Flush With Success, and Looking to Spend

Tracy Ballard and husband John Gorman of Cleveland Park enjoy their shower, which is nearly nine feet by four feet. (By Dayna Smith -- The Washington Post)

Business is up, he said, from people coming in to buy a $10,000 tub to those experiencing their first taste of extravagance, in the form of a $10 crystal cabinet pull.

Lately, chromo therapy has become popular: tubs featuring various colored lights to help treat seasonal affective disorder.

"There's some kooky, weird thing going on right now with relaxation," Goldberg said. "We just suck it up. I think, as a society, we seem to be focused on getting out of our woes and emulating someone else's life. You know, 'Jessica Simpson has a beautiful bathroom. Gee, she must really relax in there. I want one.' "

Indeed, one measure of the proliferation of luxuriousness is to survey what has become standard throne-room fare in new homes on the suburban fringe.

"What is typical is a large soaking tub, a shower that is three by four feet, dual vanities, his and hers," said Lee Golanoski, director of design for Toll Brothers Inc., one of the largest builders in the country. Even so, he said, people are asking to "option up."

"You can option up the size of the shower to an ultra shower that makes it 3.5 by five feet and dual shower heads," he said. "And now, we've created an option called luxurious master bath, which takes that a step further, even adds his-and-her toilets in private rooms. . . . Master baths are bigger than most secondary bedrooms, usually. It's another place to lounge."

That is how Eddie Burka, a retired real estate investor, has come to think of the bathroom in his Alexandria condominium. In fact, it might be said that it all begins with the Eddie Burkas of the world and trickles down from there.

He recently spent approximately $120,000 on his bathroom, where he often lounges for a good hour in the morning, watching the "Today" show from the tub.

"The floors are heated marble," he said, walking across them. "This shower's got a heated mirror, so I can shave in the shower . . . the shower sprays, they pulsate, they vibrate and all that stuff."

He was rather blas? about it all at this point. This week, he and his wife were flying to the North Pole to see polar bears.

"In here," he said, heading to the tub area, "this is a Jacuzzi tub. I got a TV set in here," he said, clicking on his 13-inch plasma with a remote.

And then, he said, he has his Toto toilet.

It comes with a control panel, and that is all that will be said about that.

Which leaves the question of why -- why Brazilian Uba Tuba when Formica will do?

Number one, said Michael J. Silverstein, senior vice president of the Boston Consulting Group and author of the book "Treasure Hunt," about luxury spending, "it's a reflection of the greatest accumulation of wealth in mankind's history."

Number two, said Sandy Schlachtmeyer of the heated tile floors, there is a sort of economic peer pressure at work.

"We felt pressured by all these enormous bathrooms, by all this marble and slate," she said. "It had to be done. . . . Maybe this is the final frontier."

For Tracy Ballard and John Gorman -- who said his new shower is "awesome!" -- the reasons had more to do with how much better they imagined their lives could be. They both work. They both get ready at the same time in the morning. They have two young children.

"We have neither the time nor the channels to decompress," Ballard said. "So we thought, 'Okay, we can create a spa-like ambiance.' "

And so, she and her husband, and at times, their two kids, have at last found a way to spend more time together.

"It's become an all-purpose room," Ballard said. "We make a date for spa night, talk about our day and relax . . . My husband is like, 'I can't believe we have this in our house,' " she said.

Jerry Weed, owner of Kitchen and Bath Studios in Chevy Chase, takes the longer view of the situation, having witnessed the first big Jacuzzi craze years ago.

"You know, two-person tubs where people were gonna get all sudsy and make passionate love," he said. " That wasn't gonna happen."

"But," he said, "it is what it is. We have a higher standard of living. Will it last forever? Probably not. We just happened to come along at a good point in history."