Toilet roll quantities for Airbnb turnovers: how many rolls per bathroom and the bulk format I switched to

Toilet roll is the consumable I got wrong for longer than I'd like to admit. For the first year and a half of running Airbnbs, I'd do a supply check before each turnover, look at how many rolls were left, and 'top it up' to what seemed like enough. Vague, expensive, and — twice — embarrassing.

Once I had a couple arrive for a four-night stay and find two sheets left on the roll. Just two sheets. I know this because they messaged me about it at 7:30pm, very politely, in the way that says a lot about their restraint. The second time, a group of four found three rolls for a five-night stay in my Brighton flat. Three rolls for four people for five days is — you can do that maths — not enough.

Fixed quantities fixed both problems. Here's what I run.

The par-level calculation I use

My rule of thumb: two rolls per bathroom, per guest, per night of stay. That's on the generous side, intentionally. I'd rather have a guest find four rolls left over than send a message at 8pm asking where the extras are.

In practice, for my standard two-bedroom flats in Brighton and Edinburgh, here's what gets set out at each turnover:

Two-night stay (2 guests, 1 bathroom): 8 rolls minimum. I set out 12. Four on the holder and backup, eight stacked visibly in the cupboard under the sink. Guests feel like there's abundance. They rarely use all of it, and leftover stock just rolls into the next turnover.

Four-night stay (4 guests, 1 bathroom): 32 rolls theoretically. I don't put 32 rolls in a bathroom. I put 12 out as the visible starter set, leave a note pointing to where extras are (the under-sink cupboard), and make sure the property has at least 24 more in the supply cupboard. For anything over four nights with four guests, I message mid-stay offering to drop extras off. Nobody has ever taken me up on this. But the offer matters — it signals that I'm paying attention.

My Lake District cottage sleeps six and has two bathrooms. For a weekend (two nights, six guests), I put 8 rolls in each bathroom. That's 16 total. More than the formula says, but it's a two-bathroom property and guests distribute themselves unpredictably.

What I stopped buying: supermarket brands

For the first year I was buying toilet roll at Tesco. Andrex, the standard nine-pack, at whatever the current price was. Perfectly adequate. But I was buying it during my weekly personal shop, mixing it with my own household supplies, losing track of how much went where, and generally running a chaos-adjacent system.

The switch to bulk purchasing changed this. It's not just cheaper per roll — which it is — it's about having a clear stock level that tells you when to reorder, separate from your own household.

Bulk formats: what actually works in an Airbnb context

There are three real options: Amazon Business, Costco, and trade/cleaning supply companies like Bunzl or WS Packaging.

Amazon Business is what I use for most consumables because of the convenience — same delivery infrastructure, business account pricing, and Subscribe and Save options on the lines I go through fastest. For toilet roll specifically, I buy Tork Advanced T4 white roll, 2-ply, 200 sheets, in a case of 36. It's commercial-grade, which means it's slightly thinner than Andrex Ultra Soft but perfectly acceptable and noticeably cheaper per roll. Guests have never mentioned it. In four years and hundreds of turnovers, not once. They'll mention a scratched frying pan. They will not write a review about toilet paper texture unless it's actually awful.

Costco is worth it if you have a card and a property close enough to justify the trip. Their Kirkland Signature toilet tissue is 2-ply, comes in a case of 36, and is genuinely good quality — better than Tork, honestly, and competitive on price per roll when you factor in Costco's pricing structure. The problem is the trip. My Brighton flat is 25 minutes from the Croydon Costco. That's a meaningful errand if I'm doing it just for toilet roll. So Costco makes sense for me when I'm doing a big combined run — bedding supplies, cleaning products, kitchen consumables — but not as a standalone trip.

Trade suppliers are worth exploring if you're at five or more properties. Bunzl, Lyreco, and smaller regional cleaning supply companies will often do an account with credit terms, and you can get cases of 48 or 64 rolls at very competitive rates. I've not fully moved to this model yet — I keep meaning to and then the Amazon delivery arrives and I don't bother. But for anyone running a larger portfolio, it's worth a call.

The format question: standard roll vs jumbo vs interleaved

Standard toilet rolls are the right choice for almost all Airbnb properties. Guests know how to use them. They fit standard holders. Nothing weird happens.

Jumbo rolls are brilliant in commercial settings — hotels, office blocks, leisure centres — but they require a different holder, guests find them slightly unsettling in a home environment, and they signal 'institutional' in a way that doesn't pair well with the 'home away from home' thing you're trying to project.

Interleaved (flat-pack) tissue dispensers are even more institutional. Unless you're running a cleaning operation where you're also stocking communal areas, forget these exist.

Stick with standard 2-ply rolls, 200 sheets or more per roll. That's the sweet spot between guest familiarity and decent value per sheet.

The starter roll setup that looks like care

One thing I started doing a couple of years ago: the first roll in each bathroom gets folded into a hotel-style point. Just a triangular fold on the end. Takes about four seconds per roll. But guests notice. It signals that the property has been properly cleaned and prepared, not just chucked back together after the last checkout. Two of my five-star reviews over the last eighteen months have mentioned 'the small thoughtful touches' — and I'm fairly confident the folded toilet paper is part of that, alongside the welcome card and the coffee pods on the counter.

It's four seconds. Do it.

Storage: where the bulk stock goes

Every property has a clearly labelled supply cupboard — usually under the bathroom sink, or in a bedroom wardrobe if the bathroom is too small. In the supply cupboard: toilet rolls, spare soap bars, a spare toilet brush (in packaging), and a small laminated card with reorder notes for my cleaner. The cleaner knows to message me when the stock drops below eight rolls in any property. That's my trigger to reorder, not 'when it runs out'.

Running out mid-stay is a guest experience failure. It's avoidable. The buffer stock in the cupboard is how you avoid it.

The one number to remember

If I had to distill this to a single rule: start every turnover with at least twelve rolls visible or accessible in a two-bedroom property. For every extra bedroom, add four. For every extra bathroom, add four more. That's not precise maths — it's a useful approximation that stops you running short without cluttering the property with an absurd quantity of toilet paper.

I've been running that formula for about eighteen months now. No mid-stay toilet roll messages. Not one. Given that I was getting two or three a year before that, I'm happy with the trade-off.

A note on branded vs unbranded

Should you put Andrex in the bathrooms and nothing else? Probably not necessary. Guests aren't checking the brand — they're checking there's enough. Commercial 2-ply from Amazon Business or Costco is fine. The one thing I'd avoid is the very cheapest single-ply rolls, which are recognisably bad the moment a guest picks one up. That's a texture that makes people wonder what else you've cut corners on. Don't do it.

Somewhere between 'obviously institutional single-ply' and 'branded luxury multi-ply' is where you want to be. Tork Advanced or Costco Kirkland both sit comfortably in that zone. Buy in bulk. Keep a fixed quantity per turnover. Track the stock once a week. That's the whole system.