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Aug 20, 2023

Woodio Block Takes Throne as World's 1st 100% Wood Composite Toilet

There’s nothing pleasant about the shock of a cold toilet seat against the

There's nothing pleasant about the shock of a cold toilet seat against the sensitive skin of your backside during the colder months of the year. A heated toilet seat is a solution, but requires an outlet nearby and investing in a washlet (something we do highly recommend for an entirely upgraded bathroom experience). If you’re not the plug-and-play sort, there's another option with a surprisingly different take on the toilet: the solid wood Woodio Block.

The spare modern form was designed by Finnish Pentagon Design, a wall-mounted solution that softens the presence of a feature most of us would prefer to deemphasize.

Made from wood chips adhered together with resin into a single cast composite form, the impact-resistant Woodio offers the appearance of a contemporary wall-mounted commode with a warmly organic speckled finish that lands somewhere between fleck stone, pebble aggregate, and particle board.

The brand's entire catalog of wood composite surfaced bathroom products are designed to be easy to clean, attributed to the material's dirt-repellent coating.

The Finnish bathroom specialists completely abandon traditional ceramic or other hard surface materials. Instead the company's Block toilet has achieved parity with those materials typically sourced for bathroom products with a "practically unbreakable" composite throne that retains everything customers expect from a premium bathroom product: easy to clean, 100% waterproof, nearly carbon-neutral, and worry-free durability.

The wall-hung design is also a space-saving form factor, one complemented with a soft-closing lid and only the wall-installed flush button visible for that modern bathroom aesthetic. And as shown above, Woodio offers color options galore allowing bathroom decor rebels to veer even further away from the standard all-white toilet palette. Hues like clay, moss, arctic, and berry are especially dashing departures of decorative design.

Woodio not only touts the eco-sustainability of their manufacturing process, but also sources locally harvested aspen wood from Finnish forests to keep impacts low.

The Block's high wood content means it feels warm on the skin when sat on.

Beyond challenging the deep-seeded notion only the smooth and resilient surface of ceramic and stone can prevent the absorption of odors, stains, and bacteria within the bathroom, Woodio's $1,000+ price tag will likely keep the lid closed for most consumers. But we hope to see this material scale toward accessibility and affordability, noting Woodio's entire collection of sink basins, toilets, tubs, and interior panels has us imagining a warmly different bathroom than ever before.

Gregory Han is the Managing Editor of Design Milk. A Los Angeles native with a profound love and curiosity for design, hiking, tide pools, and road trips, a selection of his adventures and musings can be found at gregoryhan.com.

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