Wellness Design Products Show Up On Latest Top Industry Trend And Award Lists

Academy Award nominees and Golden Globe winners are likelier to trend on Twitter than products that won gold at the 2021 virtual Kitchen & Bath Industry Show, are increasing homes’ resale value, or driving residential architecture trends. In all three instances, wellness design products are helping spur leading sectors of the economy and profits for the firms involved. Movie theaters might still be operating at limited capacity, but many home building and home improvement businesses are at peak operation levels.

Products that enhance health in various ways grew in popularity during a year when millions of Americans were stuck at home. Vacation and entertainment dollars were redirected to improving those often old structures for functionality, comfort, style and health.

Wellness in Residential Resale Trends

This is being reflected in trends across several categories. Last week’s Zillow headline touted “Luxury kitchen amenities are the new pandemic must-haves.” Steam ovens topped their resale boosters for 2020, the real estate site shared, “associated with a 4.9% premium – more than any other home feature Zillow analyzed.”

Among Zillow’s additional top 10 sales price boosting features were other wellness design enhancements, including curbless showers, which improve accessibility; quartz countertops, which are nonporous and low maintenance, and radiant heat, which adds comfort, especially to a primary bathroom.

Wellness in Home Remodeling Awards

Two of the most resale-driving home spaces are kitchens and bathrooms, so the KBIS Awards give a visibility boost to winning products. The 2021 event honors, selected by a panel of top designers, went to several products with wellness design features.

Best of Show went to Craftizen, a new surfacing material from Cosentino, a large Spanish manufacturer probably best known for its Silestone engineered stone brand. The company released a new low maintenance product tied to its Dekton collection that can extend from indoor to outdoor living spaces. As Covid kept everyone home, being able to sanitize your spaces easily and enjoy your private patio, deck or balcony both became more important.

Also on the KBIS winner lists was a Kitchen Silver award to Flo by Moen, a smart home device that monitors for sump pump leaks to prevent flooding. This is especially helpful to homeowners with vacation homes, or those who were away from home to help family members.  

TOTO won a Bath Gold by adding its GC Touchless Faucet to a residential space that still lacks them.  Touchless, also called, hands-free, faucets have been a huge trend in kitchens, but are still an emerging category in bathrooms.

An Impact Silver award went to LG Studio’s WashTower, a washer-dryer combination with accessible controls cited by multiple industry influencers as a favorite product from the show. While not kitchen and bath related, laundry rooms are gaining prominence as flex spaces, often improved along with kitchen projects.

Wellness in Residential Architecture Trends

Long before a home can be remodeled or sold, it needs to be designed and built. This is where architects play an initial role in defining trends. The American Institute of Architects’ latest Home Design Trends Survey focused on kitchens and baths, and also showed wellness design products having a significant presence.

“Results showed continued demand during 2020 for kitchen and bathroom design features that are accessible to all people regardless of age or ability—known as universal design,” the AIA reported. Products like linear drains, fold-down seats, grab bars, handheld showerheads, wall-mounted vanities and bidet style toilets all enhance accessibility. Additional wellness design trends in the survey included larger walk-in showers, which also enhance accessibility, and hands-free kitchen faucets for germ reduction.

Outdoor showers, which often feature biophilia-related products like plants and nature-inspired decorative elements, also showed up as an architectural trend. So did larger pantry space for kitchens, likely as a response to food storage needs generated by consolidating shopping trips during the pandemic, the AIA’s chief economist theorized.

Conclusions

From the earliest stages of space planning through a home closing on the resale market, wellness design is having an impact. Particularly since the arrival of Covid-19, homeowners have been making the connection between where they live and how well, and this is driving product development and profitability throughout a home’s life cycle.