7 Best RV Toilets For Small Bathrooms That Feel Surprisingly Spacious

Maximize your small RV bathroom. Our guide reviews 7 compact toilets with space-saving features like rotating bowls that add comfort without the bulk.

Squeezing past a bulky toilet to get to the shower is a daily dance nobody enjoys in a small RV bathroom. The right toilet doesn’t just save a few inches of floor space; it fundamentally changes how the entire room feels and functions. Choosing wisely is one of the highest-impact decisions you can make for improving daily life on the road.

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Sizing Up Toilets for Compact RV Bathrooms

The biggest mistake people make is looking only at the toilet’s footprint. The real issue is clearance—the space you need to sit down, stand up, and move around it without contorting yourself. A toilet with a round bowl and a compact base might save you six crucial inches of knee room compared to an elongated model.

Think about the "arc of movement." When the bathroom door swings open, does it clear the toilet? When you stand at the sink, is the toilet pressing into the back of your legs? A low-profile model, which sits shorter, can dramatically open up sightlines and make the room feel less crowded, even if its footprint is standard. It’s about managing the volume the toilet occupies, not just the square footage.

Ultimately, it comes down to two key measurements: the depth from the wall to the front of the bowl, and the width at its widest point. Get out your tape measure and map out the space. Don’t forget the "rough-in," the distance from the wall to the center of the floor drain. This will determine which direct-replacement models will even fit without major plumbing work.

Thetford Aqua-Magic V: A Classic Compact Choice

Thetford Aqua-Magic VI Toilet - Low Profile
$157.55

The Aqua-Magic Thetford 31833 VI offers a comfortable, residential-style RV toilet experience. Its SloClose seat and foot pedal flush provide ease of use, while improved mounting makes installation simple.

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08/01/2025 06:31 pm GMT

There’s a reason you see this toilet in thousands of RVs. The Aqua-Magic V is the definition of a reliable, no-frills workhorse designed specifically for tight spaces. Its all-plastic construction makes it incredibly lightweight, a critical factor for smaller rigs or those pushing their weight limits.

Its design is simple and effective. A single foot pedal handles both adding water to the bowl and flushing, making operation straightforward. Because it’s a standard in the industry, finding replacement parts at any RV shop is easy, which is a huge relief when you’re in the middle of nowhere. It’s available in both a high profile for comfort and a low profile that’s perfect for raised platforms or bathrooms where every vertical inch counts.

This isn’t the toilet you choose for a luxury feel. It’s the one you choose when you need a dependable, space-efficient, and lightweight solution that gets the job done without any fuss. For a direct swap-out in most factory-built RVs, the Aqua-Magic V is often the path of least resistance.

Dometic 310: Low-Profile Porcelain Comfort

Dometic 310 Toilet - White, Oblong, PowerFlush
$259.86

The Dometic 310 toilet offers a comfortable and efficient upgrade for your RV. Its PowerFlush system ensures a thorough clean with minimal water use, while the slow-close seat prevents slamming.

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08/02/2025 01:19 am GMT

The Dometic 310 is the perfect upgrade for anyone who wants the solid, residential feel of porcelain without the bulk. Its clever design pairs a full-size, elongated porcelain bowl with a compact plastic base, giving you the best of both worlds. The porcelain is significantly easier to clean and more durable than an all-plastic bowl, resisting scratches and stains over the long haul.

What sets it apart in a small space is the feeling of normalcy it provides. The comfortable height and slow-close wooden seat feel like something you’d have at home, which can make a huge difference in your daily comfort. Despite the elongated bowl, its overall profile is engineered to fit in the same footprint as many smaller, round-bowl models, making it a surprisingly easy upgrade.

The primary tradeoff is weight. Porcelain is heavier than plastic, so you need to account for that in your overall cargo capacity. But if your top priority is combining a compact form factor with the comfort and hygiene of a traditional toilet, the Dometic 310 is the undisputed leader. It proves you don’t have to settle for a flimsy-feeling toilet just because your bathroom is small.

Nature’s Head: The Top Composting Toilet Pick

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07/29/2025 10:00 am GMT

Choosing a composting toilet isn’t just about picking a different appliance; it’s about adopting a different system. The Nature’s Head is the most popular choice for RVers because it’s robust, effective, and completely eliminates the need for a black tank. This is a game-changer for boondocking and off-grid living, freeing you from dependence on dump stations.

The design is simple and brilliant. It diverts urine into a separate, easily emptied bottle, which is the single most important factor in preventing odors. Solids go into a main compartment with a coco coir or peat moss medium, where a hand crank is used to agitate the pile and accelerate composting. When managed properly, it’s remarkably odor-free.

While the unit itself is somewhat bulky, its real space-saving genius is what it removes. By eliminating the black tank, you free up a huge amount of chassis space for fresh water tanks, storage, or batteries. This is less about saving space inside the bathroom and more about redesigning your entire RV’s capabilities. It requires a hands-on approach, but the freedom it provides is a tradeoff many full-timers are happy to make.

