In a Luxury-Home Market Obsessed With Wellness, the ‘Shaman Is Another Level Altogether’

Luxury concierges, expected to go to the ends of the Earth to satisfy residents, may have to tread even further in their latest role.

A new crop of luxury buildings looking for more creative ways to stand out and attract wellness-focused buyers is going beyond, the flashy fitness centres and spas to add meditation gardens, cold plunges or ice baths—and, yes, spiritual concierges, who connect residents with healers, therapists and a bevy of other experts to help with mental and emotional health.

Take the Maverick Chelsea in New York as an example. The building, in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighbourhood, saw residents start to move in November and is debuting three floors of wellness amenities this month such as a 60-foot-long indoor mosaic tiled pool with cabana seating. But the highlight may be the on-call spiritual concierge who residents can tap through the building’s programming partner LIVunLtd.

Maverick Chelsea’s head of sales Alex Lundqvist said that the concierge can connect homeowners with top aura readers, crystal and reiki healers and meditation teachers.

“We want to provide multiple ways to help people who are seeking spiritual realignment or guidance,” he said. “It’s something that’s increasingly valued today.”

One&Only Mandarina Private Homes, in Mexico’s Riviera Nayarit, also offers spiritual aid—a shaman to be exact who leads a traditional Mexican sage ceremony for interested buyers to bless their new homes.

Danielle Lepe, a San Francisco resident who works at Facebook, for one, bought a six-bedroom residence at the property with her husband and jumped at the chance. “I want any home of mine to have good energy, and I believed that a shaman could bring that in,” she said.

Ms. Lepe and her husband invited several friends to join them for the auspicious day, which she said saw clusters of hundreds of dragonflies circling the sky. The shaman saged the property inside and out, she said, and also blessed their expecting friend. “I am not at all a hippie-dippy type, and neither are our friends, but our spirits and souls felt nourished,” she said. “We felt an incredible sense of peace and that everything would be O.K.”

The development’s overall wellness amenities were a big reason why the property appealed to her and her husband, said Lepe. “It has the best breathwork and fitness classes that we fully take advantage of, but the shaman is another level altogether,” she said.

These more unusual perks of buying a residence in an upscale building are no surprise, according to Beth McGroarty, the research director for the Global Wellness Institute, a Miami-based nonprofit that promotes wellness. This is because wellness-centric residential real estate has been powered by the pandemic and is seeing a rapid rise. According to the group’s data, the market was valued at $148 billion in 2017. This year, it’s projected to jump to $460 billion, and by 2025, $580 billion.

“Wellness in real estate today means everything that you would find at a cutting-edge wellness centre,” Ms. McGroarty said. “It’s also a lot more holistic and emphasises emotional and spiritual health because buyers want help in this realm, especially after the pandemic.”

Mikaela Arroyo, the director of the New Home Trends Institute at California-headquartered John Burns Real Estate Consulting, agreed. “We surveyed homeowners and renters last November, and the majority responded that mental well-being was more paramount than physical health and their top priority when seeking a new property,” she said.

Wellness amenities at Brookly Point, a luxury residence in Brooklyn, New York. Brooklyn Point

Some of the latest spa amenities also blur the line between physical and mental wellness.

A trendy amenity that’s designed to shock, all in the name of health of course, is the ice bath, where residents—as the name suggests—literally take a bath, if only for a second, in a tub filled with ice. Cold plunges are another twist on the concept and claim to have a similar effect. Cold therapy is touted as a cure all for everything from inflammation and sore muscles to improving mental health.

Fiction or fact aside, extreme temperature plunges and baths are catching on.

The Renaissance Residences Honolulu and Four Seasons Private Residences Lake Austin both have cold plunge baths. It’s also a feature at Brooklyn Point in downtown Brooklyn, according to Ryan Serhant, who is leading the sales and marketing for the building.

