10 Home Features You'll Regret When Selling

A video I made about home features you'll regret got about two million views, and then a lot of you told me I got one wrong. An orthopedic surgeon left a comment with 1,400 likes calling the freestanding tub I recommended a suicide tub, because in his line of work he sees exactly what happens when someone in their 60s tries to step over a tall, slick wall into standing water with nothing to hold onto. He wasn't alone. So today, the 10 features you said you regret the most, ranked by your own votes, plus the correction I owe you.

1. Doorless Showers

Your top pick with 1,474 likes. A big open walk-in with no door, maybe a single glass panel, photographs beautifully in every remodel and design magazine. Take a shower in one in February and all the heat you paid for walks straight out the opening, leaving you doing the little rotation to stay warm while water soaks your floor, vanity, and bath mat every single day. Water that constantly escapes the shower area finds its way into the subfloor and drywall, which becomes an inspection item that turns into a negotiation at resale. If you love the open look, keep the walk-in footprint but add a fixed glass panel that actually contains the spray, and put the showerhead on the wall furthest from the opening.

2. Cabinets That Don't Run to the Ceiling

1,460 likes, and one commenter nailed it: that gap collects dust and grime and is a pain to clean. That 12 to 18 inch gap above your uppers does nothing for you, it isn't storage or design, it's a shelf for grease you can't reach without a step stool, so you clean it once a year at most. People fill it with fake plants and baskets, turning a gap that collects grease into a display that collects grease. Ceiling-height cabinets make a kitchen read taller and more custom; that gap makes an expensive kitchen read average, and buyers notice in the first 10 seconds even if they never say it out loud. If you're redoing cabinets, run them to the ceiling; if not, crown molding to close the gap is one of the highest-return kitchen changes most people never make.

3. Freestanding Tubs (My Correction)

In the last video I said skip the whirlpool tub for a freestanding one. The whirlpool tub is still a bad buy, but recommending a freestanding tub was bad advice, and you were right to call it out. A freestanding tub has a tall, rounded, slippery wall with nothing structural nearby, so you can't mount a grab bar to it. Getting in means lifting a leg over a high edge and planting a wet foot on a curved surface with nothing to hold. For a lot of buyers, especially in their 50s and 60s, that's a genuinely dangerous piece of furniture that gets more dangerous every year, and it reads as a project they'll have to redo rather than a selling feature. The better move is an alcove tub with a wall behind it you can mount a grab bar to, or skip the tub in the primary entirely for a walk-in shower with a bench, keeping a tub elsewhere in the house for resale.

4. Touchscreen and Wi-Fi-Connected Appliances

652 likes. A knob lasts 30 years; a touchscreen lasts until the control board fails, and then you're looking at a $400 to $800 part on a refrigerator that's otherwise perfect, often discontinued after about 7 years. Connectivity adds its own failure points: the fridge needs a software update, the oven wants an account, the app gets discontinued, and the feature you paid extra for stops working. Nobody has ever paid more for a house because the oven had Wi-Fi. Buy the version with physical controls and put the money saved into a better compressor or burner.

5. Barn Doors on Bathrooms

463 likes: they're noisy and don't offer true privacy. A barn door doesn't seal, so there's a gap on every side by design, which means sound, light, and smell all pass through in the one room where all three matter most. They're also loud, and the rolling sound that's charming twice becomes the noise that wakes you up at 6am. They eat an entire wall section that could hold art, a mirror, or a towel bar. A pocket door is the better move if you're opening up walls anyway; if not, a regular door with good hardware is fine.

6. Pedestal Sinks

455 likes, and the complaint is simple: no place to set down a glass or a razor. A pedestal sink is beautiful and completely useless, with no counter and no storage underneath, so your soap, toothbrush, and razor end up on the back of the toilet or in a basket that solves a problem you created. In a powder room nobody uses to get ready, fine; in a bathroom someone actually uses each morning, you've traded all function for one photo. A small vanity, even 18 inches, gives you a surface and somewhere to hide things.

7. TV Over the Fireplace

258 likes: an abomination, and for two real reasons. Optimal viewing height puts the center of the screen at eye level while seated, around 42 inches, but a TV over the fireplace sits around 6 feet up, so you're staring up at an angle for a two-hour movie. Second, fireplaces produce heat, heat rises, and electronics don't love running through that cycle every time you use the fireplace. You've also created two focal points competing with each other, which is why the furniture never quite works. Put the TV on the largest adjacent wall at seated eye level and let the fireplace be the fireplace; if the layout truly forces it, a pull-down articulating mount solves the angle.

8. Pot Fillers

214 likes, and the comment made me laugh: it makes filling the pot easier, but you still carry the pot full of hot water back to the sink. It solves the easy direction of a two-direction problem, the trip to the stove with cold water, while leaving the harder trip back with boiling water untouched. Meanwhile you've run a water line into the wall directly behind your cooktop, a joint you'll never see until it fails and leaks somewhere behind the wall. Save the money.

9. No Real Entryway

179 likes: people at the front door shouldn't see into the entire home. This is the open floor plan problem applied specifically to the front door. Open the door for a delivery driver and they see the kitchen, living room, and whatever state the house is in, with no landing zone for keys, mail, shoes, or bags, so it all migrates to the kitchen counter permanently. A buyer's first impression happens in the first 10 seconds through that door, and if it's I can see the whole house and there's nowhere to stand, the home loses the sense of scale that makes it feel bigger. A console table, a runner, and a light fixture different from the living room's can define an entry without framing walls; a half wall or slatted screen works even better.

10. Vessel Sinks

The bowl sits exposed on top of the counter with the entire rim vulnerable to a hair dryer, an elbow, or a cleaning bucket, and once it chips, it needs replacing. They also splash constantly, since the basin is shallow and the faucet has to sit tall to clear the rim, pushing water over the edge and into the seam where the bowl meets the vanity, where mildew grows and is nearly impossible to clean. Add a 5-inch bowl on top of a standard vanity and the sink becomes chest height on a shorter adult and unusable for a child. Undermount the sink instead: easier to clean, nothing to chip, and you can wipe the counter straight into the basin.

The thread running through all 10 of these is that every one photographs well, which is exactly why they keep getting specified, in listing photos, on Instagram, on Pinterest. Almost nobody talks about what it's like to live with them for 10 years. Before you spend money on any upgrade, ask whether it makes your daily life better or just makes one photograph better once. If you're weighing a remodel with an eventual sale in mind, that question is worth asking before the contractor shows up, not after the invoice arrives.