Ever take a cold plunge? It’s a favorite among many top athletes and many health and wellness gurus will swear by it as a recovery method—provided you make it past the initial shock. Well, leave it to Kohler to capture the idea of taking an ice bath and transpose it into a hi-tech soak tub that comes with integrated lights and an interface for guided meditation.
The titular Ice Bath is part of a collaboration between Kohler and Remedy Place founder Dr. Jonathan Leary and is meant to be the first in a series of self-care products the company is developing. Founded back in 2019, Remedy Place bills itself as the “world’s first Social Wellness Club®” and has locations in New York and Los Angeles with ambitions on global expansion.
“Remedy Place’s passion for designing to heal and Kohler’s advanced engineering and quality craftmanship came together to create a sophisticated ice bath that transcends the at-home self-care category,” said Dr. Leary.
“We’re excited to bring the Remedy Place experience and cold therapy benefits into people’s homes. Our partnership with Kohler embodies a deep appreciation for world-class design and innovation, with the shared goal of delivering breakthrough products and elevated self-care experiences to make people feel better.”
Starting at $15,000 MSRP, the Kohler Ice Bath runs close to the same price point as its other wellness bath, the Stillness Smart Tub (which we’ve featured on CE Pro in the past). The design of the tub itself is meant to put its own standalone spin on plunge pools, albeit with a lot more high-tech controls to really dial in the perfect experience.
Lightapalooza took place in late February, and the growth of the event has mirrored the rapid ascension lighting fixtures and controls.
Precision temperature control lets users draw water from 38 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit while ambient lighting surrounds the underside of the Ice Bath to add an additional sensory touch to the whole experience. There’s even a digital remote that serves as a controller for the entire bath.
This includes the guided breathing timer, which helps users perfect the soak as is usually experienced at Remedy Place. Users need only punch in the desired session length and the breathe light interface on the inside of the bath helps guide them the entire duration.
It’s not even limited to the bathroom, either, as the Kohler Ice Bath is built to be able to withstand the outdoors and even comes with an all-weather cover for when not in use. The bath also comes with a secondary drain option, in the event of an outdoor installation. There’s even a UV and micron filter to keep things clean when spending long hours immersed in the experience.
Alternatively, it can be hooked up to the main plumbing line for filling and draining in the home.
Over the years Kohler has developed a variety of bathroom fixtures that would not seem out of place in a modern smart home installation. From the Numi 2.0 smart toilet to the Anthem showerhead, Kohler has long been experimenting with ways to advance its classic bathroom fixtures into the modern era through the incorporation of sophisticated technology.
To this day it remains one of the few major brands pushing this idea of a smart bathroom on the professional market. One other more entrenched in the integration industry is Séura with its smart mirrors and embedded mirror displays, which fits a lot more in with the AV focus of the industry.
However, despite Kohler’s efforts to make it easier for integrators to get on to bathroom projects through partnerships with CEDIA, it seems that the idea of the smart bathroom hasn’t quite taken off to the extent many might have thought. Even in our own Home of the Year Awards, the Kitchen & Bathroom category receives few entries each year. It makes one wonder what what the consumer appetite for incorporating specific pieces of technology into these spaces might be.
That doesn’t stop us from occasionally coming across “bath-like” wellness projects, but it’s worth noting that with most home tech projects falling in the $20K – $50K budget range, the addition of a $15,000 soak tub might just be something that only the upper echelon of clients might be interested in.
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