Wellness is booming in the home as a reaction to the ongoing extreme stress from the wider world. We see this happening in many industries; for home and garden, it is clear wellness specialist brands and health-orientated SKU variants are consistently growing faster than their sectors.
36% of all households intend to increase their spend on health and wellness products in the home. This intent is strongest in fast-growing emerging markets where brands seek an edge to break in.
Source: Euromonitor International Voice of the Consumer: Lifestyle Survey, fielded Jan-Feb 2024 (n=27,962)
Wellness motivates investments in our homes against the backdrop of a negative growth industry. This trend also offers a way to position credibly at premium pricing. However, the insight that is proving most relevant to strategy is that wellness is strongest in Asia Pacific and Latin America.
Some brands selling into homes still falsely think they can avoid the wellness trend
Right now, wellness is contained in certain rooms and activities, but this is changing. Kitchens and vegetable gardens are intrinsically part of healthy eating, just as bedrooms are the host to sleep health, and bathrooms are where home spas and self-care pampering actions focus. However, more rooms are getting in on the act, and there are aspects to wellness with “whole home” impacts. 
With both Dulux and Lowes experimenting with fragrance as an ingredient additive for paint formulas (going as far as to call one variant “Cheerful”), that is one way this spreads – products that are room agnostic are now getting into wellness. This is not just paint, we see flooring, textiles and worktop surface brands adopting wellness claims.
Wellness success is earned by brands, but a wellness trauma is always inflicted on brands, despite any strategic intent to stay clear. PFAS and VOCs offer examples, evolving towards market exclusion.
Just because a product is not in the thick of the wellness trend so far is no reason to feel safe. Wellness has a dark side – our homes should be a sanctuary for health, but many products we bring into the home today contain hazards, most obviously formula ingredients like formaldehyde and other VOCs that harm our endocrine (hormone) system.
As we study these issues, ingredients or materials labelled “toxic” by consumers are finding themselves excluded from retail ranges and suffering regulatory scrutiny and sales barriers at a pace that can feel close to overnight. The cookware sector in the US faces this with PFAS regulation.
Wellness claims are increasingly about the science of moods
Some brands are quite blatant over benefits being about hormonal reactions. Fragrance brands inside beauty and personal care are the most overt, working with IFF’s ScentCubeTM to match ingredients to hormone and emotional impacts, but hormone claims are active in weighted blankets speaking about sleep, oxytocin, and melatonin, and how a blanket can be like a hug.
Brand experiments for “happy” hormones are increasing, from serotonin as the main emotion regulator; to oxytocin as the bonding, love and cuddles hormone; dopamine as the main pleasure addiction that is getting us into so much trouble via social media companies; endorphins as the natural pain killer; and melatonin as the sleep health hormone that relies on darkness (another victim of screen use).
Mood impacts are the primary story behind a 22% CAGR in cannabis sales over 2019-2023 and the second strongest motivator for investing in any scents
Source: Euromonitor International
This is not just about knowing how to release happy hormones; we know about sunlight, we understand why gardening, pets and biophilic design at home are proving so good for us, we know why cannabis claims are spreading to bedding and clothing, and why sleep, singing and exercise have healing properties beyond the obvious. However, this is also about better understanding long-term stress, cortisol and everything that the main “stress” hormone disrupts. The science is moving on.
Wellness comes with a successful range structure for premium differentiation
Across many industries we study, we see a consistent differentiation strategy and range hierarchy that brands are succeeding with when they try to position wellness as a premium proposition. This includes industries like nutrition and personal care that are much further advanced in terms of embracing wellness.
In numerical terms in the forecast, the home and garden category most linked to the wellness trend in its entirety is indoor plants – and that has a compound annual growth rate to 2028 of +4%, four times faster than the overall Gardening growth. This is a recurring pattern for wellness product.
Read our report Wellness Zones, Mood Crafting and Our Growing Biophilia in the Home to become better informed about wellness products in the home and garden industry, the rooms that are emerging as new wellness zones, mood crafting via a practical understanding of hormones, how biophilic design fits into this, and useful learnings from industries further into this wellness trend.