Bidet Use Around the World: Which Countries Use Bidets

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Here is a number that surprises most Americans: about 97% of homes in Italy have a bidet, and roughly 80% of households in Japan own an electronic version built into the toilet. In the United States, the figure is under 15%.

Bidet use is not a fringe habit. Across Southern Europe, East Asia, the Middle East, and most of South America, cleaning with water is simply how people use the bathroom. The countries that reach for toilet paper instead, the US, the UK, and much of Northern Europe, are the global minority. Below we map who uses bidets, by how much, and the surprisingly specific history that drew the line where it sits today.

If you are new to the fixture itself, start with our explainer on what a bidet is and then come back for the global picture.

Which Countries Use Bidets: The Adoption Map

We compiled the figures below from World Population Review's country rankings, Japanese consumer-durables surveys, EU market data, and historical adoption sources. Treat them as well-supported estimates rather than census-grade precision. National bidet statistics are patchy, and different sources count standalone bidets, handheld sprayers, and electronic seats differently.

A few patterns jump out. Water-based cleaning dominates wherever one of three forces took hold: a Mediterranean bidet tradition, an East Asian embrace of bathroom technology, or a religious norm around washing. The holdouts are mostly English-speaking and Northern European countries where toilet paper became entrenched first and never lost its grip.

Italy: The Bidet Capital of the World

No country comes close to Italy. At roughly 97% household ownership, the bidet is as standard in an Italian bathroom as the sink.

The reason is not only cultural, it is legal. Since 1975, Italian building code has required a bidet in every newly constructed home. That single regulation turned a popular fixture into a near-universal one. Ask many Italians about a bathroom without a bidet and you will get a look of genuine confusion; to them it is like a kitchen without a sink.

Italy's bidet is the classic standalone basin: a separate porcelain fixture next to the toilet that you straddle after going. It is a different model from the seat-integrated approach Japan made famous, but it achieves the same result.

Japan: Where the Bidet Became a Gadget

Japan tells the other great bidet story, and it is a story about technology rather than tradition. About 80% of Japanese homes have an electronic bidet seat, the type most people know by Toto's brand name, Washlet.

Japan had little standalone-bidet history before the modern era. What changed everything was Toto's launch of the Washlet in 1980, an electric seat with a retractable warm-water nozzle, a heated seat, adjustable pressure, and an air dryer. It fit Japan's small bathrooms (no second fixture required) and its appetite for clever household technology. Within a few decades it went from novelty to default.

This is why "do they use bidets in Japan" has a slightly different answer than "do they use bidets in Italy." Italy uses a fixture. Japan uses a feature built into the toilet. If you want that same experience at home, our roundup of the best bidet seats covers the Washlet-style units that brought the Japanese standard to the US market.

The Middle East, South Asia, and the Religious Roots of Washing

Some of the highest water-cleaning rates on earth are not in Italy or Japan at all. Across the Middle East, South Asia, and much of Southeast Asia, washing with water is close to universal, with usage in many countries reaching 90% to 100%.

The instrument is usually not a standalone bidet but a handheld sprayer, often called a shattaf, or a simple water vessel known as a lota. The practice is rooted in religious and cultural cleanliness norms, particularly in Muslim-majority countries where washing after using the toilet is an expectation rather than a preference.

The takeaway for the global map: if you measure "people who clean with water" rather than "people who own a ceramic bidet," the practice covers a clear majority of the world's population. Toilet paper, not the bidet, is the regional oddity.

South America: How Bidets Crossed the Atlantic

South America is one of the strongest bidet regions outside Europe, and the reason is migration. Waves of Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese immigrants carried the standalone bidet to the New World, where it took root.

In Argentina and Venezuela, household ownership runs an estimated 80% to 90%, putting them in the same tier as Mediterranean Europe. Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay are close behind. In much of the region, a bidet is simply part of a normal bathroom, no more remarkable than a towel rack.

Europe Is Split Down the Middle

Europe is not one bidet story but two. The Mediterranean south, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece, and historically France, embraced the standalone bidet centuries ago. France is actually the birthplace of the fixture, with the first bidets appearing in upper-class French homes in the early 1700s. Ironically, French adoption has slipped over the decades and now sits closer to 40% to 50% as new apartments leave the bidet out.

The north and west, including the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia, never built the habit. The UK in particular has near-zero ownership and a long history of treating the bidet as a foreign curiosity. The line between washing Europe and wiping Europe runs roughly along the same cultural seam that separates Mediterranean and Northern lifestyles in plenty of other areas, from diet to daily routine.

Why Don't Americans Use Bidets?

If most of the world washes, why does the US, along with the UK and Canada, still mostly wipe? The answer is a stack of historical accidents rather than any single cause.

Bathrooms were built for paper. The US adopted indoor plumbing relatively late and standardized bathroom layouts around the toilet, sink, and tub. American bathrooms were also smaller than the spacious European rooms that could fit a second basin, so there was literally no room for a bidet.

A wartime image problem. Many American soldiers in World War II first encountered bidets in European brothels. The fixture picked up an association with immorality, and returning veterans were in no hurry to advocate for something they had seen in a bordello. Early on, bidets were also linked, inaccurately, with contraception.

Toilet paper got there first. In the early 1900s, companies like Scott Paper marketed toilet tissue aggressively as the modern, hygienic, all-American solution. By the time bidets might have caught on, paper was already the cultural default, and defaults are hard to dislodge.

Habit, plain and simple. Most Americans learned to use the bathroom with toilet paper because their parents did, and theirs before them. Unfamiliarity, not any real drawback, keeps the cycle going.

The encouraging part: this is changing fast. Household penetration is still under 15%, but the share of Americans who say they have used a bidet jumped from roughly 26% to 37% in a single year. Cheap attachments that clamp onto an existing toilet, the 2020 toilet paper shortage, and growing awareness of the hygiene and cost savings have all pushed adoption up. The US is early on the curve, not stuck off it.

What the Global Map Tells You

Step back and the pattern is clear. Bidet use is the world norm, expressed three different ways: the Mediterranean standalone basin, the Japanese electronic seat, and the Middle Eastern and South Asian handheld sprayer. Toilet paper as a primary cleaning method is concentrated in a handful of English-speaking and Northern European countries.

For an American or Brit, that reframes the question. The interesting puzzle is not "why does the rest of the world use bidets" but "why did a few countries stop." And once you have tried one, the appeal that drove 97% of Italy and 80% of Japan tends to make a lot more sense.

If you want to join the majority, the easiest on-ramp is a clamp-on attachment or an electric seat for your existing toilet. Our guide to the best bidet seats walks through the options, from $40 attachments to full Washlet-style units, so you can find the version that fits your bathroom and budget.