Beyond the Beautiful Bathroom: Designing for How We Want to Feel
Why the TOTO Flotation Bath, Sunshower and everyday wellness rituals have changed the way I think about bathroom design
By Lisa Melvin
“The real value of wellness design is not how impressive it looks, but how meaningfully it supports the life being lived around it.” |
Why wellness bathroom design matters to me
I have spent almost three decades immersed in construction, interiors, kitchens and bathrooms, and I will never lose my love of beautiful materials, intelligent detailing and exceptional craftsmanship. But the longer I work in design—and the more I learn about health, recovery and longevity—the more interested I become in what our spaces actually do for us.
A bathroom can, of course, be beautiful. It can also help us slow down, sleep better, prepare for the day, recover after training and create a moment of calm when life or our bodies feel demanding. That is the kind of luxury I find increasingly compelling: not another possession, but a space that earns its place in our lives through repeated use.
This thinking sits behind the working spa room at our Kuche & Bagno showroom. It is not a staged display. It is a place where the TOTO Flotation Tub, Sunshower and AXOR shower experience can be understood through use, water, warmth and sensation. As a designer, I was already passionate about these products, but a recent experience made me appreciate them in a far more personal way.
When function suddenly mattered more than appearance
A week before I was due to fly to France, my back went into an intense protective spasm during a light warm-up set in the gym. By the end of the weekend, sitting, standing, walking, and even getting in and out of bed had become difficult. I had professional treatment booked and continued with carefully supervised movement, but I also began using our showroom spa room every evening.
Alongside professional treatment and carefully supervised movement, I used the showroom spa room every evening. The supported bath position, the water massage, the focused infrared warmth, and the cold-water finish became a restorative ritual that helped my body relax and made those few difficult days feel much more manageable. Five days later, I was able to travel as planned.
I had used the bath and Sunshower before. What changed was my understanding of the smaller, less obvious design decisions—details you may not fully appreciate until movement is restricted or a part of your body really needs support.
The TOTO Flotation Tub: thoughtful design you can feel
The TOTO Flotation Tub is often introduced through its ZERO DIMENSION technology. The bathing posture is inspired by the position the human body naturally adopts in weightlessness, with the hips and ankles supported in a deeply reclined position. The adjustable pillow cradles the head and neck, while warm water flows around the pillow and across the shoulders—an area that would normally sit above the water and quickly become cold.
It is a strikingly beautiful bath, but one of the details I now value most is also one of the most practical. Inside, the raised leg-rest and base areas create a platform from which to enter and leave the bathing position. Rather than lowering yourself immediately into the deepest part of the bath, you can move in stages. Those areas also have a corrugated, grip-giving surface underfoot. When my back was in spasm, that combination made getting in and out feel remarkably manageable and reassuring.
Once reclined, HYDROHANDS changes the experience again. Two specially calibrated water jets create spiralling, multidirectional movement designed to work across the back with a sensation closer to hands-on massage than a conventional whirlpool. In my position, those jets reached the lower lumbar area that needed the most attention. The feeling was focused and powerful, but because my whole body was supported, I did not need to brace myself against it.
The separate AIR-JET system uses eight outlets and offers two levels: a stronger mode and a gentler one. I had noticed the air jets before, but I had never fully appreciated the way they enveloped my lower legs. On the stronger setting, the sensation around my calves felt surprisingly deep—almost as though a sports therapist were working into muscles that were sore from training. It is unlike anything I have experienced in a professional spa.
I am conscious of poor circulation in my legs, so that stimulating, energising feeling was especially welcome. More broadly, it reminded me that the success of the TOTO Flotation Tub is not down to one headline feature. It is the way the posture, warmth, lumbar water massage, leg air massage, head support and easier access all work together. This is not simply a bath with jets; it is a complete bathing experience designed around the body.
Why Sunshower is about far more than keeping warm
The Sunshower added a completely different layer to the room. Installed within the shower, it brings controlled infrared and, in our model, UV light into a ritual that already forms part of everyday life. That integration is what makes it so interesting from a design perspective: there is no separate treatment room to visit and no freestanding piece of equipment to store. The technology is simply there when it is useful.
For my back, I used the infrared function. Sunshower combines infrared-A and infrared-B: one creates a deeper warming sensation, while the other is absorbed closer to the skin's surface, creating more immediate heat. Standing in the shower with the warmth directed towards my lower back felt completely different from being in a hot room. It was focused, comfortable and incredibly easy to repeat each evening.
