For the last three years Jake Welch has been 3D scanning public restrooms and archiving their peculiarities on a website called The Restroom Archive.
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Welch → scan → website
“It started as a joke,” Welch, the site’s creator and head archivist, told 404 Media.
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Welch → start → Media
The Restroom Archive describes itself as “an ongoing repository of publicly accessible restrooms.”
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Archive → describe → restrooms
When someone first visits the Archive, the site serves them a random 3D scan of a public restroom, its location, and a brief written description.
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site → visit → restroom
Hurricane, Utah’s Gypsy Emporium Antique Mall, for example, was scanned on April 11, 2026 and features paintings of a squirt gun on two of its four walls.
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Hurricane → scan → walls
“This restroom is accessed by passing through the antique mall through a back hallway and through the door of a jail cell,” the description says.
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description → access → cell
The renders are created with smartphone photogrammetry apps like Polycam which take hundreds of photos of an area and stitches them together to create a 3D environment.
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which → create → environment
The rooms appear to run at the seams as if they’re built from wax and the tech has trouble with reflective surfaces, sometimes rendering mirrors as an abyss.
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tech → appear → abyss
There’s often a blank spot or warp in the render where the person who took the photos has been marred out of the scan.
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who → ’ → scan
Sometimes the process captures a shoe or bit of arm which ends up in the final render unattached to a human.
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which → capture → human
The brief descriptions and imperfect scans make the Archive uncanny, but also funny.
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Archive → make → ?
“I had just discovered Polycam for the first time, and went out with friends one night, staying out late.
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I → discover → friends
We went to an IHOP, and I kind of started to scan the restaurant as a joke,” Welch, a freelance designer in NYC when he’s not scanning restrooms, told 404 Media.
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he → go → Media
A month later, he scanned a bathroom restaurant while out with his wife.
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he → scan → wife
“I came back and we were just laughing at how funny of an idea that was and I kind of just kept doing it,” he said.
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he → come → it
After scanning the restaurant, Welch went on a road trip with friends and scanned all the restrooms he hit along the way.
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he → scan → way
“After I had like five or six of them, I started noticing things that I liked about each of them.
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I → have → them
I was like: ‘I like that this one has this weird trash can from outside in the restroom,’ or ‘I love that this one has the hand dryer plugged into an outlet right below it.’
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dryer → like → it
It was all of these things that I thought were just hilarious, but also kind of interesting,” he said.
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he → think → things
Some of them show their wear from the use of people passing through them.
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Some → show → them
But some of them are really interesting and well-designed, well-decorated, or super eclectic,” Welch said.
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Welch → design → them
“Maybe this is the artist brain in me but I started to see them as storytelling.
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I → start → storytelling
They very much reflect the culture of where they’re situated and the people that are using them.”
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that → reflect → them
According to Welch, some of the most frightening restrooms are the ones he saw on road trips.
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he → accord → trips
“I feel like it’s always the ones that are on the highway as you’re passing through a truck stop.
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you → feel → stop
Sometimes in its bar where it’s just totally graffitied and worn.
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it → graffitie → bar
The mirror is completely covered, you can’t even see in it.
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you → cover → it
They’re often scary,” he said.
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he → ’re → ?
Welch said he’d also observed vast regional differences in America’s toilets.
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he → say → toilets
I think it has a lot to do with suburban versus urban,” he said.
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he → think → suburban
“Most of my restrooms in Utah are quite spacious, or maybe a little bit more commercial because there's a lot of [chain restaurants] in Utah.
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Most → be → Utah
Oftentimes, I'm scanning them in these tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurants where you have to walk through the kitchen to get to the back, and it's obvious that they don't let everybody use the restroom.
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everybody → scan → restroom
So those ones are usually a little bit more decrepit, a little bit more neglected, or sometimes they use them like storage rooms, a little bit more multifunctional because space is tighter in New York.”
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space → use → York
After three years of scanning the restrooms and uploading them, Welch decided to overhaul the Archive and open it up to public submissions.
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Welch → scan → submissions
“There are submission agreements that they have to abide by, but they're really loose,” he said.
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he → be → that
“It's it's things like just making sure that the scans are quality, making sure that they're not scanning anything too terrible or too gross because I have to vet all of them before they're posted, or, you know, making sure that people aren't trespassing or aren't scanning private residential restrooms or anything like that.
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people → make → that
Most Android and iOS smartphones can handle scanning a bathroom, but Welch preferred his iPhone.
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Welch → handle → iPhone
“If it’s a pro model, it has lidar, which uses lasers in your phone to measure distance,” he said.
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he → ’ → distance
“I don’t even know why they have that.
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they → know → that
It feels like the use cases are kind of limited, but for me, it’s like I can’t get any other phone besides a pro model anymore because I like the lidar too much for bathroom scanning.”
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I → feel → scanning
…and 26 more, not listed.
