How to Promote Wellness in Your New Bathroom

Advice inspired by new products found at KBIS 2019

Just as people invest in gym memberships, healthy food and workout clothes, many are also investing in their wellness at home. Thankfully, popular building products manufacturers like Kohler and American Standard are making it easier than ever to do so. This wellness-focused design trend is showing up throughout out the house, but especially in the kitchen and bathroom.

Bathrooms are the space where you get ready and recover from your workouts and workdays. For some people, that means a enjoying deep tub soak with bubbles piled up a mile high. For others, taking a hot steam shower with a massaging showerhead is the best way to face the day, or relax.  At the 2019 Kitchen & Bath Industry Show (KBIS), manufacturers showed off the latest bathroom products, designed to make the bathroom a space for wellness and relaxation. You can create a healthy, spa-like bathroom of your dreams in your new home when you get some inspiration from these KBIS 2019 finds:

Personal Hygiene

Personal hygiene, whether to prepare for your workday or after exercise, is also tied to wellness.  Toilets with bidet functionality improve hygiene over toilet paper. It used to be that you’d have to spend thousands of dollars for a bidet style toilet, but at the most recent Kitchen & Bath Industry Show for the building and remodeling trade, American Standard introduced bidet style seats compatible with most toilets for less than $1,000.

Moen and Brizo both introduced height adjustable shower arms, ideal for dual user master suites. Button controlled hand-showers are trending, and will enhance your shower experience in a small but meaningful way. How many times have you struggled with getting the massage setting your muscles were crying out for?!

Smart Wellness Tools

Leveraging the power of automation and app-controlled products was a major theme at KBIS this year. If your mornings are a hectic rush, U by Moen’s digital shower head lets you control your showering experience by voice, phone, and controller. For bath people, the Kohler Konnect has a voice controlled tub filler. You can program and control by voice-connected apps like Alexa might be your speed. If you’re a bath person rather than a shower person, you can also start your tub water with a Kohler Konnect voice-controlled tub filler.

Luxe Extras

For those with luxury homes and budgets, Toto’s new $19,269 zero-gravity flotation tub is the ultimate splurge for an in-home spa. Let go of your tension, stress, and pain as you lay back in this top of the line tub. Flotation is prized for its relaxation benefits, with potential reductions in pain, tension, stress and anxiety. If this therapy and fixture prove to be widely beneficial, it’s likely that we’ll be seeing flotation tubs from more brands and an eventual reduction in prices, as we have with bidet style toilet seats.

Another product at the Kitchen & Bath Industry Show that might appeal to the fitness-conscious luxury buyers: Perlick’s 15-inch dual drawer mini fridge for bathrooms. This could be a nice-to-have appliance for cold packs, water, and lemons for an after workout cool down, or for medicines that should be kept cool. Vola’s sleek, designer-style tubular towel warmers have luxury and comfort appeal, and make getting out of a nice, hot shower easier.

Stylish & Safe

Last but definitely not least are designer-inspired grab bars. No one wants his or her master suite to look like a rehab hospital room, so bars that blend into the room’s décor, but can keep you from a painful fall on hard tile, are definitely worth considering. Ponte Giulio brings Italian style to this category for the first time, so your bathroom can look like a resort spa.