Showering and design, reimagined: How Methven is redefining everyday wellbeing at home

There’s a moment before the water touches your skin. A pause at the end of a long day, the anticipation as you wait for the right temperature, steam rising, the gentle sound of water falling.

It’s often a moment we take for granted, but Andy Grigor is always thinking about the way water can soothe and stimulate, comfort and awaken, relax and revitalise. As the Head of Design and Innovation at GWA Group, he’s been creating for as long as he can remember, even when it was just helping his dad in the home workshop growing up.

Andy Grigor, Head of Design and Innovation.

Every time he sits down to start a new design today, he thinks about conversations he’s had with family and friends. How will they use his creations when ideas and sketches turn into physical pieces in homes across the country?

“What’s the experience of using the product going to be?” he says. “The shower isn’t just a place to get clean, it’s a moment to slow down, reset and reconnect with ourselves.”

It’s a simple goal: to transform water from something merely functional to something that can be enjoyed. The experience must lead, and everything else follows.

A design journey

The Waipori range has always given us this experience. An enduring collection of showers and tapware, it carries a shape people recognise before they know why; a form that’s lived quietly in homes for many years.

“Waipori has always been one of those shapes people gravitate towards; its geometry has always resonated,” Andy reflects. “It hits a really nice sweet spot: refined in its simplicity, a familiar shape without being ordinary.”

So when his design team gathered to revisit the collection, there was a creative tension in the air. The goal wasn’t to change, but to enhance an already loved design.

“It was about, how do we take that and evolve it so that it fits the environment? It deserved to meet the interiors people are creating today.”

Back when Waipori first started making its way into homes, bathroom design was much simpler. Today’s technology didn’t exist yet; there was no warm brushed bronze catching morning light, brushed nickel shifting tone throughout the day, or gunmetal deepening the mood of a small ensuite.

But colour was just one part of the story. “Every detail was revisited: new tooling, new faceplates. Even changes you can’t consciously see.”

At one stage, Andy remembers the design veering too far from its origins. The silhouette had flattened to become more geometric, and for a moment it felt like they were making progress. But something wasn’t quite right.

“We realised we’d gone a little bit too far down that path… the design language had been lost a little bit,” says Andy. “It really is a process, and those subtle changes are the most difficult. We get accused of being a bit neurotic, but you go through the same for any design process. You pare it back, or you put too much detail on, and then you have to pare it back again.”

Doing exactly that, the new form started to take shape. The spout was tilted a couple of degrees, and prototypes were held up against the original design to not only see what looked different, but how it felt to be used and held in the hand. Slowly, the design started to unfold into something that felt similar, yet undeniably better. Cleaner, softer and more contemporary.

One thing that didn’t change was the heart of the tapware: the SatinJet® mechanism that makes every shower feel fuller, warmer and more enveloping. Even in a small bathroom, the softness of the water feels generous, a tiny moment of restoration at the end of the day.

It’s this balance of performance and wellbeing that has become central to Methven, where outstanding design, quality materials and rigorous engineering creates a truly immersive moment with water.

“It’s about creating moments people enjoy,” says Andy, and it’s this philosophy that’s shaping what’s next for Methven.