Hand Dryers or Paper Towels in Hotel Washrooms? | KT Guide

A pub group in Norwich worked out it was spending more on washroom paper towels across four sites than on its entire cleaning chemical budget. The bins overflowed every Saturday night and one site had a recurring drain blockage that cost more to rod than the towels did to buy.

What Does the Law Actually Require?

Regulation 21 of the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 requires suitable and sufficient washing facilities, and specifically that they include a means of drying hands. It doesn't specify which means. Paper towels, a roller towel or an electric dryer all satisfy the requirement, so the choice is a commercial and practical one rather than a compliance one.

Where it gets stricter is food premises. In a pub kitchen, restaurant or hotel serving food, hand-drying provision falls under food hygiene requirements as well, and many environmental health officers prefer disposable paper towels in food preparation areas specifically. That's a genuine distinction worth respecting: the washroom serving your restaurant floor and the sink inside the kitchen are not the same decision.

Where Do Hand Dryers Genuinely Win?

The consumable is the whole argument. A paper towel dispenser needs restocking, generates a bin that needs emptying, and produces waste that goes to landfill. On a busy Saturday in a pub washroom, that means staff time during service and an overflowing bin regardless. A dryer removes all three at once.

The drain problem is the one operators underestimate. Paper towels get flushed, and in older buildings with narrow runs that turns into recurring blockages. The Bremmer Generic Turbo's product data puts it at 98% cheaper than paper towels over its life and 85% lower CO2, with fewer blocked drains as a direct consequence of removing the towel entirely. If drains are already a known problem on site, the professional chemicals range covers the maintenance side of that separately.

Bremmer Hand Dryer Range: What's Actually Different

This is an honest opinion rather than a spec sheet fact: for a pub or venue washroom that takes genuine abuse, the Generic Turbo's stainless steel shell and anti-vandal build matters more than the HEPA filter does. For a hotel washroom off a lobby, invert that. The Prime Blade's filtration and antibacterial coating are the features guests notice indirectly through a washroom that feels clean, and vandalism is rarely the problem there.

What About the Energy Cost?

This is where the older objection to dryers has genuinely dated. A conventional hand dryer draws roughly 2400W and runs for 30 to 40 seconds per use. The Prime Blade runs at 800W and dries in a fraction of that time, so the energy per use is dramatically lower on both counts at once, not just one. Several models also carry heater on/off and speed adjustment, letting you run the unit cooler and cheaper in a warm building.

Against a paper towel's ongoing purchase, storage, restocking labour and waste disposal cost, a modern high-speed dryer typically wins on total cost within the first year or two in any washroom with real footfall. In a low-traffic office cloakroom used twice a day, that case is much weaker and towels may genuinely be simpler.

What Does Installation Actually Involve?

These are hard-wired units, not plug-in appliances, so this is electrical installation work assessed under BS 7671 like any other fixed circuit. The Prime Blade ships with a UK power line and a steel mounting bracket that fixes to the wall with four bolts, and the unit then attaches to the bracket, which keeps the physical fitting straightforward once the supply is in place. If you're already having an electrician on site for a wider refurb, adding washroom dryers to that visit is far cheaper than a separate callout later. Our Hotel Entrance Matting: What the Law Requires covers the other commonly overlooked public-area compliance item on the same refurb.

Frequently Asked Questions