Body wash vs bar soap in Airbnb bathrooms: eight months testing and what I've settled on

The bar soap I kept avoiding

For four years I didn't use bar soap in any of my Airbnbs. The thinking — which I picked up from various hosting groups and never really questioned — was that bar soap feels unhygienic to guests, that multiple people sharing a bar is off-putting, and that liquid soap in a pump dispenser is just cleaner and more professional-looking.

Then I went on holiday. I stayed in a place in Lisbon — a flat in Bairro Alto, a two-bed run by a Portuguese host who'd been doing it for about a decade. The bathroom had a ceramic dish with a locally made olive oil bar soap, a small bottle of argan oil conditioner, and nothing else. It looked genuinely nice. And I realised I had absolutely no problem using the bar.

I came home and started reconsidering my automatic preference for liquid soap.

The hygiene question — what the research actually says

The concern about bar soap is that it retains bacteria from previous users. Studies have looked at this. The short version: bar soap can harbour bacteria on its surface, but studies that have looked at whether those bacteria transfer to hands in practice have generally found the levels are too low to be clinically significant. The wet environment on a used bar of soap is not, it turns out, a meaningful bacterial reservoir for the kinds of quantities that cause infections.

What does affect the hygiene of a bar of soap: whether it dries between uses (it should), whether it sits in standing water (it shouldn't — a proper soap dish with drainage is important), and whether it's replaced regularly. A fresh bar at each new guest is completely hygienic. The hygiene concern with bar soap in STRs is largely a perception issue, not a microbiology one.

That said: perception is real. A guest who thinks bar soap is unhygienic is going to have a reaction to finding one, even if they're wrong. So it's worth thinking about which of your guests this actually matters to.

The case for bar soap in 2026

Three things have shifted in the last couple of years that make bar soap more interesting for STR use:

First, sustainability. Liquid soap comes in plastic bottles. If you're buying individual small bottles per guest, you're generating a lot of single-use plastic per year across multiple properties. I did the maths last year: five properties, two turnovers a week average, three individual bottles per bathroom (shower gel, shampoo, conditioner hand soap) — that's about 1,500 plastic bottles a year if you're replacing every time. Some guests notice and care about this. Increasing numbers mention sustainability in reviews and messaging.

Second, cost. A decent bar of soap — something in the Lush, Wilko, or Molton Brown bath soap range — costs between 80p and £3.50 depending on brand. One bar per guest. Zero waste from half-used liquid product. Depending on what you're currently spending on individual liquid minis, a switch to bars might be neutral or slightly cheaper per stay. It's not a dramatic saving but it's worth knowing the number.

Third, aesthetic. This is the one I underestimated. A nice ceramic soap dish with a well-chosen bar looks deliberate. It looks like someone curated the bathroom. A plastic bottle of Baylis & Harding raspberry or a basic Tesco shower gel mini doesn't have that effect, however inoffensive it is.

The case against

Guests who go through a lot of soap. In a one-night stay, a single bar is absolutely fine. In a five-night stay with four guests, a standard 100g bar might be half-gone by checkout — and if it's fallen off the dish and spent time on a wet bathroom floor, it's in a bad state. You'd need to replace mid-stay, which adds operational complexity.

Soap dishes need maintenance. A ceramic dish that's had four bars through it and hasn't been properly cleaned between turnovers gets a grim soap residue around the edges. That looks bad. The liquid pump bottle that's been wiped over quickly is less susceptible to this specific problem.

Guest perception variation. For some guests — I'd particularly think about guests from certain regions and older guests — bar soap is genuinely off-putting in a shared accommodation context. The perceived shared nature of a bar soap (even though it's fresh and new) can cause a negative reaction that a pump bottle doesn't. You can mitigate this by leaving the bar in its wrapper until arrival and adding a small note — "fresh bar soap for your stay" — but it adds a step.

What I've settled on

A hybrid approach across five properties, tested over the last eight months.

Bar soap at the sink: yes. I use the Method bar soap (from Waitrose or Amazon, around £2.50 for 170g) on a white ceramic dish. It's palm oil free, it smells good, it looks considered. Fresh bar for each guest. The cost is roughly the same as the Method foaming pump soap I was using before, once you account for waste.

Shower products: still liquid, still pump dispensers, refilled in bulk. The shower is where guests want a proper lather and the pump setup means I control quality and quantity. Bar shampoo is a separate category — some people love it, some hate it — and I haven't gone there.

Body wash in the shower: liquid, from a pump bottle. I've tried bar soap in the shower as well and the feedback was mixed — one guest loved it and mentioned it in a review (positively), two guests didn't use it at all and used their own product instead, and one left a note asking if there was shower gel. Not worth the friction.

So: bar soap at the sink is a reasonable call for most STR properties. Shower products: liquid in pump dispensers. Don't overthink the body wash vs bar soap debate for the shower — stick with liquid. But the sink is worth reconsidering.

The brands I'd recommend

Budget end: Simple Kind to Skin bar soap (fragrance-free, sensitive skin, about 60p per bar) — guests with sensitivities appreciate the lack of fragrance, and it presents well. Wilko own-brand glycerine bars at around 45p are also fine for properties where cost is the priority.

Mid-range: Method bar soap at around £2.50 per bar, or the Dove Beauty Bar (two for about £2.50 in supermarkets) — both last well and look good on a ceramic dish. The Dove is particularly generous in size (100g) which matters for longer stays.

Higher end: Molton Brown has a range of bath soaps at around £6–8 a bar. I use these in one of my Edinburgh properties specifically because the listing is pitched at higher price points and the bathroom aesthetic needed to match. One bar per stay. It works. Do I believe guests are getting £6 of value from the soap? Probably not. But the bathroom photograph for the listing looks excellent and two guests have mentioned the soap specifically in reviews. At the nightly rates that property charges, £6 per soap is well within the amenity budget.

Whatever you choose: pair it with a proper soap dish. No draining dish means no dry bar, which means soap that goes mushy after two days and looks neglected. A ceramic dish with drainage holes costs £4–8 from most homeware shops and makes the whole setup work.