How to use a bidet toilet seat

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After you finished installing your bidet seat, it’s now time to learn how to use it.  This is the best part.

Because a non-electric toilet seat is relatively easy to figure out how to use, we won’t be going over how to use those.  Instead, we’re going to show you how to operate an electric bidet seat.

Some bidets have special features that others do not have.  So we’re only going to be showing you how to operate the common features such as wash, dry, and maintenance.  But if you have any questions about using a particular feature on your toilet seat, let us know in the comment section below.

Temperature Adjustment

Before you begin using your bidet toilet seat, the very first thing that we recommend doing is adjusting the temperature for the seat, water, and if applicable, air dryer.

Using Toto toilet seats as an example, you would set the temperature for the seat by pressing the “seat” button repeatedly until it lights up to your desired setting.  These settings are either “off”, “low”, “medium”, or “high”.

You would do the same for “water” and “dryer”.  All three of these buttons are located under the label “temperature”.

At first, when you’re not sure how hot or cold you want each of these to be, we recommend setting them to “medium” and then making adjustments as you go.  If it’s too hot then bring it to “low”.  And if it’s not hot enough then bring it to “high”.

Cleansing

After you’ve set the temperature, you’re ready to use the bidet.  Most decent electric bidets come with at least two cleansing functions: a rear wash and a front wash.

Again using Toto as an example, you can turn on the rear wash by pressing the “rear” button and you can turn on the front wash by pressing the “front” button.  You can activate the oscillating feature by pressing these buttons a second time.  The oscillating feature simply moves the nozzle back and forth a bit to clean a wider area.

When the cleansing modes are on, you are able to adjust the position of the nozzle and the pressure of the water as well.  These can be adjusted to 5 different levels with the Toto bidets.  You can press the “-” button to decrease the pressure and the “+” button to increase the pressure.  And you can press the left arrow to move it forward and the right arrow to move it backwards.  The standard position for the nozzle is in the middle (3rd position point).

When you want to stop cleansing, simply press the “stop” button.

Drying

After cleansing, you can activate the air dryer if your bidet has one.  On the Toto bidets you can do this by pressing the “dryer” button located next to the cleansing buttons.  Again, you can adjust the air dryer temperature if it’s too hot or too cold.

Heated Seat

Once you’ve set the temperature for the heated seat to “low”, “medium”, or “high”, you should be able to feel that the seat is warm.  You can also turn the heated seat “off” so that it doesn’t warm up at all.

In the Toto bidets there is also an eco mode designed to save energy.  When this is on, the heated seat will automatically turn off when it’s not being used or it will turn to “low” during periods when it is not used as often.  This energy saving mode is smart feature that can detect your usage patterns and make its own adjustments.

Maintenance

Bidet seats can keep your toilet cleaner than your regular toilet seat.  That’s because many of them have built-in features to clean, deodorize, and sanitize.  Your toilet seat may or may not have these features depending on the model.

It’s important to keep the toilet seat and area clean from a sanitary perspective, but keeping everything clean will enable you to prolong the life of your toilet seat.

One of the more common features your toilet seat should have is nozzle cleaning.  Some bidets even have nozzles that can automatically clean themselves.

On the Toto bidets, there is an “on/off” button for “wand cleaning”.  When you press this button, the nozzle will extend for about 5 minutes and spray a little water on itself.  You can use a soft cloth to wipe the nozzle.  When you’re done with cleaning the nozzle you can press the “on/off” button again and the nozzle will retract.  This wand is also protected by a cover from dirt during regular use.

Some Toto bidets have a “pre-mist” function that sprays a bit of water in the toilet bowl before use so that nothing sticks to it.

Another common feature that bidets have is the deodorizer.  The deodorizer turns on automatically.  You don’t have to do anything to activate it.  On the side of the Toto bidets, there is a deodorizer filter that you can take out to clean if you suspect that the deodorizer is not working well.  Toto recommends that you clean this once a month by scrubbing with a toothbrush.

You can clean the toilet area by removing the toilet seat.  Most bidets are installed with a mounting plate that secures the toilet seat in place.  And you can slide the bidet seat off the mounting plate to clean.

As far as we know, only particular Toto toilet seat bidets have electrolyzed water sanitization.  The bidet seat is able to turn the water in the toilet into electrolyzed water to sanitize the toilet bowl.  If you have a bidet with this feature, you don’t have to do anything to activate it.  The pre-mist water and post-mist water is electrolyzed water.  It disinfects your toilet bowl regularly.

Common Concerns…

Some of the misconceptions people have are that a bidet is difficult to use, it will spray water all over the place, or the water will be too hot or too cold.  These are entirely myths.

Once you learn how to operate the control, bidets are very easy to use.  The learning curve is small with many bidet seats because their designs have improved over the years.

Unless you are turning on the water spray without actually sitting on the bidet, it won’t spray all over the place.  Bidet seats have gone through lots of trial and error and testing to get to the right temperature and angles, so they are surprisingly a pleasure to use.

In summary, don’t knock it until you try it!

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3 Comments

  1. On the s500e can you adjust the front wash nozzle more forward when the setting is set to the most forward position? It still isnt hitting the correct spot. Or is there an adjustment on the toilet seat that needs adjusting.

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