An exterior rendering of Cipriani Residences Miami, located in the Brickell neighbourhood and slated for completion in 2026. The Boundary

“This is a development that has been designed around the story of wellness, and the three levels of amenities include a rock-climbing wall, two pools plus this cold plunge pool,” he said.

Cipriani Residences Miami, located in the Brickell neighbourhood and slated for completion in 2026, is playing up the ice bath that will be part of its wet room. Michael Patrizio, the managing director for the project’s developer Mast Capital, said that the bath will be between 50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit and next to the sauna so that residents can move from hot to cold or vice versa setting quickly. “We’re trying to be ahead of the market with what we give our owners, and this bath is definitely a way,” he said.

Picturesque meditation gardens are another fresh perk that developments have at the ready to help buyers find calmness. “Our research has found that a connection with nature is important to home buyers today as a way for them to destress and reconnect with themselves,” said Ms. Arroyo. “Meditation gardens in the wake of this couldn’t be more opportune.”

At 212 West 72nd St., on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, for example, there’s an interior courtyard garden on its third-floor amenity level that’s meant to be used for yoga and meditation. It’s accessible from the fitness centre and features a wooden pergola that’s draped in florals.

Rendering of the meditation garden at The Perigon, a luxury new development in Miami Beach. Binyan Studios

The Perigon, located in Miami Beach and debuting in 2025, is a luxury condominium tower with a meditation garden designed by Gustafson Porter + Bowman, the London landscape architecture firm behind the redesign of the Eiffel Tower’s green spaces and the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park.

Neil Porter, the architect who led the project, said that his vision was to create a secluded space for owners within the larger gardens that’s away from the activity of the beach. The long, linear area is flanked by a water channel, said Mr. Porter, that has pods constructed of timber which residents can sit on as they self reflect. Other elements include seating alcoves on solid ground and an abundance of lush plants and flowers such as lilies and irises. “The pods resemble floating islands,” Mr. Porter said, “and the garden is meant to be a place for a tranquil escape.”

This article originally appeared on Mansion Global.

For Jack Freeman, a compelling interior should not look as though it was completed in a single shopping trip.

The founder and designer behind FREEMAN & CO prefers rooms that develop through art, travel, commissioned furniture and objects collected over time. It is an approach that treats the home less as a decorative project and more as an evolving portrait of its owner.

“I am a true believer in collecting versus decorating,” Freeman says.

That distinction underpins the international practice he has built across private residences, hotels, property developments, yachts and private aviation. Its projects stretch from Point Piper, Vaucluse, Circular Quay and Toorak to Mayfair, Bel Air and the Caribbean.

Although the locations and architecture vary considerably, the work is connected by a restrained design language. Natural stone, warm timbers and sculptural furniture establish the foundation, while art, bespoke lighting and individual objects give each interior its identity.

The objective is not to overwhelm a room with obvious symbols of expense. It is to create an environment that feels calm, layered and particular to the people living within it.

“The greatest luxury isn’t about excess,” Freeman says. “It’s about creating an oasis where you come home and feel immediately grounded — effortlessly chic and deeply personal.”

Collecting instead of decorating

Decorating can imply the completion of a room: selecting the required furniture, filling the available walls and producing a coherent finished image.

Collecting is less conclusive.

A collected interior has room to change as its owners travel, discover artists, inherit pieces or reassess how they use their home. Its character comes from the relationship between objects rather than adherence to a single brand or season.

That does not mean placing unrelated pieces together without discipline. The designer must understand scale, proportion, material and provenance well enough to create a dialogue between them.

A contemporary artwork might sit beside a historic piece of furniture. A precisely detailed new interior may be interrupted by an irregular object made by hand. Smooth stone can be balanced by timber, textiles or a patinated metal surface that becomes richer with age.

The tension between those elements is part of the appeal.

For Freeman, art is not an accessory to be added once the furniture plan is complete. It forms part of the architecture and atmosphere of the room from the beginning.

