The 12 Coolest Bar and Restaurant Bathrooms in Denver

“Bathrooms are like menus,” says Jon Hartman, the design director at Wunder Werkz, the creative force behind some of the Front Range’s coolest bars, restaurants, and hotels like Semiprecious, Yacht Club, and the A Frame Club. “You can just print your list of food items on a white piece of paper, and it’s gonna do the job. The same goes for a very utilitarian bathroom with four white walls, a toilet, and a sink. But every step you take past that is another moment of intention and storytelling that you can bring forward. It’s an opportunity to play up the deeper parts of the restaurant’s character.”

In other words: The bathroom is where a restaurant can loosen its collar a little. It’s a pocket-size world apart from the dining room, a place for inside jokes, mood lighting, oddball art, and tiny details that might get lost in the main space. “You can play with elements not suitable for all eyes at once, more adult,” Hartman says, pointing to Yacht Club’s Playboy tear-sheet wallpapered ceiling as proof. (That same bathroom also features a framed photograph of a urinal from local author Brian Fouhy’s book Occupied, which documents bathrooms with near fine-art seriousness.)

It’s the unexpected details that get people talking: Postino’s custom-stamped TP, the mob posters in Gaetano’s loo, and the bathroom exteriors at Bang up to the Elephant that bamboozle you into thinking you’re walking into a Porta Potty. Of course, in an era where every moody mirror and colored light bulb risks entering what Hartman calls the “arms race for Instagramability,” the challenge is making a space that photographs well without feeling engineered solely for the selfie. The best bathroom design, he argues, doesn’t scream for attention. It simply creates an atmosphere people naturally want to remember—and, inevitably, document.

The best restaurant bathrooms don’t stop at the visual, either. They flirt with all the senses: Maybe the playlist shifts from party to private lounge, the lighting softens, the scent changes from wood fire and garlic to perfume and incense.

While “the gold standard for interesting bathrooms is obviously Sketch in London where guests find a forest of individual pods in a stained glass room,” Hartman says, Denver has been building a roster of bathrooms worth talking about too. Below, 12 must-see (must-pee?) bar and restaurant bathrooms in the Mile High City.

Cirrus

• Address: 3200 E. Colfax Ave., Denver (Congress Park)
• Editor’s take: The higher you get, the more incredible you will find these bathrooms, and, luckily, there are four different rooms to experience.

It just makes sense that Denver’s most stylish pot den would have stellar bathrooms. Designed by Littleton-based Inside Stories, there are four distinct bathrooms, each elevated by your altered state.

First up, a disco-ball-adorned room changes colorscape seasonally, so in June expect a rainbow for Pride. Next, a public transit-themed bathroom features RTD signs printed with Stop 420 and a spray-paint graffiti peacock by local artist Sunny Morrell. A third room follows Cirrus’ Nana Rule—if your nana wouldn’t approve, don’t do it—with different “Blessed” prints, nicknacks, crochet needles, and a message board of letters written by real grandmothers who’ve visited the pot lounge. Lastly, there’s a garden-themed loo with a unique floral-printed sink and art work by local artist Grow Low. This winter, guests will have three more bathrooms to check out.

Hey Kiddo

• Address: 4337 Tennyson St., Denver (Berkeley)
• Editor’s take: While the minuscule mirrors might be too small for a selfie, it’s ideal for capturing your peace sign and peacing out.

“Hey Kiddo is all about letting loose and having a good time,” says Regular Architecture founder and designer Kevin Nguyen, who conceptualized the restaurant’s interior. And the kaleidoscopic bathroom, which bursts with color from multi-hued tiles covering the walls, plays into that. Instead of a huge mirror to hyper-fixate on your flaws, the tiny mirrors here encourage you to “view both the space and yourself from a different angle and in different light focusing on small moments,” Nguyen says.

Fino

• Address: 3015 E. Colfax Ave., Denver (City Park)
• Editor’s take: The luxury here is understated. Instead of ostentatious spectacle, the hotel’s $22 million renovation budget quietly announces itself in every carefully considered finish.

Fino, the Mediterranean restaurant inside the recently remodeled All Inn Hotel, carries its new midcentury modern architecture and design aesthetic all the way into the washroom. Designed by Abigail Plantier and the team at Maximalist Interior Design, the space layers terrazzo tile, wagyu marble countertops, and hand-applied Venetian plaster into a moody, copper-toned space. Oblong mirrors hang above rock basin sinks like functional sculptures, while the stone basins quietly nod to the space’s former life as Rockbar.

The Front Porch

• Address: 1215 15th St., Denver (Union Station)
• Editor’s take: The bar offers a very popular Wednesday Flip Night where you flip a coin to see if you pay for your drink. Don’t worry, if you flip wrong, you can throw yourself a pity party in the loo.

Sure, sometimes you head to the bathroom because you need to go. But other times you just need a pick-me-up (no, not that kind). At the Front Porch, push the red button to turn the room into a rave, complete with a flashing disco ball and speakers blaring the party anthem: ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.” Suddenly, your bathroom break becomes the most fun you’ve had all night.

FlyteCo Tower

• Address: 3120 Uinta St., Denver (Central Park)
• Editor’s take: Sure, take the historic tower tour, but head to the bathrooms for the real deep dive into the weirdly fascinating parts of aviation history.

