2025 ISH Frankfurt: Emerging Trends in Bathroom Design

When digital intelligence resonates with humanistic care, and Western culture coexists with global trends, what role should Chinese bathroom brands play in the global landscape? How can they break free from the constraints of OEM manufacturing and establish a discourse system in the global market that combines "Eastern aesthetics + original technology"? 

On April 16, at the "2025 Frankfurt ISH Exhibition Sharing Session" jointly hosted by Jiachuang Media and NetEase Home | Kitchen & Bath, Zhang Cuimin, Chief Content Officer of Jiachuang Media, shared her firsthand exhibition insights and reflections on the industry.

Core Value of ISH: Global Bathroom Industry’s Compass

ISH embodies three core values:
1.    Translating industry trends, technological revolutions, and quality upgrades into corporate strategy.
2.    Building a green ecosystem to transform sustainability into competitive advantage.
3.    Revealing global market dynamics and breakthrough strategies.

Key Trend: Green Environmental Protection

Theme: Solutions for a sustainable future
Innovations Highlighted:

Material Regeneration

•    Hansgrohe: Uses ≥30% recycled plastics in showerheads and 100% recycled paper packaging.

Biodegradable Materials

•    Exhibits used eco-friendly non-woven fabrics for booths, reducing waste while enhancing openness.

Water Resource Sustainability

•    Grohe Eversteam: Recycles 80% of shower water via UV filtration.
•    Roca: Dual-filter system reuses handwashing water for toilet flushing.

Key Trend: Color Innovation

Healing Natural Tones

•    Soft, pure hues create therapeutic bathroom spaces.

Dopamine-Boosting Palettes

•    Bold colors (e.g., vibrant oranges, pinks) infuse energy into designs.

Key Trend: Category Innovations

Ceramic Basins

Material innovation will place greater emphasis on environmental protection and sustainability.
Integrated thin-edged pedestal basins, all-in-one solutions combining faucets and basins like the Elissa series, as well as new technologies such as 3D printing and smart sensing, will see broader application.
Cross-industry collaborations will become the norm, and natural and artistic elements will be increasingly integrated into basin design.
 

Faucets & Fixtures

Focus on Material Innovation:

The faucet and hardware category is increasingly focused on material innovation. The faucet and hardware category emphasizes new materials such as carbon fiber, bio-based resins, and eco-friendly glass, which are being rapidly adopted.

Invisible Design: Embedded installation and concealed drainage have become standard features in high-end products, enhancing minimalistic aesthetics.

Enhanced Sensory Experience: Designs are becoming more immersive by integrating fragrance, lighting, and tactile elements to stimulate multiple senses.

Integration with Smart Home Systems: Faucets are increasingly being connected to smart home ecosystems, enabling intelligent control and automation.

Cultural Empowerment and Cross-Industry Fusion: Products are blending regional cultural identity with luxury design elements, creating unique and meaningful expressions. 
 

Shower Trays & Bathtubs 

 Led by Kaldewei, a series of innovations in materials and technology have been implemented.
By leveraging steel enamel and other advanced materials and processes, Kaldewei has enabled heating functionality in bathtubs and shower trays.
Additionally, easily detachable floor drains showcase the ingenuity of hidden design concepts.

Shower Enclosures, Bathroom Cabinets, and Smart Mirrors

Shower enclosures emphasize ease of installation, while bathroom cabinets feature modular and lightweight designs.
Smart mirrors highlight seamless material integration and meticulous attention to detail.
In these product categories, Chinese companies demonstrate strong innovation and intelligent manufacturing capabilities, making them key players in driving category breakthroughs.

Design & Product Trends

We can’t help but ask: Why are globally leading products able to establish a unique design language and brand system?
What kind of logic and thinking lies behind them?
Through ISH, the concepts and application trends of international bathroom products come vividly to life.
 

Naturalism

The naturalist style originated in the late 19th century during the Arts and Crafts Movement in the UK, gradually emerging as an eco-friendly design philosophy that embraces nature.
At the Frankfurt exhibition, this was vividly reflected — from Grohe’s flowing “Water World”, to Hansgrohe’s “Fantasy Forest”, and Roca’s modern interpretation of rippling water spaces — all presenting a contemporary take on naturalism.

