6/10
Open rating explainerInformationWIREDVery effective chlorine filter. Multifrequency red light therapy in the shower. Handy-dandy water-resistant remote control, with a timer. Claims to remove some heavy metals and mineral hardness. Disco in the shower!TIREDIndependent testing not available for review. Dose is variable depending on distance from showerhead. Remote buttons difficult to see, requiring trial and error.Have we reached peak red light yet? Red light therapy—a fairly recent trend touted for everything from hair growth to smooth skin to muscle relaxation—has blossomed into a half-billion-dollar industry over the past half-decade. This has ranged from red light saunas and red light masks to red light hats, mats, heaters, and pads.
So maybe I shouldn't have been surprised to see wellness company HigherDose turn up with what it's calling the world's only red-light shower filter. "Combo I never saw coming,” agreed my colleague Nena Farrell, who has spent the past year or two assessing the effects of various red-light-emitting objects on her skin, scalp, and hair.
HigherDose's new showerhead includes a 10-stage shower water filter that removes chlorine and perhaps other chemicals and heavy metals from the water. It also has a glowing ring of red and near-infrared light, which promises to boost “glow, circulation, mood, and skin & scalp health.”
The red lights also have the fun side effect of turning your shower's overall vibe into something between discotheque and darkroom. At $600, it's also priced a bit like a nightclub, though this remains in line with many other red light therapy options.
After around two months of testing, I can't say for sure that I look any younger or hairier, but I will say my mood is a little better while I'm showering. And my shower does glow. And I can vouch for at least some of the effectiveness of its water filter.
But given that my top pick shower filters cost a third to a quarter as much, it's troubling that red light therapy dose is likely to vary widely—and that HigherDose was not able to provide sufficient documentation for some of its bolder filtration claims.
Put on the Red Light
Photograph: Matthew KorfhageUnlike many health fads, red light therapy is a rare case in which TikTok influencers and clinicians share similar interests at the same time.
Red light therapy belongs to a broad class of treatments that medical researchers optimistically call “emerging.” Cinicians at Stanford University and elsewhere don't see much potential for harm, and indeed a lot of potential promise, in using red light therapy to help spur thicker hair growth or reduce wrinkles. For both hair growth and skin blemishes, WIRED reviewers have anecdotally also seen good results with some devices.
But we're still mostly in the “throwing gum against the wall” phase. Researchers don't seem to have agreed on appropriate dosing. Theories run rampant as to why red light works at all (mitochondria maybe, or maybe better blood flow or collagen production). Proposed benefits have proliferated in the medical literature and especially on the marketing websites of red light therapy companies.
Which is to say, any particular health or dose claims should be taken with a grain of salt. But as an industry standard, home red light devices tend to max out at an irradiance of 200 milliwatts per square centimeter.
This is also the irradiance of HigherDose's showerhead. Company reps say this leads to an optimal light density at a distance of 6 to 18 inches, the assumed distance of your head from the shower. (I'm tall and my shower's short, so my head might be a little closer than this depending on where I'm standing.)
Anyway, it's easy to see the appeal of combining red light therapy with a shower. A lot of red light therapy devices have a hard time fitting into normal routines—something I noted the first time a colleague showed up to a Zoom meeting while wearing a terrifying red light mask with demonically glowing slits where her mouth and eyes would usually be.
Red light therapy requires that you set aside time and space—something I already regularly do to shower. The showerhead is recommended for sessions from 5 to 15 minutes. And while the latter is a long stretch under the water for some, I've always been a somewhat slow and meditative shower-taker. If anything, a 10-minute red light timer actually helps me jump out before I self-pickle.
Notes on Design
Video: Matthew KorfhageIt's worth noting that the design of the HigherDose red light showerhead is a bit ingenious. It's also, in its own way, a handsome device.
For obvious reasons, “showerhead with lights” occupies a pretty narrow sliver on a Venn diagram: Water and electricity like to be separated. This showerhead works by mating an outer, external ring of lights with a fairly small-diameter showerhead.
The ring of red LEDs is charged separately via USB-C (this takes an hour and a half to charge fully), and can then be pushed up onto the showerhead and rotated to lock in place. The water-resistant, covered charging port is positioned away from where the water flows. One full charge is good for a couple hours of showers, which for most people is at least a week's worth.