Before there was Denver International Airport, Blucifer, and the A Line, Denverites flew out of Stapleton International Airport. The airport shut down in 1995 and left behind a 164-foot air traffic control tower and its attached base. FlyteCo Tower—an eatertainment spot with bowling lanes, pinball machines, Skee-Ball, and other games—took over the building; the newly added Over Flyte space has suite-style golf simulators and high-tech axe-throwing. The building pays homage to aviation history, and the bathrooms are no exception. Stalls are wrapped in a colorful collage of vintage flight maps, neon bag tags, and safety brochures, many from now defunct airlines like Pan Am. But even better, live air traffic control broadcasts from DIA are piped in through the sound system. —Brittany Anas 

Glo Noodle House

• Address: 4450 W. 38th Ave., Denver (Berkeley)
• Editor’s take: While you can’t take any of the bodega’s snacks, you can take a selfie with them.

“We wanted the back hallway of the restaurant and the bathrooms to feel like a Tokyo alleyway,” says Ariana Teigland, Glo’s co-owner. As such, one of the restrooms is designed to resemble an arcade, with a custom Pacman-inspired cabinet built by Teigland’s dad that fits around the sink. The other is a bodega lookalike that’s full of Japanese snacks, a flower display, and cigarette packs. Nothing is for sale; it’s just for looksies (and selfies). —BA 

Good Luck Club 

• Address: 1350 S. Broadway, Denver (Platt Park)
• Editor’s take: The boombox in the bathroom is stocked with more throwbacks than the CD case in your first car (think: Avril Lavigne and Colbie Caillat).

Good Luck Club opened this spring, giving Millennials (and those that support them) a place to feel young again. This proudly Y2K space boasts old-school Nintendo video games for you to dive back into, CD players where you hand-pick the playlist, and drinks that taste like boozy Capri Sun. And like any great early-aughts rager, the bathroom is likewise pimped out. The ladies’ room is pink and purple and glowing with neon and fun decor like CD vines and fuzzy lampshades. A plush sofa is a nice upgrade from stall talk.

Kawa Ni

• Address: 1900 W. 32nd Ave., Denver (Highland)
• Editor’s take: Start on the gentlest setting. This is still a relationship, not a trust fall.

If there’s one bathroom in town guaranteed to send people back to the table evangelizing, it’s Kawa Ni. The sleek Japanese spot skips the selfie-bathroom trend entirely and instead goes straight for comfort, care, and a borderline spiritual level of personal service with customizable bidet toilets. Their heated seats immediately put you at ease as you tinker with adjustable spigot positions and water pressures. It’s less of a bathroom amenity and more the final course of hospitality.

La Forêt

• Address: 38 S. Broadway, Denver (Speer)
• Editor’s take: When you turn the faucet on, it takes a few seconds for the water to actually reach you (because it’s flowing down from the ceiling) so no need to call for help—it’s coming, just making its entrance.

Most restaurants with cool bathrooms boast impressive wallpaper. La Forêt wraps you in a full off-grid fantasy. Moss crawls up the walls, the stalls look hewn from timber, and water rains down chains from the ceiling creating a waterfall. It’s the kind of bathroom where someone at the table is bound to return saying, “You have to check it out.”

Milpero

• Address: 3455 Ringsby Court, Denver (Globeville)
• Editor’s take: Like a good tasting menu, the bathroom anticipates the needs you didn’t even know you have: mouthwash, feminine products, stain remover, dental pick, and, somewhat ominously, a timer.

Like Michelin-starred chef Johnny Curiel’s tasting menu restaurant itself, Milpero’s bathroom is interested in process as much as polish. Warm woods, exposed plumbing, visible butterfly joints, and a framed circuit board nod to the mechanics behind the magic—a fitting match for a concept built around corn, the farmers who grow it, and nixtamalization, the ancient technique that transforms maize into masa. An avocado-green sink, 1930s waterfall dresser, and a midcentury pendant light command the space aesthetically.

But the real luxury here is how hospitality extends into the restroom. A minimal but very thoughtful shelf of products, including mouthwash and stain remover, quietly handles every possible emergency before it becomes a crisis. And if things get really dire, there’s even a map of Denver’s tunnel system hanging on the wall, just in case you need a discreet escape route (warning, it might be a bit dated).

Renegade Brewing

• Address: 925 W. 9th Ave., Denver (Lincoln Park)
• Editor’s take: If you need a minute, you can count all 99 bottles of beer on the men’s bathroom wall.

You won’t need reading material (or a scroll sesh) to pass the time in Renegade’s facilities. Joe Palec’s doodle murals in both restrooms are chock-full of Easter eggs, and the murals covering the walls are themed around beer and pop culture, with more than 100 characters, logos, and references sprinkled throughout. In the men’s room, look for Smokey Bear, King of the Hill, and Mr. Bean. In the women’s room, spot references to Midsommar, Titanic, and The Wizard of Oz. It’s a fun Where’s Waldo–like activity where the toughest thing to find might be the willpower to return to your table.

Dear Emilia

• Address: 3615 Delgany St., Denver (RiNo)
• Editor’s take: Go ahead and practice your Italian—nobody’s judging your accent or lack thereof.

Step into Dear Emilia’s restroom and you won’t hear soft instrumentals trickling out the speakers. Instead, you’ll hear “Ciao, dov’è il bagno?” followed by “Hi, where is the bathroom?” At Emilia, the restroom soundtrack teaches Italian, so by the time you wash your hands you might also know how to order a Negroni or politely ask for more mortadella. Designed by Regular Architecture, the space carries the firm’s signature clean, restrained aesthetic, softened with playful color inspired by the gelato shops in Italy: One bathroom is wrapped in whimsical blush pink, the other in a pale pistachio green.