Not to sound snotty... But... we hang them on the towel holders - LOL

If your towel bars/hooks are coming out of the wall, they've been improperly installed. The screws for the hooks/bars should be put into studs; if there aren't studs where you want the bars, use wall anchors. Properly-installed bars can hold a small child hanging from them (uh, not that this would ever happen of course!). Unless your towels are over 40lbs, that should do the trick :)

What embees said. Yeh, occasionally something in the towel bar needs to be tightened, but they work just fine.

As I see it, your other options are hooks or a stand-alone rack.

We have the suction hooks that we attach to the glass enclosure and hang the towels from them. After a month's use, they'll fall down, but they go right back up and are good for another long while.

we do both here. I'm the neatnick that has to hang mine (perfectly) on the towel bar. DH tosses his over the glass shower door. It's really not a big deal here....

We use chrome towel rails in the spare bathroom...double ones to hold two towels each. But my DH installed them himself because I know just what you mean about some being sloppy feeling and coming off the wall, if they're not in the studs or done properly.
In our own bathroom we have a timber one that DH also built. It's built into the floor and is kind of like a partition/screen/half wall for the toilet area, when it has towels hung on it.
I love love love it, because the towels are out in the open and not against a wall, it saved having a half wall for privacy, and the hanging rails are wide, so the towels hang kind of apart, not touching. And we find they stay fresh and sweet for ages, because they dry so quickly, and are aired so well all day long.

Hi, auggie1020! Welcome to the forum!

A well-mounted towel bar shouldn't come loose--at least, not for a long while. Are you worried about your new ones? Can you get your builder to put them up well? Put them up so that the screws can be mounted into the studs, instead of using the anchors usu. used for plaster ones? Or use butterly anchors instead of the plastic ones usu used w/ palster or wall board. Some anchors are better than others, too.

Though if you try to use the studs, the spacing of the towel bar can be really stupid. If you get the style that has brackets and separate rod that stretches between them, you might be able to ditch the short rod that came with them, and put the second bracket farther over, which might look better.

(but of course, you probably have holes in your tile wall right now anyway)

You need to let air get to the towels, so it's best to spread them out somehow.

My mom put hooks on the wall--about head heigh, actually, so the towels could hang down.

I use the towels bars. My one observation about towel bars (other than that the badly mounted ones do loosen) is that there are seldom enough for the number of towels you use daily.

My mom's hooks actually allowed her to hang more on that wall than bars would, because they got "spread out" vertically, instead of horizontally. (that's why she mounted them way up)

If you have enough floor space, you could get a towel rack.

There are these :

a train rack:

a towel ladder

a wall-mounted towel ladder

(which doesn't impress me, bcs the top towels will lie against the lower; this might be useful for someone who has washcloths on the top, towel on the lower, etc.)

a freestanding slanted towel ladder

http://www.organize.com/towelladder.html

a spa towel rack that stands on the floor

Like

or this

There's the quilt-rack style

The little ones make me crazy--too much work!

Another thing about towel bars if they're spaced a generous distance from the wall, there's actually less stress on them.

I liked my mom's hooks best of all. So does she; when she moved, she put hooks in her new bathroom.

Or a coat-tree sort of thing.

Then there's this--the ultimate space saver

The Hinge-It, which gets installed onto the hinge of the door.

http://www.hingeit.com/store/category.cfm?Category=46

Actually the suction-cup hooks on the shower door sound good, too!

You know, if I were a builder, I'd make it a selling point, that I installed horizontal bracing during framing, between the studs, so that people can mount towel bars and safety bars ANYWHERE in the bathroom, and have them be secure. It wouldn't be that much work, honestly.

I want one of those warming towel racks. Sigh, I have no place handy to plug it in.

Or, be wasteful like me. I hate reusing towels and never reuse a washcloth. I like the luxury of fresh linens each day.

I have a train rack with shelves and hooks. Towels in use are on the hooks, towels that are clean are stacked on top.

I also have hooks just outside the shower, for towels to reach for when stepping out. Sometimes DH leaves a towel there, but it doesn't look bad because I placed the hook well (design wise).

I installed all of my towel bars, train rack and hooks as well as mirrors etc. Only one was a bit lose after using the appropriate fasteners for the wall area (ie different if you're going into a stud verses drywall only). The lose one is a glass shelf. I had to take it down and use a better wall anchor than the one it came with (I don't ever use the plastic ones....you can buy lovely metal ones by the box).

I am not a neetnick by any sense of the imagination, but if DH left a towel hanging on the glass door I'd consider spousal abuse. I didn't build an elegant master bath t have it look like a gym. If the towel bars are wonky...it's a VERY easy fix, which you can do yourself, and recapture the lovely room :)

I don't like towel bars, because I think they use way too much room. I also don't think that towels dry as well as on hooks, because they generally need to be folded to fit.

We use over-the-door towel racks with hooks on them, like the one below.

Here is a link that might be useful: over-the-door towel hook

I hung a regular shower curtain rod inside the shower towards the back (runs from wall to wall just like the front curtain rod)about 3-4 inches from the wall of the shower, at the same height. When I'm done with my towel I hang it there, on the inside of the shower to dry. I don't have glass shower doors, so you can't see the towel hanging inside.

Thanks for all the advice. I am going to try the train rack and see how that goes. Very good forum!

My two daughters use towels like crazy. Three for every shower each takes, one for hair, one for the body, and one for the floor. If I get to the bathroom fast enough, I scoop up the towels, throw them in the dryer with a Febreze drying sheet , then re-fold and put them back on the bathroom shelf. They'd be grossed out if they knew I was doing this, but no one has caught on!

I do a load of towels at least once a week, so they don't really get to the stinky stage. I just "enforce" reusing a towel more than once. If I didn't, I would have to launder at least 56 towels every week. I probably was ten to twenty now. Imagine the water and detergent I am saving. By the way, I have about ten Turban towels my kids could use to tie up their wet hair. For some reason, they just prefer using full size bath towels.

I also reuse my towels, they get laundered once a week. I use terry bathmats for the floor, thicker and more absorbent, they don't get that wet, I let them airdry on the edge of the tub and roll them up after. You could get your dd's some bathmats to use instead of towels.

Auggie, I'm with you on the locker room thing. In my old bathroom, a towel over the shower bar was no big thing. When we built in 2001, I had a gorgeous decorated bathroom and suddenly a wet towel was an affront to my eyes. DH tended to leave his robe on the hook and his towel over the glass block shower wall. I never really solved the problem. I'm not usually anal about this kind of thing, but for some reason, that really bugged me.

In the house we're building, we each have a walk-in closet. I'm putting a towel bar and robe hook in each, the idea being that towels will dry there, and the bathroom will stay pretty. We'll walk into the closet to dress anyway, so why not leave the wet stuff there instead of the bathroom. I'll deal with them from there, either folding for reuse or tossing in the laundry.

Hope it works.

Arlene