But describing Sunshower as something that merely warms you up misses much of its purpose. Its infrared technology is designed to support circulation, ease muscle tension and joint discomfort, encourage mobility and help muscles recover after exercise. The warmth can also encourage relaxation, support sleep and open the pores for a deeper cleanse. My recent experience centred on muscular comfort and recovery, but its wider appeal lies in bringing a short, repeatable wellness treatment into an ordinary shower.
The UV function is separate, and I did not use it as part of this particular recovery routine. It is nevertheless an important part of the wider Sunshower story. The system delivers controlled, low-dose UVA and UVB light. Sunshower associates UVB with vitamin D production and UVA with pigmentation and a healthy-looking complexion, and discusses the relationship between daylight, energy, mood, and the body’s day-night rhythm.
The relationship between light and skin goes further still. Through Dermasun Medical, the brand also uses low-dose UVB light therapy for chronic skin conditions, including psoriasis, eczema, sun allergy, and vitiligo. That clinical work is separate from the everyday wellness setting in the shower, but it adds another fascinating dimension to the story of how carefully controlled light can support health and wellbeing.
Layering water, warmth and contrast
The final element I used was the dedicated AXOR cold-water attachment. It draws on the principles of Kneipp hydrotherapy, where carefully applied cold water—or a contrast between warm and cold—creates a stimulating, invigorating response. This doesn't mean an ice bath. A controlled stream of cool water applied precisely can be a much more accessible way to introduce contrast into the bathroom.
After the cocooning warmth of the TOTO bath and the targeted infrared of the Sunshower, the cold-water finish felt crisp and refreshing. It completed the experience beautifully: support and massage, then warmth, then a short sensory reset. Together, these products showed me how a bathroom can offer different experiences depending on what the body needs that day.
That same principle is one reason I remain so passionate about Finnish sauna. I have had my own traditional Finnish sauna since 2021, and we have since designed and built saunas for several clients, both outdoors and integrated into bathrooms. As I write this, another is being installed within a bathroom project, which is incredibly exciting.
In Finland, a sauna isn't viewed as a luxurious spa extra. It is embedded in domestic life—a place to wash, warm, pause, talk and reset. In many Finnish homes, living without a sauna would feel almost as unfamiliar as living without a bathroom would to us in the UK. That everyday quality is exactly what interests me. The value comes from the ritual becoming part of life, not from saving it for a rare special occasion.
From our showroom spa to the wellness ensuite I am designing at home
This experience is now feeding into a completely separate project: the wellness ensuite and sleeping sanctuary I am currently designing for my own home, more than twenty years after I first moved there.
In an earlier blog, ‘The Nervous System Home: Why I’m Redesigning My Own Sleeping Sanctuary After More Than 20 Years’, I wrote about creating a space shaped by circadian lighting, clean air and humidity, acoustics, low-toxin natural finishes, sleep-focused window treatments and sensory wellbeing. The ensuite is an important part of that thinking, because our evening and morning bathroom routines are so naturally connected to sleep, energy, and the nervous system.
The TOTO Flotation Tub and Sunshower are in our working showroom spa room, not in my home. But using them so meaningfully has raised new questions for my own design. How can the room support me when I am tired, training, recovering or simply overstimulated? Which elements will I genuinely use? Which products justify their footprint not only through beauty, but through the role they can play over many years?
A more useful definition of luxury
I am not interested in filling homes with products for the sake of ownership. Nature remains the foundation of wellbeing: daylight, fresh air, movement, sleep, time outdoors and human connection. Technology should support those fundamentals, not distract us from them.
However, when we are already investing in a bathroom, I believe it is worth looking beyond the purely aesthetic choices. Beautiful finishes matter, but so do comfort, access, recovery, light, warmth and the ability to create a repeatable ritual that helps us feel better. Sometimes the feature that appears indulgent on a mood board becomes the one you value most when life places an unexpected demand on your body.
My experience did not suddenly turn me into an advocate for the TOTO Flotation Tub or Sunshower; I already was one. What it gave me was a deeper, more personal understanding of why their design matters. They are beautiful pieces of bathroom technology, but their real value lies in the moments when they stop feeling like products and simply become part of taking care of yourself.
That, to me, is what wellness bathroom design should be: thoughtful, lasting and genuinely useful—on the best days, the busiest days and the days when your body asks you to slow down.
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