D.C.-area people are building absolutely bonkers at-home wellness spaces
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An indoor sports court in a Bethesda home designed by GTM Architects. Photo: Stacy Zarin Goldberg
Time to make friends with your bougie neighbor: More Washingtonians are putting elaborate wellness spaces in their homes.
What's happening: Instead of leaving home for their self-care, an increasing number of locals with means are installing in-house saunas, salons, yoga, and meditation areas, elaborate gyms, cold plunges, massage rooms, endless pools — you name it.
The big picture: Covid forced more people to bring their health and self-care routines in-home — a convenience they realized they wanted to make permanent once the world opened up again.
What they're saying: Having a home gym or a sauna is by no means new, but more people are creating increasingly luxurious setups where you could easily spend hours, experts tell Axios.
- "They want everything to come to them," says interior designer Laura Hildebrandt. "That's the whole point of the luxury."
By the numbers: Wellness real estate has been the quickest-growing element of the global wellness industry since before Covid, and it grew over 20% in market size between 2020 and 2022, according to a 2023 Global Wellness Institute report.
- Most surveyed Americans said that "improving health and wellness" was their top motivator when making decisions and purchases for their home, per a study released last year by analytics company Kantar.
The intrigue: These respites aren't cheap. "The max is your imagination," says Hildebrandt. "Like $100,000 would not be an issue."
Zoom in: Clients are opting for home gyms with mirrored walls and ballet bars, separate thermostats and HVAC systems, special gym flooring, surround sound, big-screen TVs, and high-level equipment like Pilates reformers and Sorinex weight racks.
Sports-focused adds are also big like basketball or pickleball courts, lap pools, putting greens, and golf simulators.
- And, in true D.C. helicopter-parent fashion, this means your budding pro sports star can also practice at home.
- "The amount of money people spend to improve their kid's basketball game is incredible," says Evan Lyons, co-founder of the gym-designing group Ardent Fitness. "It's a crazy world."
Meanwhile, people are taking self-care seriously — infrared saunas and cold plunges are popular moves.
- So are elaborate home spa setups with heated floors and towel racks, plus Bluetooth smart showers and body sprays (aka a 360° carwash blast for your bod).
- Also big: Toto smart toilets, which can often run thousands of dollars and come with motion sensors, heated seats, built-in bidets, and air dryers (aka a 360° carwash blast for your booty).
Of note: This trend doesn't just apply to full-time homes — people are increasingly putting such areas in vacation homes, too.
- WFH life means they're spending more time there during the offseason and workweek and don't want to break their routines, says Marnie Oursler, who designs and builds custom coastal Delaware vacation homes for many Washingtonians.
- For instance, Lyons built a $100,000 fully equipped gym for a D.C. couple's vacation home in Turks and Caicos in a contemporary side building with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the ocean.
And, of course, self-care isn't relegated to just humans: Take a Vienna, Va., project Hildebrandt did with an in-home salon where both the two-legged and four-legged could get groomed, thanks to the doggie spa installed next to the glam area.
