Over the past few years, manufacturers and bathroom designers have been looking for ways to improve bathing solutions with the help of more advanced assistive technology and sustainable materials.
One place where the future of the bathroom experience can be found at trade shows such as the Pop up my Bathroom stand at ISH 2023 in Frankfurt.
Pop up my Bathroom is a large experience that showcases the trends that manufacturers are focusing on and the challenges they hope to have solved.
According to this stand, here are the top bathroom experience trends that are set to see major changes over the next few years.
-
Zero Waste Bathrooms
One of the biggest pushes in recent years is in the field of sustainability, with many newer homes being made under the principle of leaving as little waste as possible during the lifespan of the building itself.
Whilst this is highly achievable in most rooms of the house by using natural and easily recyclable materials, bathrooms (and to a lesser extent kitchens) have much more stringent requirements that make zero waste almost impossible in most use cases.
However, many manufacturers are taking up the challenge regardless, focusing on building with recyclable materials as opposed to plastic and enamel, which means that when someone remodels their bathroom, most of the bathroom can be recycled, ensuring that it avoids the landfill as much as possible.
As well as this, using water-saving fittings such as dual flush systems and contactless taps allow for less water to be used and therefore less water to be wasted.
-
Tiny Bathrooms With Massive Accessibility
When house prices started to rapidly ramp up in 2020, the tiny-house movement started to see a resurgence, with people trying to cram as much as possible into as small a space as is physically possible, typically by embracing extreme minimalist principles.
Whilst most people are unlikely to live in outright tiny houses, the trend allows for more compact bathrooms and innovative solutions designed for much smaller spaces, including scaled-down profiles, made-to-measure vanity units and more precisely designed showers and baths.
How this improves accessibility is that it allows for bathrooms with much smaller profiles to allow for the same level of space and manoeuvrability, as well as providing design and construction tools that allow for bathrooms to be shaped around people’s exacting needs.
-
From Smart Bathrooms To Emotional Bathrooms
A somewhat more unusual trend is how bathrooms have evolved to be more than just a highly functional room with a clearly delineated purpose. Whilst it still has those basic functions, bathrooms also operate as quiet, contemplative spaces and even lifestyle areas.
As such, designers and manufacturers have been challenged to think about how smart technologies could serve to help people feel better and fulfil a particular aim, rather than be a novelty that is quickly ignored and discarded in favour of the next big trend.
This is an extension of the existential dilemma smart homes have, where technology and home design are expected to work more harmoniously now that smart features can be considered from the start of a construction project rather than be retrofitted.