A tiled room, usually adjacent to a locker room, but sometimes constituting an open shower area within a locker room, containing multiple showering positions, usually beneath numerous showerheads affixed to the walls at intervals of about every four feet, and one or more floor drains. The showering positions are sometimes situated around a shower pole or a shower column each of which would have between 4 - 6 showerheads affixed around each column. Communal showers are designed so that a large group of people may shower simultaneously so as to save
time and avoid delay. Because they do not contain any dividers or shower stalls, communal showers do not permit for any modesty where the users of such a facility would be showering together simultaneously in the nude. Communal showers are usually designed to accomodate between 10 and
40 users simultaneously, and are usually found in institutional settings, such as at a gymnasium, swimming pool, fitness studio,
high school, university, professional sporting venue or in a
prison. In the
United States, communal showers are segregated by
gender, but at some facilities in Europe, particularly at a sauna, both genders may shower communally at the same
time.
