What to Look For in Swim School Change Rooms

Nobody tours a swim school and asks about the change room. Parents ask about teachers, ratios, levels and water temperature, which all matter. Then they enrol, and within three weeks the thing they grumble about on a Saturday morning is a wet bench, a missing hook and a queue for one cubicle. Give it five minutes before you sign up, because this is where the logistics of a weekly lesson work or quietly fall apart.

You will spend longer in there than your child spends swimming

A preschool class often runs for half an hour. Getting a small child into swimmers, onto the deck, then dried, warmed and dressed again afterwards can take longer than the lesson. Add a second child and the maths gets worse fast. A good change room turns a 30 minute lesson into a 45 minute outing. A bad one turns it into 90 minutes of damp wrestling, and that is the number that makes families quietly drop lessons.

The family change room, and how many of them there are

Family and unisex change rooms exist because many pools restrict adults of one gender from certain change areas once children reach a set age, which our guide to child safe practices covers. What that guide does not tell you is how many the building has, and one family room shared by every class changing over at once is a different proposition to a row of them.

What to look at while you are standing in there

• Cubicles, or an open bench? Plenty of families are happy changing in the open and plenty are not, and preferences shift as children get older. What you are checking is whether a door exists at all, not whether anybody is behind it on the morning you visit.
• Somewhere dry, at a height your child can use. A shelf or bench that is not already puddled, and hooks a four year old can reach. If the only surface is the wet floor, everything goes home damp.
• Where the water goes. Floors that drain between classes feel completely different to floors holding a shallow lake all morning. Wet shared floors are also why thongs are a good habit, as our guide on skin infections at the pool explains.
• The phone rule. Most centres restrict photography on the deck and ban it outright in change rooms, so ask before you get a phone out.
• A hairdryer, if your family wants one. Some centres have them and some do not, and it matters more for long or textured hair. Our guide to hair after swimming covers the routine.

The temperature nobody asks about

Learn-to-swim pools are heated, and in a well-run indoor centre the air is kept warmer than the water so children do not chill on the way out. That warmth does not always reach the change room, especially in an older building or one with a door propped open to the car park in July.

A child who comes out of a warm pool into a cold room, shivers while a parent hunts for underwear, and gets cold every week will start resisting lessons. That resistance tends to get read as fear of the water or a problem with the teacher, when the child has simply learned that the end of swimming is unpleasant. Our guides on pool water temperature and lesson anxiety go deeper, but the change room belongs on the list of suspects.

Visit at the hour your class would run

A quiet Tuesday at eleven tells you almost nothing, because change rooms are fine when empty. What you want to see is the changeover: the four minutes when one set of classes finishes, the next arrives, and everybody wants the same six hooks. Ask to look around at the time of your intended slot, and watch whether families end up changing in the corridor. Our guide on choosing a swim school puts this alongside everything else worth comparing.

Changing more than one child

With two or more, the room stops being a facility and becomes a choreography problem. A cubicle that fits one adult and one child does not fit one adult and three, and a child who is dressed and bored while you deal with a sibling will wander. A bored child a few metres from open water is a supervision problem, not an inconvenience. Change the wanderer last, keep them where you can touch them, or use a room with a door.

The trick most experienced parents land on is doing half the job at home: swimmers on under clothes before you leave, so arriving takes a minute. Afterwards, dry your child properly and get a warm layer on. If you are up against it with more than one child, dry clothes over damp swimmers gets you to the car, but rinse the swimmers and get them out of the bag as soon as you are home, which our guide on caring for swimwear and towels explains. Two exceptions: a child with eczema or chlorine-sensitive skin, and a child prone to tinea, should come out of wet swimmers at the pool. The drying and warming is not the part to skip, especially in winter. Our guide on twins and multiples covers the rest.

Accessible changing is its own question rather than a harder version of this one. If your child needs a hoist, floor space or a change table that fits an older child, our guides on swimming lessons for children with additional needs and swimming lessons for wheelchair users work through what to ask a centre.

What is fair to expect

Some of the best teachers in the country work in council buildings that have seen better days, as our comparison of council pools and private swim schools sets out. What is reasonable to expect is a room that is clean, warm enough, has somewhere dry for your things, and shows someone has thought about changeover.

So weigh it as one factor among several. If you are comparing options, browse swim schools near you or the wider Australian directory, then go and stand in the change room of your top two.

Frequently asked questions

How many family change rooms should a swim school have?

There is no set number, so judge it against how many classes finish at once. One family room serving six simultaneous classes has a queue built into every Saturday, while a row of them handles the same crowd. Ask how many there are, then visit at your intended timeslot and watch a changeover.

How much time should I allow for getting changed after a swimming lesson?

Allow roughly as long as the lesson itself for one young child, and longer for two, until your routine settles. Putting swimmers on at home and keeping the job afterwards to drying, a warm layer and dry clothes over damp swimmers cuts it down a lot, as long as the swimmers are rinsed and out of the bag once you are home.

Is it okay to take my child home in a towel instead of getting them dressed at the pool?

Yes, as long as you dry them properly and get a warm layer on first. Children lose heat quickly once out of the water, so a shivering child bundled straight into a car is the version to avoid. Dried, dressed over damp swimmers and changed properly at home is a common routine, especially with more than one child, provided the swimmers come out of the bag and get rinsed when you walk in rather than at bedtime. Two exceptions: a child with eczema or chlorine-sensitive skin, and a child prone to tinea, should come out of wet swimmers at the pool, because time spent damp is exactly what irritates one and suits the other.

Does an old or dated change room mean the swimming lessons will be poor quality?

No. Plenty of excellent teaching happens in older council facilities where the change room has done thirty years of service, and an old building tells you nothing about the person in the water with your child. Grubby is a different question from old: a room that is dirty, freezing or plainly not coping with the families booked into each timeslot is telling you how the place is run.