The ice bath cometh: the latest luxury wellness accessory

Hospitality entrepreneur Tim Grant, 42, has been keen on fitness for most of his life, whether cross-country skiing or triathlons, and for that entire time he’s used a strange homemade remedy as an end of day treatment: an ice-water bath. “They help with recovery to better perform the next day,” Grant says. “More recently, I’ve been doing it to promote immune and nervous system response, as well as control. It’s to de-stress.”

He improvised them in countless ways, from ice-filled waste bins — much deeper than a conventional bath, and so easier to submerge in — as well as dipping into cold seas in winter. Finally, though, Grant has found a ready-made product for his home in Putney, west London: Monk, an at-home ice bathing unit that launches in the new year.

Ice-water bathing, and baths, have moved into the mainstream in recent months. Lockdown fitness titan Joe Wicks installed a spa in his garden, complete with copper ice bath, as a stress-busting device. Basketball legend LeBron James and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey have both touted the benefits of ice baths. Harry Styles swears by one on his current tour and, of course, alternative therapy advocate Gwyneth Paltrow, has vouched for them, too.

Wim Hof, a Dutch entrepreneur who promotes ice bathing, just captained a BBC TV reality show, Freeze the Fear, that pummelled celebrities through a series of sub-zero challenges. One waggish rubbish collection firm, Divert, even offered to rent out its plastic receptacles for £10 a week (ice not included).

Anyone who wants to install a unit at home isn’t limited to the new Monk, though. Many rivals are already on the market, each with enticing, even empowering names, the Dreampod, Renu and Morozko Forge among them. Such models can cost up to $19,000.

Monk aims to stand out both for its price — relatively affordable at £4,995 — and its focus on aesthetics, its design with a sleek, faux-concrete shell more like a high-end spa than a gadget from a sports medicine lab. It’s this combination that Monk’s founder, London-based Laura Fullerton, hopes will set her start-up apart from those rivals.

“It’s got to look super sexy, so you’re proud to have it in your home,” she says, promising that Monk will use sustainable materials throughout, including ensuring the product can be fully recycled at the end of its use cycle. Monk will shun chlorine filtration, too, in favour of a chemical-free process — a nod to many advocates’ all-natural preference; it will still only need a water change once or twice a year.

Fullerton first encountered ice bathing during a wellness workshop. “I hate being cold, but it was like pressing the reset button — the endorphins that followed,” she says, adding that she once even sneaked into the swimming ponds at London’s Hampstead Heath to slake her obsession. “I found out the hard way the water was contaminated, because my skin was horrifically itchy for a couple of weeks after that.”

Her product pairs with an app that both controls the bath and trains users in breath-control therapy (Wim Hof is among those who preach the power of such a practice in tandem with deep-cold dips). Monk is set to launch in early 2023, but Fullerton says she has 2,200 interested parties, including Tim Grant, as well as investment from pro athletes whose names she declines to share, and Brewdog’s chief executive James Watt.

“It seems like everyone is buying them at the moment,” says Scott Carney, author of What Doesn’t Kill Us and an ice-bath devotee himself. “But there’s nothing new at all about them.” Anyone who wanted to try ice bathing at home used to have to do it with a DIY version. “People purchased a $120 chest freezer at [wholesaler] Costco, and they’d sit in it after unplugging it,” he laughs. “So anything is a step up from that.”

The science of such treatments is reasonably well established through widespread research on the physical benefits of controlled cold-water immersion, or exposure. Dr Rhonda Patrick, in particular, is a researcher who has specialised almost entirely in this area.

Dr Tom Ingegno owns an alternative medical centre, Charm City Integrative Health, in Baltimore. He’s long used cryotherapy, or cold therapy, and plans to install ice baths at a new clinic. Ingegno describes the physical benefits simply. “When your body thinks it’s freezing to death, there’s massive system vasodilation, which is like you’ve wrung your body out like a sponge before pumping fresh blood to the tissue,” he says.

Unfortunately, these benefits have been amplified beyond some of the more shored-up statistics in the past two years, says Carney — with some proponents taking left-field ideological stances and even promoting anti-vaccination propaganda. Ice-water bathing has become a staple of so-called “biohackers” who can take wellness practices to extremes. “Be aware of the actual company you buy from,” says Ingegno: “There’s a lot of BS out there.”

Most ethical acolytes, though, emphasise the mental benefits as much as any physical boosts. “The hardest thing about an ice bath is looking at it — the mere concept of getting in. That’s hard,” laughs Carney.

The hardest thing about an ice bath is looking at it — the mere concept of getting in. That’s hard

It’s mental wellbeing that Monk’s Fullerton suggests is most in need: “Stress is a real epidemic, too, and no wonder people are turning to these other holistic, natural solutions given what’s happened over the last two years.”

Perhaps, though, the reason for the rise in ice baths’ popularity is more basic: more people are buying them because they can. The wealthy worldwide have more disposable income than ever, their bottom lines bolstered rather than diminished by the pandemic (albeit now, perhaps, more prone to belt-tightening as recessions begin worldwide). Tricked-out bathrooms are primed for another gimmick to be installed alongside that Jacuzzi bath, Toto toilet and more.

“It’s a luxury product, and it seems like a crazy amount of money to spend to have one in your house,” says Carney. “But if you have the disposable income, why not have an ice bath?”

Find out about our latest stories first — follow @FTProperty on Twitter or @ft_houseandhome on Instagram