Not a pro but IMO (and I am assuming the Master is separate from this), I would opt for the first option. I think Jack/Jill's are great especially with kids (or future kids)

Where is the master bedroom? I think the hall bath should have a tub. If the master is downstairs, it would be nice to have the junior master upstairs for you to use while your children are small.

Nobody can answer without the floor plans, and you should consider IF you have guests with any frequency. A hall bath, plus a "junior master" , meaning EN SUITE....... assures a "different gender" arrangement with kids, AND a guest space when needed, with ensuite privacy. Thus..it depends. Show both plans in full scale for better advice

I'd go for the ensuite and a tub in the hall bath. You may want to consider two ensuites if there aren't additional bedrooms .

I'd do a full bath in the hall and then the en suite bath with a shower only. The reason for that it is easier to have full access by anybody to the tub in a shared bathroom and then for the en suite the shower will be more practical for use by guests and older children. Younger children will likely use the tub in the hall bath where parents can easily help too.

I vote for only showers :) I know it's conventional wisdom to have a tub for kids, but I do not quite see the point. Kids are going to use a tub for so short a time and they are dangerous for tiny kids. When my child was a baby I washed them first in the kitchen sink (they also have the little tubs you can use) and then, we were staying at our cabin, which only had a shower. I put a small inflatable pool in the bottom of the shower, filled it from the shower head with a couple of inches of water, and voila! Tub. After the age of 2 it was primarily showers only, though we had a house with a tub. And you can do a dual handheld/fixed shower head to make it easier to rinse them off.

Hope this is helpful :)

I'm not a fan of Jack and Jill bathrooms at all. They just cause way more issues than they solve IMO. I vote for a full hall bath + an en suite. I'd do a bath in the hall bath for kids and a shower for the guest en suite.

Thank you so much for the advice everyone!

Just to clarify - the two additional bathrooms on the second floor are separate to our master suite which we hope to have a nice soaking tub and over sized shower. It's a hard decision for the additional bathrooms on the floor as I do agree, kids use a tub for SUCH a short amount of time and showers look much prettier, but resale wise I'm not sure if this would be a downside to a potential buyer?

I am with Sina on the Jack and Jill. Kids can go out in a hallway and share a bath. I am even against the TUB i a kids bath. A kid can shower at four years of age. Most moms end up bathing a kid in the master tub if one exists, or tossing two kids in together in that bath. A house only needs one tub , so that's the decision. Either way, skip the Jack and Jill concept. : ) Always ends up with too many doors.....and cramped.

Build for you. Post the plans. : )

Thanks Jan.

Jack & Jill - I do hear that opinion very often that people don't find them as useful as they should be which I find interesting. Do you mind me asking what the drawbacks are? We are from Northern NJ and not many new home designs offer jack & jill the way they do in a lot of the development towns in South/West Jersey. I first discovered them in a Toll Brothers house and thought they were so sweet! But being that we don't have kids yet and don't know the sex of our future babies, I guess it's not something very useful right now? We figured down the road when we resell the home one day, if you have 3 children technically every child has their own bathroom (+one shared). I'm assuming you think the junior en suite is much more practical/valuable down the road?

No J&J bathroom they are a nightmare with kids. I would do 2 bathrooms as ensuites if you only have the 2 plus master and I would do one with a tub/ showr combo and the other shower only. I have never gone to bed without a bath in my 72 yrs on this earth so I always would want a tub even as a guest and maybe when the kids arrive there might be abather in the mix.

We had a J&J in the house we rented in LA for 2 1/2 years. It was shared by my son and daughter. There was also a 1/2 bath/powder room on the landing to the 2nd floor, so DD could use it if DS was hogging the bath. It really wasn't a big problem - children do need to be taught about consideration for others and sharing.

the main reason i dislike the idea of a jack & jill type set up is you have no idea what might be going on with and between your kids. you cant hear someone being sick in the night.... at any age. and teens (can) become secretive... with a hall bath they have to come out of their room once in a while, and cant hide the fact that they have friends of either sex staying over without permission.

and then there is the locking each other out of the bath... but thats something they can work out.

