, the answer is "probably neutral for most buyers, a small plus for some, a non-issue for most." What I can say with more confidence is what happened to us: we bought a house with one, almost removed it, kept it, and wouldn't now. If you're the seller, that's the outcome you want.