Emotional Value

Products today go beyond practical functionality — they also serve as expressions of emotional value.
From the atmosphere of the space to the design of the products themselves, this year's ISH exhibition clearly reveals how international brands are pursuing emotional experience in their offerings.
       

The moment you step into Alape’s space, you’re greeted by a Zen-inspired environment crafted with basins, greenery, and water — instantly bringing a sense of calm to a restless mind.

Laufen’s basins showcase winding, artistic forms that evoke the idea that “life is a flowing river,” using graceful curves to express a vision of beauty and imagination.

Hansgrohe’s Avalegra basin faucet integrated solution features a rain shower-style water flow, giving the water an aesthetically pleasing emotional value and inspiring imagination.

Grohe’s Smile faucet, at the moment the switch slides open, reveals two small dots that clearly form a joyful “smile.” Both designers and users can feel the genuine happiness from the heart.

Hansgrohe’s ultra-thin shower solution achieves a slimmer, more elegant look through innovations in technology and craftsmanship, using an exposed installation method. The PowderRain water flow technology and AirPower air injection technology are also applied here.

Geberit’s Supertube system provides efficient drainage solutions without the need for additional vent pipes. GROHE has worked hard behind the scenes, and at the ISH exhibition, their products attracted large crowds and received widespread praise.
 

Kaldewei’s heated shower base, developed through advanced technology, warms the base so that even in the coldest winter, stepping on it feels warm. After showering, the heated base helps quickly dry the floor, making the shower space more comfortable and dry. Additionally, ambient lighting showcases the unique charm of the space, truly embodying excellence both inside and out.

Advanced Modular Design

The modular design of products and technologies effectively reduces the complexity and time of on-site construction, improving production efficiency while reducing the difficulty of personalized customization. This edition of ISH showcased various modular design solutions.

Grohe’s SPA shower adopts a modular design, allowing users to freely combine different water flow modes and spray modules according to their needs and preferences. For example, the overhead shower module offers diverse water flow combinations such as rain, waterfall, jet, clear stream, and fine rain, giving more imagination space for customization.

Duravit’s bathroom cabinets feature a unified color scheme and style across the cabinet body, basin, mirror, and soft furnishings, making it very easy to add, remove, or replace any modules.

Geberit’s modular bathroom cabinet solution allows different panels to flip and reveal various matching schemes. The on-site experience is highly interactive, and the modular design makes the solutions clear at a glance.
 

Smart New Future

The breeze of smart bathroom technology is sweeping in. At this year’s ISH, besides TOTO, the “veteran” of smart toilets, top brands such as Villeroy & Boch, Hansgrohe, and Grohe all showcased smart toilets as their core products. Zhao Yi, head of Villeroy & Boch’s bathroom sales in China, stated, “Whoever masters smart technology will master the world,” showing their high emphasis on smart toilets.

Convenient Installation

With rising labor costs, many brands have started to rethink product structure design to reduce the intensity and workload of later-stage installation, making installation more convenient and easier. Brands like Duravit and GROHE have launched products and services featuring quick-installation technologies, promoting lighter, more convenient, and more user-friendly installation of toilet ceramic bodies and lids.

International Bathroom Industry’s “Advanced Methodology”

Innovation is a word both abstract and concrete. Besides a few disruptive innovations, the bathroom industry also needs plenty of gradual, incremental innovations. International bathroom brands bring innovations filled with reflections on technology, philosophy, and lifestyle.

Unbounded Imagination

The “antonym” of innovation is sticking to conventions. Breaking free from the constraints of habitual thinking lets space brim with imagination. Alape’s basins have a certain degree of slope, making the basin not only practical but also full of imaginative possibilities.

Hansgrohe’s recycling system collects and filters water from the shower to reuse for flushing the toilet—an “out-of-the-box” solution realizing environmental concepts.

Ideal Standard’s shower system, beyond conventional color schemes, also launches a futuristic “Space Silver” series, recreating the future scenario of “roaming in space.”
 

Besides unrestricted product creation, differentiation in experiential scenarios and interactive methods also allows brands to reveal a unique side.
 

In a corner of Villeroy & Boch’s exhibition hall, there is a glowing “small hole.” When looking closely, it reveals a kaleidoscope-like fun display featuring miniature Villeroy & Boch ceramic basin products. It vividly expresses the brand and product characteristics, full of playfulness and uniqueness.

