Older than over 40 countries and about 400 Fortune 500 companies, Toto sanitaryware is a Japanese luxury home interior brand that sits in a league of its own. Not many have the claim to fame that Toto has, being one of the world’s first and most advanced sanitaryware and home interior brands.
Founded in 1917, Toto was founded by Kazuchika Okura as Toyo Toki Co. Ltd., it was created after Okura was inspired by European, modern sanitary ceramic, and plumbing technology, aiming to modernize Japanese bathrooms. Okura is also credited for developing Japan’s first seated flush toilet in 1914. At the time, Western-style seated toilets were a novelty in Japan, where squat toilets were standard and bathroom culture as a concept barely existed.
With their rich experience, state-of-the-art tech and rigorous research & development, Toto sanitaryware has been leading the world for the past 100+ years now. How a Japanese brand became the standard for the fanciest homes, hotels and offices all over the world is anyone’s guess, but those who dig deep can find many reasons.
What is remarkable about Toto Sanitaryware is not just that it started ambitiously, but that it kept that ambition alive through multiple economic crises, two world wars, oil shocks, and housing downturns.
Toto Washlet: A Product Turned Cultural Institution
In 1964, when the Tokyo Olympics were held, Toto began importing and selling a product called the “Wash Air Seat,” a toilet seat attachment distributed by the American startup, American Bidet Company. The product had been intended to assist people with limited mobility but Toto saw something more universal in it. Starting in 1969, Toto began producing a domestic version of the Wash Air Seat with the added feature of a heated toilet seat.
But the real leap came in 1980 when Toto launched a product called the Washlet G (a neologism drawn from “Let’s Wash,” with G standing for “gorgeous.”) Initial sales were extremely favourable, and the product nearly sold out after its launch due to high consumer demand. At 149,000 yen, it was not cheap. Yet it found buyers because Toto had engineered a genuinely better product, not a novelty.
Then came the crisis that would define the brand’s character. Without warning, Toto began receiving a large number of consumer complaints that the warm-water spray became cold after less than three months of use. Toto then made the courageous decision to address this crisis by replacing every product rather than repairing them. This bold decision earned Japanese consumers’ trust and helped drive Washlet’s success. A product recall at full replacement cost, not repair is an enormous financial risk for any company. But Toto understood that a brand promising cleanliness and comfort above all else cannot survive a loudly told story of failure.
From there, Toto Washlet’s evolution became a benchmark of refinement. Most current models have a sensor preventing water from spraying while a person is not sitting on the toilet. Nozzles are designed at precise angles: 43 degrees for the rear and 53 degrees for the front to prevent water from splashing back. Rear and frontal cleansing functions operate on separate nozzles, each of which is washed with warm water when stowed away and before use. This is a result of hundreds of hours of research and testing in pursuit of an experience that is, in every measurable sense, cleaner than every alternative. By the time the Washlet turned 40 in 2020, 80% of Japanese households had a Washlet or other bidet seat. In March 2019, total global Washlet sales topped 50 million. Outside Japan, the devices can be found in five-star hotels and landmark buildings around the world.
No Sticky Science
At a microscopic level, porcelain is a series of ridges, valleys, and crevices to which waste can easily stick. To address this, Toto developed a nano-technology glaze called Cefiontect. This ultra-smooth ceramic glaze is baked in during the manufacturing process, not painted on. It seals the porcelain, creating a super-slippery, non-porous surface.
Cefiontect glaze prevents particulates from adhering to porous ceramic surfaces. Less cleaning means fewer chemicals in the environment and less water used for maintenance. The product innovation and the environmental responsibility are, in this case, a rare and elegant alignment.
The Cefiontect glaze sets the stage for every other cleaning technology Toto has developed. It is the foundation on which Premist, E-Water+, and Actilight operate.
A Toilet That Cleans Itself
Actilight represents Toto venturing into the realm of photocatalytic chemistry, showing their dedication to learn, research and incorporate knowledge to create something better than the existing.
