It has been nearly three years since I hit Home Depot to replace a few older inexpensive plastic toilet seats with Bemis’ model 25CH molded wood seats.

The molded wood versions seemed like a better fit, partially because the idea of dumping additional plastic into a landfill is unappealing, but also because of the look and feel of the material.

The downside to these Bemis toilet seats is that the finish lasted only lasted three years.

Each seat looked to have very small chips of the finish/paint missing.

• both seats were cleaned regularly with “green” cleaning supplies (such as Simple Green or Mrs. Meyer’s);
• both seats were installed in master bathrooms;

As of this post, toilet seats are made by the following companies:

• American Standard (www.americanstandard-us.com)
• Bemis (www.bemisseats.com)
• Church Seats (www.churchseats.com)
• Kohler (www.us.kohler.com)
• Toto Ltd. (www.totousa.com)

Instead of picking up the nicest looking molded wooden seat that Home Depot had to offer, I did a bit more research. I found that certain seats had slow-close hinges that prevented the seat from slamming down when closed.

Requirements:

1. Material: Wood or molded wood
2. Hinges: Metal
3. Shape: Round
4. Color: White
5. Feature 1: Slow close hinges
6. Feature 2: Anti-bacterial/mold finish

Manufacturer Results:

• American Standard:
  One seat, the Traditional Champion 4 Toilet Seat 5265.295 met all of the requirements, however very few distributors carry the seat.
• Bemis:
  The Bemis 544BRCP and 544CH each met all requirements, Except none of these models offered Slow-Close Hinges.
• Church Seats:
  Church Seats model 540CP only lacked the slow-close hinges. While they do advertise easy-close hingest on their site an easy way of ordering them does not seem to exist.
• Kohler:
  Kohler’s molded wood models K-4695 Ridgewood, K-4648 Stonewood lacked metal slow close hinges.
  The K-4639 Cachet Quiet-Close toilet seat did offer slow-close hinges, however the entire seat was made of plastic.
  The Triko molded toilet seat- K-4726-T integrated hardwood fibers (eh, close enough) with metal hinges, but did not offer the Quiet-Close functionality.
• Toto Ltd.:
  Toto’s offerings consist mainly of seats with integrated bidets, however the SoftClose Toilet Seat met all requirements except for it’s made of plastic and lacks metal hinges.

Resulting Purchase:

The American Standard Traditional Champion 4 Toilet Seat 5265.295 from National Builders Supply.

Also available from eFaucets