Changing room

Changing stalls are small stalls where clothes can be changed in privacy. Clothes are usually stored in lockers. There are usually no separate areas for men and women. They are often combined with gender-separated communal showers. Most public pools have changing facilities of this kind alongside communal changing rooms.

Lockers and bench in changeroom

Locker rooms are thus named because they provide lockers for the storage of one's belongings. Alternatively, they may have a locker room attendant who will keep a person's belongings until one comes to retrieve them. Locker rooms are usually open spaces where people change together, but there are separate areas, or separate locker rooms, for men and women. Sometimes they are used in swimming complexes.

Locking devices used in locker rooms have traditionally been key or coin lockers, or lockers that are secured with a combination lock. Newer locker rooms may be automated, with robotic machines to store clothes, with such features as a fingerprint scanner to enroll and for later retrieval. Locker rooms in some water parks use a microchip equipped wristband. The same wristband that unlocks the lockers can be used to purchase food and drinks and other items in the water park.

Some communal changing rooms are only supposed to be used by groups of persons, not individuals. In this case, there may be no lockers. Instead, the entire room is locked in order to protect belongings from theft.

Locker rooms are also used in many middle schools and high schools. Most of them include showers for after Physical Education.

A changeroom in a department store

A block of clothing store fitting rooms in Denmark

Changeroom sign in clothing store

Fitting rooms, or "dressing rooms", are rooms where people try on clothes, such as in a department store. The rooms are usually individual rooms in which a person tries on clothes to determine fit before making a purchase. People do not always use the fitting rooms to change, as to change implies to remove one set of clothes and put on another. Sometimes a person chooses to try on clothes over their clothes (such as sweaters or coats), but would still like to do this in private. Thus fitting rooms may be used for changing, or just for fitting without changing.

Retail establishments often post rules such as maximum number of items allowed in changing room, e.g. "no more than 4 items allowed in changing room".

It appears that the first store fitting rooms appeared with the spread of department stores.[2] Émile Zola noted their existence in his novel Au Bonheur des Dames (1883), and that they were then forbidden to men.[2] Some years later, when Henri Gervex, who painted Jeanne Paquin in 1906, that was no longer the case.[2]

In any case, Buster Keaton worked in one in an American 1928 silent comedy The Cameraman.[2] Since then, they have continued to provide comic scenes in films, for example in the 1995 French film Les Trois Frères.[2]

A green room is a room located backstage in a theatre or some such performance space where the actors (musicians, dancers etc.) wait before they go onstage. One theory of its naming is that it traditionally has green walls; as green is considered to have a calming effect and is meant to bring focus before the performance and calm nerves. Another is that performers in the green room are "Green to go", ready to go on stage. Green rooms are usually located backstage, but sometimes under the stage, or to the side, they can also be located anywhere where there is room to put a communal space. In exhibition halls and convention centers, Pipe and Drape "rooms" may be constructed as a Green rooms. Green rooms are usually not separated by gender, because performers often change in separate, usually gender separated, dressing rooms and congregate in the Green Room, once largely or completely in costume to help each other focus and calm nerves of other performers. Green Rooms may be separated by performing group, or the main headliner may have their own Green Room, and the supporting acts share another. Green rooms are often also used on non-show days and during the install and strike of productions as a break room or meeting room, and may contain a fridge, microwave, coffee machine, or water fountain.

Most ready-made clothing shops, especially those in the large shopping malls, have one or more fitting rooms, which are designated booths or try rooms that enable customers to try on clothing to check its size, comfort, and suitability for purchase.

In larger Victorian houses it was common to have accessible from the bedroom a boudoir for the lady of the house and a dressing room for the gentleman[3] (see also his Cabinet (room)).

Before the advent of modern plumbing, there existed a number of places for washing one's clothes and body. Cleansing stations were separated by gender, and combined the function of cleaning clothes with cleaning of the body. The closest modern equivalent would be a combination laundromat plus locker room with showers.

During the nineteenth, and early part of the twentieth century, the increase of urbanization caused an increase in the spread of disease. Poor hygiene was determined to be the cause. Since many families did not have practical means to clean themselves or their clothes, public cleansing stations were established for their use.