Actilight technology keeps your toilet immaculate without any extra effort. No chemicals are used but just light, oxygen, and water. The Neorest with Actilight is the only toilet in the world that stays clean on its own.
If the toilet is not in use for eight hours, it automatically sprays the bowl with E-Water+. After ten hours, the UV light in the lid switches on. The combination of the special glaze and UV light triggers the photocatalytic cleaning process. The toilet maintains itself through your absence as efficiently as it serves you through your presence.
Water Conservation Efforts
One of the persistent myths about premium products is that luxury and environmental responsibility are fundamentally at odds; an idea that the best things consume the most. Toto has spent decades systematically dismantling this idea.Toto was the first to market a 1.6 GPF (gallons per flush) toilet in 1989 as an answer to California’s drought issues. That was decades before water efficiency became a marketing priority in the industry. Since then, the company has pushed that figure considerably further.
The Tornado Flush system builds further on this achievement. Toto’s Tornado Flush system generates 360 degrees of cleaning power that reaches every spot. Their 1.28 GPF toilet models save approximately 5 gallons of water a day and 1,825 gallons or more per year for a standard household. Rather than relying on volume to move waste, Toto uses velocity and centrifugal force, creating a rimless, dual-nozzle design that sends water into a full circular orbit inside the bowl.
Silence as a Design Language
Technology without beauty is engineering. Beauty without technology is decoration. What distinguishes Toto from every competitor in its space is the company’s insistence that the most advanced toilet in the world should also be the most beautiful one.
Toto’s Neorest collection offers the most innovative, design-forward array of products available, with elegant designs drawn from nature. Toto believes that the bath space should be a relaxing, restorative place where people escape the stresses of daily life.
The Neorest NX, for instance, draws its sculptural form from the natural beauty of pebbles shaped by water over time. This is a studied philosophical commitment: the idea that the most enduring shapes are those made by nature’s patient processes, and that a toilet aspiring to permanence should borrow from that grammar.
The Neorest WX1 model utilises a new ceramic material that prevents the ceramic from warping as much during the firing process, resulting in finer, more elegant lines in the finished product. Every millimetre of tolerance in the manufacturing process is treated as an aesthetic decision. The pursuit of thinner walls, crisper edges, and cleaner silhouettes is as rigorous as the pursuit of better flush performance.
Toto products are specified in some of the most luxury hotels across the globe, including the Mandarin Oriental Mayfair, Marriott, Nobu and Rosewood properties. The choice of these properties is telling. When Nobu and Rosewood choose a sanitaryware partner, they are making a statement about the level of guest experience they intend to deliver and their repeated choice of Toto is as strong an endorsement as any review or award.
The Philosophy Beneath the Toto Sanitaryware
It would be easy to catalogue Toto’s innovations as a list of impressive features and they are impressive. But the deeper story is about a company-wide belief that the bathroom is a wellness space, and that the people who use it deserve comfort, dignity, and beauty along with hygiene.
Toto smart toilet designers created bathroom products that support wheelchair users, caregivers, families, older adults, pregnant women, and individuals managing temporary or long-term disabilities. The work extended beyond individual products, influencing entire spaces and public restroom facilities. Luxury, in Toto’s vocabulary, is not exclusionary. It is about making the very best experience available to the widest possible range of people. To call Toto the best sanitaryware brand in the world is not an overstatement at all; after all it’s the most technologically advanced, the most aesthetically accomplished, and the most complete one in existence. If you are keen on knowing the latest toto toilet prices or are looking for a Toto dealer in Delhi NCR, you’d be delighted to check out the Toto sanitaryware collection at Tikriwal Trading Company (TTC).
More than a century after Kazuchika Okura looked at a European porcelain toilet and imagined what a Japanese luxury toilet could become, Toto is still doing exactly what he started: looking at what exists, deciding it is not good enough, and building something better.