My kids (boy and girl) were 8 and 11 when we built our custom home. Prior to that, they shared a compartmentalized bath in the hall (that had a tub.) That was fine when they were small. I am very glad that we were able to give them each their own bath in our current house, however. My daughter is 16 now, and has always had a ton of sleepovers. En suite baths are just easier for that, plus she has SO MUCH beauty “stuff” (we had wisely designed her vanity as extra long with a built in lower makeup area.) I just think if you have opposite sex teens it’s just easier to not share unless you have to.

Oh, and both of my kids love baths! Still! Both are athletes and like to soak their muscles.

These are very subjection questions, with no right/wrong answer. But while we are giving opinions:

I dislike J+J bathrooms, I'd opt for a public full bathroom and the guest suite

I dislike modular glass enclosures. Only like glass on a full tile shower. I'd go acrylic (never fiberglass) with a fabric curtain

I would choose a low entry standup unit for the guest suite, then a tub unit for the public bathroom

Call me a brat. I wouldn't be a guest in any home where I had to use any hall bath........and certainly not any shared by the kids. I'd be at the nearest great hotel. Or still at HOME. Camping at my sister during a power outage? I have packed and fled at 11:00 pm.

Although the idea of just having showers sounds good to me who generally don't take baths and have tried to encourage my kid to take showers. She really likes to take baths and will do so just to soak and says it helps when she has a sore body. I don't want her in the master to do that. Having a tub for "public" use is generally a must for resale.

There are also kids where it is just easier to have them take a bath than a shower for sanity sake. I have a friend with one of those. She is older and doesn't need supervision, but oh the drama if there is a shower involved. Could be some unknown sensory issues, but nothing confirmed.

You never know what life will deal you.

I see the Jack and Jill dislike comments all the time but we had one at our last house and had no problems whatsoever. Each bedroom had its own vanity area and shared the toilet/tub area. It worked great. I wouldn't hesitate to have one again. But we use locked doors in our house, which, I found out recently, many folks don't have them. Maybe that's what makes J&J's problematic :/

For tub vs. shower, I'd vote for shower but make sure there's a clear way to keep water contained to the shower area. My mom has one of those shower pans and only uses a curtain and it only takes one bump of the shower head to suddenly have water all over the bathroom floor. I'd also make sure you have a shower head on a slide bar so that the height can be adjusted. It's much easier for little ones to shower if the shower head is closer to their height.

Life is full of surprises. Do you need to build a house for children who don't even exist yet?

I also vote for the hall bath with tub/shower and an ensuite in a bedroom. This will work great for having guests and for an older child. I have 3 children, the oldest almost 9, and they all still prefer a bath. So, for our house it may be 13 plus years of baths from the kids...not such a short time for us.

Chisue - yes because we plan on having children in the very near future and will most likely resell to people who have children.

A local realtor should have some advice. I hope all goes according to plan for you.

How many bedrooms are there? I used a j/j once, as an adult, and hated it. I felt nervous, like someone was going to walk in on me from the other side if I forgot to lock their entry door. Then, if I forgot to unlock it, they couldnt get in when I left the room. I guess you could have two vanities separated by toilet/shower though, but then if I was going to do that, I’d see how much more it would be to add amother en suite bathroom instead.

I would defintely go for the en-suite/ hall bath. I wouldnt want guests having to go to the hall bath. As much as I am not a tub person, I would want a tub for the small kids and resale.

I vote for the bath in the hall. Some parents want to shower their kids starting at age 4. Some want the option of baths for much longer, even into young adulthood. You don't know what your hypothetical children will prefer and you have no idea what any future buyer will prefer. A shower/tub combo in a hall bath is quite innocuous for those who don't use a tub and a necessity for those who do. Plus it's not only good for bathing little kids. Who wants to give their labrador a bath in their beautiful master soaker tub? Or fill a scrub bucket in the kitchen sink and lug it upstairs to wash the bathrooms? Or support a sick kid who just woke up puking and shower them off? (Sitting them in the bath to shower them is *much* easier I assure you) All those things are really difficult in a wide, deep soaker tub.

Whether or not you choose to have a second en suite is up to you but remember this: if one kid gets their own bathroom, the other should too. It's fairly easy to justify having to share a bathroom and impossible to justify preferential treatment.

I agree that it's hard to give specific advice without knowing the layout and style of the house. You can rest assured that your kids will grow up knowing that whatever you have is "normal" so don't worry about planning for their potential preferences which are completely unpredictable. Soon enough they will grow up and be able to create the homes they've always dreamed of!