Gautam Gulati creates custom homes designed around wellness, and says that he’s helped patients with chronic diseases ween off medications and live a much happier life
Gulati is the founder of the Well Home, an outfitter of wellness-focused luxury properties that works with builders, clients and developers to ultra-personalize homes to a client’s exact needs.
Gautam Gulati considers himself a shepherd of sorts, guiding homeowners through the booming wellness real estate industry.
Gulati is the founder of the Well Home, an outfitter of wellness-focused luxury properties that works with builders, clients and developers to ultra-personalize homes to a client’s exact needs.
His is one of many companies seizing on the $400 billion wellness real estate industry—the fastest growing out of all sectors in the wellness economy, according to a 2024 Global Wellness Institute study.
These days, it’s common to find top-of-the-line homes with cold plunges, saunas or other wellness features. Gulati helps homeowners navigate which among those would work for their own lifestyle and health goals.
The Montreal-born, Washington, D.C.-based health-guru and entrepreneur has a doctor of medicine from George Washington University. He pivoted to design when he realized how influential a supportive physical environment was in his father’s journey with Alzheimer’s, and received a certification in interior design.
Gulati said that sickness has been “manufactured” into our lives, with stale, sedentary spaces or pantries that “stock ultraprocessed foods.” His firm, he said, is founded on the idea that “health begins in the home,” and spaces should help us default to a healthy lifestyle.
Before founding the Well Home, what did that process of supporting your dad look like?
Gautam Gulati: We got him the best medical treatment and the best doctors but that wasn’t moving the needle. What did was small home changes to accommodate his condition. I went down a rabbit hole and spent a couple of years changing things: the temperature, lighting, sound, aromatherapy and sense, movement patterns, grab bars, types of food. We ended up creating a 100-point checklist for those who live with dementia.
People with dementia also experience agitation around sunset, called sundowning. There are things that we can do to reduce or mitigate agitation, like adjusting the temperature or colors of the room and the lighting. We also play with soft furnishings, like pads under rugs to make them less slippery, or the feeling of their bedsheets.
Some things matter more in some conditions versus others. For example, acoustics might really matter for someone living with autism, but doesn’t matter as much for somebody with diabetes.
These design choices can be super subtle, like geometric tiles in the shower for example, to trigger more creative thinking and neuroplasticity inside the brain.
How does your background in supporting neurodegenerative diseases inform your work with all your clients?
We go by the principle of designing for their reality. We don’t design spaces in a way we think is going to be beneficial, instead we have to observe them and design for their experience.
Our “life in reverse” method involves asking clients to imagine their last decade of life and what that looks like. Are they dancing with their grandchildren? Are they biking in Napa Valley? Are they just simply carrying their own groceries and living independently? Our goal is to reverse engineer a plan to help them get there.
What are your holy grail features that you would recommend to anyone?
Well, there’s wellness features across what I call the “seven levers of bioharmony”: sleep, movement, nutrition, connection, mindfulness, purpose and safety.
I prioritize safety and sleep, so I would definitely recommend air filtration, water filtration and low-VOC paint, as well as circadian lighting. The tight insulation of our homes nowadays is trapping a lot more toxins inside of our home, so having proper centralized air filtration, capturing the majority of the particles, is extremely important.
What is a wellness feature that you wish more people would use?
We’ve built “social speakeasies” which are intentional spaces inside of our home that are dedicated toward connection and community and gathering. It can be anything, a poker room, a gaming room or a vinyl room, but it shouldn’t serve any other purpose but for connection.
We’re working on a project in Virginia, where off to the side of the living room there’s a little sundeck. We’re putting a massive painting in front of it, and when you pull out the painting, there’s a speakeasy in there.
Where is the wellness real estate industry headed?
AI is becoming extremely helpful in design, because we can start to build in tools for evaluating the health design of a space which don’t require a human, which can be really expensive. It’s going to make wellness features more accessible for the 65% of our population, who are living with chronic conditions. Our firm is working on its own model.
What’s your opinion on the effectiveness of home cold plunges? Fad or fab?
Yes, they’re definitely effective.
Features like saunas, plunge pools, vitamin C showers that cover the “recovery” part of wellness, which pair with more active spaces like a home gym, are all the rage now.
Sometimes it might not be practical or feasible to have all these capabilities on one property. The science says that for a cold body plunge to be effective, you just have to get to under 54 degrees Fahrenheit. So, for one client, who didn’t want a full plunge pool, we put a cooling device in a soaking tub that doubles it up as one.