Confusingly, products imported from Japan such as TOTO are referred to as "toilets", even though they carry the cachet of higher cost and quality. Most flush toilets are connected to a sewerage system that conveys wastewater to a sewage treatment plant; alternatively, a septic tank or composting system may be used. The Old Norse language had several terms for referring to outhouses, including garðhús (yard house), náð-/náða-hús (house of rest), and annat hús (the other house). Thomas Bowdich, an English traveller, visited Kumasi, capital of the Ashanti Empire in 1817 and mentioned that majority of the houses in the city especially those near the king's palace included indoor toilets that were flushed with gallons of boiling water. The mechanism consists of a plastic tank hidden inside the typical ceramic cistern or an exposed metal tank/cistern.

Within the bowl, there are three main waterway design systems: the siphoning trapped system (found primarily in North American residential installations, and in North American light commercial installations), the non-siphoning trapped system (found in most other installations), and the valve-closet system (found in trains, passenger aircraft, buses, and other such installations around the world). Some of the houses there have a drain running directly beneath them, and some of these had a cubicle over the drain. These toilets are generally more expensive to purchase, and the plastic tanks need to be replaced about every 10 years. The company Caroma in Australia developed the Duoset cistern with two buttons and two flush volumes as a water-saving measure in 1980. A "toilet plume" is the dispersal of microscopic particles into the air as a result of flushing a toilet.The Indus Valley civilisation in northwestern India and Pakistan was home to the world's first known urban sanitation systems. In the early 19th century, public officials and public hygiene experts studied and debated sanitation for several decades. This dry excreta management system (or "dry sanitation" system) is an alternative to pit latrines and flush toilets, especially where water is scarce, a connection to a sewer system and centralized wastewater treatment plant is not feasible or desired, fertilizer and soil conditioner are needed for agriculture, or groundwater pollution should be minimized.

The siphon action quickly "pulls" nearly all of the water and waste in the bowl and the on-rushing tank water down the drain in about 4–7 seconds —it flushes. diameter hole at its bottom covered by a flapper valve that allows the water to rapidly leave the holding tank when the flush is activated. The Public Health Act 1875 set down stringent guidelines relating to sewers, drains, water supply and toilets and lent tacit government endorsement to the prominent water closet manufacturers of the day.

This device uses the standing water to seal the outlet of the bowl, preventing the escape of foul air from the sewer.

After the pieces are removed from the kiln and fully cooled, they are inspected for cracks or other defects. citation needed] Additionally, this design presents the disadvantage of creating a strong lingering odor since the feces are not submerged in water immediately after excretion. When properly built and maintained, pit latrines can decrease the spread of disease by reducing the amount of human feces in the environment from open defecation. citation needed] With the onset of the industrial revolution and related advances in technology, the flush toilet began to emerge into its modern form. Similar to "powder room", "toilet" then came to be used as a euphemism for rooms dedicated to urination and defecation, particularly in the context of signs for public toilets, as on trains.citation needed] His flush toilets were designed by inventor Albert Giblin, who received a British patent for the "Silent Valveless Water Waste Preventer", a siphon discharge system. Several types of toilets were developed; these include lavatories with ring-well pits, underground terracotta pipes that lead to septic pits, urinary pits with large bottomless clay pots of decreasing size placed one above the other.