Listen to Paul Potts Sing in His Perfect Environment… This Custom Bathroom

People love a good sing-song in the bathroom. For this reason, TBWA\Stockholm and the Swedish hardware store K-rauta joined forces with a number of experts to develop a bathroom with optimal acoustics for one of the world's most famous tenors – Paul Potts. The 360-campaign was developed by TBWA\Stockholm and kicks off this weekend with an activation in all of K-rauta's hardware stores.

The process to build a bathroom for Paul’s voice began when the Swedish hardware store K-rauta commissioned acoustic engineer Claes Olsson to analyse and listen to his voice. The analysis showed which sound frequency range Paul’s voice falls within and from there, the choice of materials was analysed along with which length, breadth and ceiling height would best amplify his voice. The end result is a fully-tiled bathroom measuring 5.90 X 4.70 metres with a ceiling height of 3.20 m and a reflective surface area of 123.3 square metres.

“It is possible to design a bathroom entirely adapted to your own singing voice and to prove this, we have specially built a bathroom for one of the most famous tenors in the world – Paul Potts – and recorded him singing an opera aria in the bathroom. I am one of the many people who like to sing in the shower and if you are going to update your bathroom anyway, why not take this opportunity to optimise the acoustics,” says Magnus Jirlow, Marketing Director at K-rauta. 

Music therapist Katarina Lindblad, who was also involved in designing the bathroom, says that people appreciate singing in the bathroom as the sound and acoustics make it more rewarding than in everyday situations. Not to mention that the bathroom is also a place where we can be left in peace. Singing is a very intimate thing and many people feel embarrassed to sing in front of others. As we have a sense of privacy and security in the bathroom, we can show sides of us that we normally keep hidden and benefit from the hard surfaces and lack of soft furnishings in a bathroom that create an aurally pleasing acoustic environment. This makes it fun to sing in the bathroom and it also gives us a bit of a self-confidence boost. 

Tenor Paul agrees: “Often a bathroom is a the only place that is secure for me to warm up in, I hate warming up in front of other people. You often share a dressing room so the bathroom is the only place where there are no other people. Hearing my voice in the bathroom is a somewhat strange sensation, but also a quite fulfilling one. I think everybody needs that egoboost sometimes,” Potts says.

A total of 12 films have been produced, of which five will be featured on national television and online. Also, additional films have been produced for K-rauta's social media channels and for their own channels. The song recored in the bathroom has also been released on Spotify. Check it out here.