The showerhead does have a power switch. But it's best operated via its little shower-safe remote control, which is also charged by USB-C. Click the On button, and the remote will pair with the showerhead. The red light turns on for 5, 10, or 15 minutes. This works just fine, though it'd be nice if the buttons were more clearly marked than just with raised black text on a black button.
Finding the power button, which looks like the other buttons, requires trial and error. But once you've got the remote figured out, the red light does indeed offer relaxation and a little bit of drama to my morning shower.
Obviously, don't stare directly into the red lights. HigherDose offers darkened shower goggles if you plan to face your showerhead. But I don't typically confront hot jets of water face-to-face anyway. So in effect, this device is mostly raining light down on my scalp and neck.
Effective Filtration
As far as the water filter goes, I can vouch for the fact that HigherDose's 10-stage filter is quite effective at reducing total chlorine in my water to undetectable levels, as measured by chemical tests I performed at home. Unlike most shower water filters I test, the filter removed all total chlorine levels down to undetectable levels in my chloramine-treated water system. Indeed, it's actually one of the most effective filters I've tested for chlorine removal. The levels stayed undetectable for weeks.
The filter is fairly complex compared to many other shower filters. Most contain some combination of activated carbon, calcium sulfite, and KDF-55 filter media. HigherDose's adds a layer of vitamin C, which has been demonstrated to reduce chlorine and other contaminants. There are also layers of vitamin E (vague wellness) and a layer of “far-infrared ceramic balls” whose claims to filtration seem more dubious. A stainless steel mesh layer traps some sediment.
Beyond chlorine reduction, HigherDose makes bold additional claims for its shower filter, namely that the filter removes the vast majority of volatile organic compounds, microplastics, mineral hardness, and heavy metals like lead and cadmium. Company reps cited independent third-party testing but did not answer questions about the identity of the lab or how many gallons of water were run through the shower filter to attain these results. In general, a reputable lab will test substance removal across thousands of gallons of water, not just right out of the box.
Either way, total dissolved solids in the water were only slightly reduced after passing through the HigherDose filter, decreasing from about 26 parts per million to 24 parts per million. This is a fairly normal result for shower filters, which rarely can remove large quantities of minerals from high volumes of water. It is not, however, easily reflective of HigherDose's claims to remove the majority of minerals.
Photograph: Matthew KorfhageRed Shifts
As far as the effects of red light therapy go, results are more inconclusive. HigherDose is still in the process of obtaining FDA clearance, which is a demonstration of safety but not necessarily efficacy.
Do I feel greater scalp health, as promised? As an inveterate hat wearer, I do catch the occasional patches of dry skin, and I haven't had any such reactions in recent weeks. But this is also prone to suggestion. When I think about whether my scalp itches, my scalp starts itching.
It's also difficult to regulate the red light dose, unlike with masks or hats that are designed to be worn directly against the skin. HigherDose says the ideal therapeutic distance from its red light showerhead is between 6 and 18 inches. This corresponds to similar claims made by other makers of infrared panels with the same intensity of light.
What's interesting is how much the light intensity, and therefore the therapeutic dose, varies across this distance. When tripling the distance from a light source, intensity changes by a factor of nine. Depending on where you stand, how you stand, how tall you are, and where your shower hangs, you'll get wildly different intensities of exposure and thus wildly different results.
Which is to say that red light therapy by showerhead is a bit of an exercise in faith. If you've had reason to believe red light therapy has helped you in the past, maybe this is a low-effort way to get moderate, daily doses of red light and near-infrared radiation. But you'll have a hard time attaining consistency.
One thing I can say for certain is that the showerhead was every bit as effective as promised when it came to improving my mood. A red light showerhead offers an unexpected aura of drama to the familiar old morning shower. It turns out I actually quite enjoy bathing in the lurid red light of a strip club, certain lounges in certain movies, or perhaps the light of an alien sun.
Power up with unlimited access to WIRED. Get best-in-class reporting that's too important to ignore. Includes unlimited digital access and exclusive subscriber-only content. Subscribe Today
$599 at HigherDose$599 $509 at Nordstrom