In a corner of the Duravit exhibition hall, a robot usually used for product testing is “picking up a brush” to paint “portraits” of visiting guests, showcasing both Duravit’s rigorous product testing standards and the brand’s commitment to customization and fun.
 

Minimalism Is the Ultimate Luxury: Restrained Formalism
 

When thinking of “high-end” and “luxury,” people often imagine adding more elements and functions to make a product look more “expensive.” However, international brands take the opposite approach by achieving “ultimate luxury” through minimalist expression.

Roca’s basin cleverly hides the drain, presenting a refined design that enhances visual aesthetics.

Additionally, Roca’s mechanical built-in tank smart toilet overcomes the technical challenges of concealed tanks in wall-hung toilets, greatly increasing the installation difficulty of wall-hung smart toilets while reducing later maintenance costs.

Villeroy & Boch’s integrated pedestal basin features sleek line designs and one-piece molding craftsmanship, perfectly demonstrating the “minimalist” aesthetic and “high” craftsmanship difficulty, making it a timeless piece of art.

Grohe’s EverStream water circulation shower system is a sustainably innovative system that recycles used water from the drain pipe, adjusts its temperature, purifies it, and reuses it, thus promoting water resource recycling. Although this is a “complex” system, it is implemented with concealed installation and looks extremely simple on the surface.

Hansgrohe’s shower faucets integrate thermostatic system functions into a minimalist exterior. Visually, they appear as simple overhead and hand showers, subtly presenting an “advanced” sense of sophistication.

“In this era of over-design, the greatest luxury is restraint.”
 

Details Are King: Ultimate Aesthetics

"The devil is in the details, the angel too." Classic and outstanding products always shine through meticulous attention to detail.

Unique interpretation of ultimate aesthetics: Alape’s “in and out” basin creates a seamless consistency between inside and outside.

Exquisite craftsmanship revealed through details: Villeroy & Boch’s cut-edge basins push basin craftsmanship to the extreme, embodying the core of European fine carving techniques.

Minimalism enables convenient installation: Corud’s pull-out faucet optimizes internal structure to reduce lead balls under the sink during installation, enlarging the cabinet space below, saving space and making installation easier.

“Nearly perfect” details: Geberit bathroom cabinet mirrors use rigorous edge finishing techniques to achieve seamless joints in the mirrors themselves.
 

Bossini’s foldable faucet can bend into different angles, with simple lines unfolding smooth aesthetics.
 

Enhancing Product and Brand Recognition

If our products were covered so their “logos” were hidden, could you still recognize which brand they belong to? One important factor in what makes a brand a brand is unique recognizability.

Hansgrohe showers share many common features: clean, smooth lines; use of geometric elements; strong product recognizability and innovation leadership, establishing their “reputation” in the market.

Villeroy & Boch’s smart toilet surfaces cleverly integrate the “n” from their brand symbol, making product elements part of the brand iconography and perfectly showcasing strong “brand DNA.”

Jason’s customized product solutions continue their strong metal element style. The hardware elements in basins closely integrate with ceramic bowls, and metal elements around bathtubs echo the overall spatial feel while effortlessly presenting the brand’s metal elements.

Laufen’s basin products are classic cases of “product evolution.” They exemplify “thin-edge technology” taken to the extreme. While details are constantly improved, the thin-edge technique and highlights remain consistent, refining the thin edge as Laufen’s signature language, giving the products strong recognizability.

The “spoon”-shaped basin series is also evolving, yet its essence remains unchanged, showcasing the continuity and vitality of Laufen’s products.

Returning to Life Scenes: Aesthetic Ritual
 

Scenes are not only carriers of life but also arenas for the soul.
 

In today’s aesthetic advancement, a beautiful lifestyle requires ritual. Brands need to present not just products themselves but also an understanding of life and an expression of aesthetics.

Roca’s exhibition hall returns to the Mediterranean lifestyle, expressing their understanding of life through Spanish-style romance and stories.
 

Relaxation and Refinement

“Relaxation” and “refinement” are not mutually exclusive. Relaxation means having balance and flexibility in life, while refinement is an expression of life. At the ISH exhibition, one can enjoy “snack freedom” and “coffee freedom,” enhancing the beauty and hopes of life.

Bathtubs filled with popcorn, freely available bread, cakes, and fruits at the booth allow easy, relaxed conversations while enjoying delicious food.