Lighting is considered in the same way. Beyond its practical purpose, a bespoke fitting can operate as a suspended sculpture, changing both the room’s composition and the way its materials are experienced after dark.

A design perspective shaped by travel

International travel plays a significant role in Freeman’s creative process.

Design fairs such as PAD Paris and Salone del Mobile in Milan provide opportunities to encounter emerging designers, established galleries, new materials and collectible furniture away from the filter of social media.

More spontaneous discoveries can prove equally important.

“Sometimes it’s the simple things,” Freeman says. “That piece found on a shopping trip with a client in Paris, stumbling across an artisan’s workshop, or a special memory that forms the narrative of the story.”

Objects selected during travel bring more than visual interest into a home. They carry an association with a place, maker or experience, giving the client a connection that cannot be reproduced by ordering an entire interior from a catalogue.

Freeman’s influences are international, but his projects are not conceived as replicas of Parisian, Milanese or Californian style. Each commission responds to its architecture, setting, natural light and the daily lives of its occupants.

A waterfront Sydney residence demands a different treatment from a Mayfair townhouse. A Caribbean estate shaped by brutalist architecture and reflecting pools calls for another response again.

The designer’s role is to absorb those references without allowing them to overwhelm the individual qualities of the property.

Designing the complete experience

FREEMAN & CO extends beyond conventional interior decoration.

The practice’s stated services include interior design and architecture, project management, property acquisition, development advice, concept design, documentation, furniture and lighting design, procurement and art curation.

That breadth allows the team to become involved before a room’s dimensions and finishes are fixed.

Early participation can be important at the top end of the residential market, where architecture, landscape, interiors, technology and art must operate as one environment. Decisions about ceiling heights, wall dimensions, sightlines and lighting can directly affect where art is installed or how custom furniture is proportioned.

The practice can then carry those decisions through to procurement and final installation, maintaining the design narrative as a project moves between architects, builders, specialist craftspeople, dealers and suppliers.

Its residential portfolio includes a South Coast retreat conceived as an escape from urban life, a Caribbean estate with reflecting pools, an East Coast-inspired Palm Beach residence and a Mayfair townhouse organised around an expressive drawing room.

The studio also says it has worked on highly tailored Sydney residences with values exceeding $100 million, although the private nature of such commissions means individual addresses and clients are not always disclosed.

A home that can keep changing

The risk in creating a perfectly resolved interior is that it can become too static — a composition that looks exceptional in photographs but leaves little room for life.

Freeman sees the home as something that should evolve with its owners.

“I love the evolution of design,” he says. “We are talking about people’s lives, and as they evolve, so too should their private sanctuaries.”

That evolution might involve adding art, reupholstering a significant piece, adapting rooms as a family changes or making space for objects gathered through future travels.

The original design needs to be strong enough to accommodate those layers.

This may be the clearest expression of Freeman’s approach to luxury. It is not simply access to rare stone, collectible furniture or commissioned craftsmanship. It is the creation of a personal environment whose meaning deepens rather than diminishes with time.

Fact box

Designer: Jack Freeman

Role: Founder and managing director

Practice: FREEMAN & CO

Base: Australia, with international projects

Project locations named by the practice: Point Piper, Vaucluse, Circular Quay, Toorak, Palm Beach, the NSW South Coast, Mayfair, Bel Air and the Caribbean

Sectors: Private residences, hotels, residential developments, private aviation and superyachts

Services: Interior design and architecture, property development, project management, property acquisition, documentation, furniture and lighting design, FF&E procurement, interior dressing and art curation

Design philosophy: Collected, personal interiors shaped by art, craftsmanship, travel and enduring materials

Website: free-man.co

In a Luxury-Home Market Obsessed With Wellness, the ‘Shaman Is Another Level Altogether’

Jack Freeman believes the most compelling interiors are not decorated, but collected. The FREEMAN & CO founder creates layered, personal spaces shaped by art, travel and craftsmanship.