Separett Tiny: A Urine-Diverting Space Saver

Separett Tiny Urine Container
$999.00

This waterless composting toilet features urine separation for odor-free operation via a built-in ventilation fan. Its compact, space-saving design includes a removable 2-gallon urine container for easy waste management, ideal for tiny homes and off-grid living.

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11/07/2025 12:32 am GMT

When even a standard-sized composting toilet is too big, the Separett Tiny enters the conversation. This Swedish-designed toilet was engineered specifically for the minimal dimensions of tiny homes and van conversions. Its most significant advantage is its incredibly compact and flexible design, which separates it from nearly every other option on the market.

Unlike the Nature’s Head, the Tiny is a urine-diverting dry toilet (UDDT), not a composter. It diverts liquids to an internal or external tank, while solids are collected in a biodegradable bag within the main compartment. A clever, pressure-activated screen hides the solids when not in use, keeping things tidy. The lack of a composting medium or an agitator crank is what allows for its minuscule footprint.

This is the ultimate problem-solver. Because it’s so small and doesn’t require a large internal solids bin, it can be installed in closets, under benches, or in wet baths where other toilets simply won’t fit. It’s the perfect choice when you’re measuring your layout in millimeters and need a functional, waterless solution for a truly compact build.

Laveo Dry Flush: The Go-Anywhere Waterless Toilet

Laveo Dry Flush Toilet - Portable, Waterless LDPE White
$1,170.58

The Laveo Dry Flush toilet offers a waterless and odorless waste solution, perfect for tiny homes, RVs, and off-grid living. Its cartridge system is easy to use, sealing waste in airtight bags for convenient disposal, and each full-size toilet includes a starter kit with cartridges and pee powder.

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07/31/2025 10:31 am GMT

The Laveo Dry Flush is the most self-contained and mess-free toilet you can find. It requires no water, no plumbing, and no chemicals. Its unique system uses a proprietary liner cartridge that encapsulates and seals away waste with every "flush." Think of it as a high-tech diaper pail for adults.

The process is ingenious. You do your business, press a button, and the battery-powered unit twists the liner, sealing the waste into an airtight packet that drops into a collection bag below. It’s completely odorless and requires zero handling of waste until the entire cartridge is full, at which point you just dispose of the sealed bag.

This isn’t a cost-effective solution for full-time living, as the refill cartridges are an ongoing expense. However, for weekend campers, van lifers who only need a toilet occasionally, or as an emergency backup, its convenience is unmatched. Its biggest advantage is placement freedom—since it needs no connections, you can put it literally anywhere it fits and even remove it when you need the space for something else.

Thetford Porta Potti Curve: A Sleek Portable Solution

Thetford Porta Potti 565E

Enjoy the comforts of home with the THETFORD Porta Potti 565E Curve. This portable toilet features a large capacity waste tank (21L), electric flushing, and level indicators for both the waste and flush water tanks.

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Forget the clunky, utilitarian porta potties of the past. The Porta Potti Curve is a modern, thoughtfully designed portable toilet that feels more like a permanent fixture. Its taller seat height, generous bowl size, and battery-powered flush create a far more comfortable and civilized experience.

The two-part design is classic but refined. The top section holds the freshwater for flushing, while the bottom is a sealed waste-holding tank. A simple latch separates the two, allowing you to easily carry the lightweight bottom tank to a dump station or public restroom for emptying. The integrated toilet paper holder and tank level indicator are small touches that make a big difference in daily use.

This is the ideal solution for camper vans, truck campers, and any rig without a built-in black tank system. It offers the convenience of a flush toilet without the need for permanent plumbing. When you’re parked for a while, you can even take it out of the bathroom to create a surprisingly spacious shower area.

Saniflo Sanicompact: A Macerating Powerhouse

The Saniflo Sanicompact is the toilet you choose when you want to put a bathroom where it was never meant to be. This is a macerating toilet, which means it uses a grinder and a pump to pulverize waste and send it through a narrow one-inch pipe to your black tank. This completely decouples the toilet’s location from the location of your main drain.

This technology opens up a world of possibilities for custom RV layouts. Want to add a half-bath in a rear garage or a slide-out? The Sanicompact makes it possible by pumping the waste up to 9 feet vertically and 100 feet horizontally. The toilet itself is a sleek, tankless, all-in-one unit with a compact footprint, designed for tight European-style installations.

This is not a simple drop-in replacement. It requires a 120V power source and careful plumbing, and the macerator pump adds a layer of mechanical complexity. However, for remodelers and custom builders, it’s a powerful tool that solves otherwise impossible plumbing challenges, allowing you to prioritize your floor plan based on how you live, not on where the factory happened to place the drain pipe.

The best toilet for your small RV bathroom is the one that best fits your priorities—whether that’s off-grid freedom, residential comfort, or pure spatial efficiency. By looking beyond the simple footprint and considering how each type of toilet impacts your plumbing, your resources, and your daily routines, you can turn a cramped necessity into a surprisingly comfortable and spacious part of your mobile home.

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