How to Repair a Toilet Seat or Lid (by Capitan Farloc)

How to Fix a Broken Toilet Seat: A Practical Guide for a Simple but Effective Repair

It might seem like a minor issue, but a damaged toilet seat can quickly become a real nuisance in everyday life. Whether it’s a broken hinge or a crack in the material, there’s no need to replace the whole thing: with the right tools and a bit of DIY spirit, you can fix it yourself and restore full functionality to your bathroom.

In this article, I’ll guide you step by step through the repair process, with practical advice, recommended materials, and a few handy tricks to help you achieve a safe and long-lasting result.

Specifically, I’ll explain what to do in two of the most common types of damage that can affect a toilet seat:

• When the Toilet Seat Hinge Breaks
• When the Material Around the Hinge Screws Breaks

When the Toilet Seat Hinge Breaks

The first type of damage I want to look at is when one of the hinges holding the two movable parts of the toilet seat breaks.

This is probably the most common issue—and definitely the quickest and easiest to fix.

An example of how this kind of hinge can break is shown in the photo below:

Getting a Replacement Hinge for Toilet Seats

In this case, repairing the hinge itself is, in my opinion, too complex and not really practical. Fortunately, replacement hinge kits for toilet seats are easy to find at hardware stores and in the major DIY chains. They’re quite affordable too—when I bought mine in 2024, the average price was under €10, and this particular one cost just €5.

The kit includes everything you need: threaded pins, fixing nuts, and the relevant washers, which may have worn out over time or been damaged during the removal of the seat.

Installing the New Hinges

Replacement hinges, even if they look similar to the originals, are rarely identical—so here are my two tips for fitting them:

1. Replace both hinges: Aside from the visual mismatch of having two hinges with different shapes or colours, changing only one hinge can lead to uneven movement between the two, causing misalignment between the seat and the lid.
2. Drill new pilot holes: It’s very unlikely that the holes on the new hinges will match the old ones. So, position the new hinges and, if the holes don’t line up, drill new ones—the old holes will be covered by the hinge anyway. If the new holes are very close to the old ones but not quite aligned, shift the hinge slightly (a 1–2 mm offset won’t cause any issues), align one screw with an existing hole, and drill a new hole for the second screw.

When the Material Around the Hinge Screws Breaks

The second type of damage I want to cover is a bit more complex: it happens when the screws holding the toilet seat hinges come loose because the material they’re anchored into has failed. The hole becomes enlarged, and it’s no longer possible to screw them back in securely.

This tends to happen mostly with mid-range toilet seats—those made from solid-looking material that isn’t actually wood (solid or plywood) or thermosetting resin, but rather MDF. MDF is a dense material that’s great for lacquering, but it can easily crumble around screw holes, as happened in this particular case:

When this happens, it can go one of two ways: either the hole simply gets stripped, meaning the screw can no longer grip the material and just spins freely or, as in this case, the screw stays firmly anchored, but a chunk of the surrounding material breaks off, leaving a much larger hole than in the previous scenario.

Removing the Hinges

The first thing to do in this case is, of course, to remove the old hinges. Since they’re not damaged, you can set them aside along with the fixing screws.

This is also the perfect time to clean off any rust or dirt that may have built up, and to lubricate the hinges with a spray lubricant.

Once the hinges are off, it’s easier to clean the rubber bumpers underneath both parts of the toilet seat. To remove any grime that may have settled in the joints, I always use an old toothbrush along with a standard bathroom degreasing spray.

Widening the Holes with a Drill

At this point, the holes need to be widened using a drill bit to match the diameter of the beech dowels. In my case, since quite a bit of material had broken away, I used a 10mm drill bit.

I used a drill press for this step, for two main reasons:

• It ensures the hole is perfectly straight and perpendicular to the toilet seat
• I was able to set the depth stop to 2–3 mm above the base surface, so I could drill as deep as possible without risking a breakthrough on the other side

Of course, you can also drill the holes freehand using a corded or cordless drill, but in that case you’ll need to be extra careful, especially to avoid drilling right through the seat.

At this point, I took some beech dowels—the kind typically used for wood joinery, which you can find in any hardware store or DIY shop.

Beech is a fairly dense and hard wood, making it ideal for this kind of repair where the screw needs to grip into something solid that won’t crumble easily, unlike MDF.

Gluing the Beech Dowels into the Holes

Using a small brush, apply wood glue generously to both the dowels and the holes. Then insert the dowels into place and leave everything to dry overnight.

Reinforcing the Other Screw Holes

If the other screw holes also show signs of wear—or even if you just want to be on the safe side and make a long-lasting repair—you can reinforce them by inserting toothpicks soaked in wood glue.

This way, the screws will have fresh material to grip onto: both the wood from the toothpicks and the glue that’s penetrated into the MDF. It’ll hold much more securely.

Trimming the Excess Beech Dowels 

Once the wood glue has fully dried, you’ll need to remove the protruding part of the beech dowels. There are several ways to do this: some people use a flush-cut Japanese saw (I tried, but mine started leaving marks on the lacquered surface of the seat, so I gave up), while others prefer a utility knife but beech is quite hard, and that method can be slow and tiring.

I opted for a mini rotary tool (like a Dremel) fitted with round abrasive discs. This allowed me to cut off the excess wood quickly, though the cut wasn’t very precise and the friction slightly scorched the wood, leaving it darkened. I wasn’t too concerned, though, since I planned to fill and smooth the area anyway to repair the lacquer that had chipped around the holes.

Here’s how it looked after trimming and filling:

Covering the Filler Marks

At this point, another small issue came up: since the piece of material that broke off with the screws was quite large, the filler area wouldn’t be fully covered once the hinge was reinstalled. I didn’t want to leave that unsightly patch exposed, so I had to come up with a solution.

The simplest idea I had was to cut out two round pieces of white adhesive plastic to place under the hinge mounts—one to cover the filler, and the other for symmetry, making it look like a decorative feature.

To cut the circles, I just placed a round object on the adhesive plastic (in my case, a small paint jar) and carefully cut around it using a fine-blade utility knife.

The final result, once the circles were glued on, isn’t perfect… but I can live with it.

The alternative would have been to spray-paint the two circles using white paint and a piece of card with holes cut out as a stencil—but this time, I went with the simpler option.

Drilling the Pilot Holes

Before inserting the screws to fix the hinges, it’s essential to drill pilot holes. These are necessary to prevent the material (MDF in our case) from expanding when the screw is driven in, which could cause the white lacquered surface to crack.

If, like me, you’ve also reinforced the other screw holes with toothpicks and glue, it’s a good idea to redrill pilot holes in those as well.

To avoid drilling too shallow—or worse, too deep and breaking through the other side—I usually place a piece of masking tape on the drill bit to mark the screw’s length. That way, the tape acts as a visual guide to stop at the right depth.

Once everything was reassembled, this was the final result:

Well, that’s the end of the article. If, in the meantime, you’ve decided that repairing your broken toilet seat isn’t worth the effort and you’d rather replace it, you might find this article helpful: How to Replace a Toilet Seat or 'Lid' (by Capitan Farloc).

I hope you enjoyed the article and above all, that it’s been useful to anyone who decided to take on this kind of DIY challenge.

Thanks for reading,
All the best!

Luciano (Capitan Farloc)