We Asked A Cleaning Pro: Should Toilet Paper Hang Over Or Under? Here's What They Said

When you share a home with others — whether it's your family, close friends, or roommates you barely know — conflict is bound to happen. You might fight about whose turn it is to load the dishwasher, take out the trash, or walk the dog. There may be disagreements about how to store different foods or fold towels, and like so many households, you might even argue over the best way to hang a toilet paper roll. That last one has been the subject of heated debate for some time now, perhaps as long as people have been hanging rolls of toilet paper from a dispenser on the wall. Should you hang the roll with the paper hanging over or hang it with the paper hanging under? To get to the bottom of the debate, we asked a cleaning pro. 

Speaking exclusively to Hunker, Angela Brown, the CEO of Savvy Cleaner, set the record straight. "Toilet paper rolled over or under is a matter of preference for the homeowner," she explained. Some like the "under" method because it can potentially be harder for family members to spin the roll and dump the paper, while the "over" method (the more popular choice) is often more convenient to grab. Still, the real benefits of either orientation may be too insignificant to sway you from your tried-and-true approach. Brown explained, "The goal as a professional house cleaner is to match what the homeowner had previously done and not reverse the replacement roll or judge the homeowner for their preference."

If you're happy with how you hang your toilet paper roll now, there's no need to change it. "There is no difference in sanitation or ease of use if a toilet paper roll is 'over or under,'" Angela Brown noted. So, if it doesn't matter how you put the roll on the holder, how do you prevent toilet paper-associated disagreements? The surest answer is to give everyone their own bathroom and let them decide how to hang the TP roll. Of course, not every house has multiple bathrooms, and covering the cost of adding a bathroom is a little extreme just to solve a toilet paper orientation debate, no matter how heated it gets. Instead, a simpler option may be to simply flip the roll how you want it when you use the bathroom and then flip it back when finished.

If you don't trust yourself (or your housemates) to flip the roll each time you use the bathroom, installing two toilet paper roll holders, one for each orientation, is another way to compromise. Alternatively, you could experiment with a holder that holds the roll vertically rather than horizontally or DIY a double toilet paper roll holder, with space for an "over" roll and an "under" roll. Even offbeat solutions may help here, like upcycling a tree branch from your yard to create a rustic toilet paper tree with spots for two rolls. While compromise is the name of the game concerning the toilet paper roll debate, there's one thing we can all agree on — it's always polite to replace an empty roll before leaving the bathroom. As Brown confirmed, "One just hopes there is always a little paper on the roll left for the next user."