With all due respect to biohackers, don’t forget to drink Huel or take supplements: the simplest shortcut to a long life may already be within reach, right at home. In fact, it’s the bricks and mortar that can make the difference between hitting 90 or losing. World Health Organization data suggests that 80% of health outcomes are related to your environment – in other words, what surrounds you matters much more to your well-being than anything in your genes. Kayla Barnes-Lint, an Austin-based biohacker, has already embraced the idea, touting the $3 million she spent on a so-called “longevity house.” However, a design that highlights longevity isn’t just smart for your health; It’s a smart financial move, too. The Global Wellness Institute predicts that the wellness-focused real estate market will be worth $1.1 trillion by 2029, and premium wellness-focused homes already command a 10 percent price difference versus traditional luxury properties. “We need to move from longevity intervention to longevity infrastructure,” says Cas Bordier, a consultant in this field at the startup Mavi.
Developers and designers are moving into the market: California-based Moses Hershko, who has built homes for Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, among others, has completed an 18,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom mansion in San Francisco. He calls the $65 million home a “longevity estate.” Every aspect of its construction was aimed at improving health, incorporating features such as blue light attenuation and circadian lighting systems.
Brian Wilkie is part of the Los Angeles-based Peter Dunham Interiors team. The company is known for its work with celebrities such as Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jennifer Garner, and Hilary Swank. He sees an increasing emphasis on proactive wellness on clients’ wish lists, as with a recent client who was keen to rid her bedroom of electromagnetic fields, or electromagnetic frequencies, which some studies suggest interfere with sleep. EMF baffling wire mesh installed behind upholstery on walls – discreet but practical. Wilkie describes such vitality and health-boosting tricks as “an invisible layer of design.”
However, other houses are less shy about their purpose as an active built environment. Dr. Sabine Dunay runs the world-renowned Viavi Longevity Clinic. Patients subscribe to her ongoing support of their health, with regular, extensive check-ups at ViaVi’s central London headquarters, but they often ask Donnay to advise them on how and where they live – it’s the health of the building she’s testing in this case rather than the health of the humans who live there. Take one of her clients, a biohacking entrepreneur in his 40s, who was struggling to rein in some of his hormonal readings. He already had a gym, hyperbaric chamber and more in each of his four homes, but Sabine quickly registered what else he needed: a breathing room. “It’s a space that I feel people are missing most of these days,” she adds. “Our clients know the benefits of exercise, but what they forget is that you need to calm down.”
“We looked through the house to find any space that clearly indicated to your physiology that there was nothing there — no requirements, no gym, no TVs,” says Belgian-born Donnay, who has experience in both allopathic and complementary medicine. She notes that this particular client was often taking meetings from her gym, walking on the treadmill while checking multiple screens for news. “I wanted him to have space to go and find his calm.” The result: He redesigned a small box room exactly according to her decorative recipe, with an earthy color palette, as well as rugs and rugs — some soft, others rough, mimicking the diversity of nature — as well as soft pillows scattered around the floor. After a few months spent there for 20 minutes a day chasing Zen, he was so impressed by its effect that he retrofitted one into his remaining homes around the world.
Donnay’s architectural consulting is just one part of her practice, but now there are dedicated healthy home consultants whose entire mission is to ensure your brick and mortar enhances your lifespan. Mavi’s Kas Bordier is one of these experts, most of whom call themselves environmental engineers; She confirms that she does not have any medical qualifications of her own, but rather strengthened her interest in the field through her personal passion. Bordier says her 3-year-old startup is already working with developers to incorporate proactive health features into residential tower plans. One of the deals signed was with a group in Panama, which is also a hotspot for stem cell research and treatment.
Bordier and others like her focus on the so-called exposome. Think of this as the outlier of your genome: the latter represents your inherited strengths and weaknesses, while the former includes what happens to you throughout your life, from exposure to air pollution to stress. Bordier and her colleagues believe that proactive interventions in the exosome could lead to meaningful improvements in longevity. For a client who was struggling with sleep—a critical component of healthy aging—Bordier analyzed a perimenopausal woman’s bedroom. I noticed a lot of light pollution, well above 50 lux that starts to interfere with melatonin production, so I replaced traditional bulbs with circadian-compatible options from Ray Lighting – full spectrum and flicker-free, they mimic the shift in sunlight. Gone are the shiny synthetic fiber bedsheets and shiny walls, replaced by natural fibers and low-VOC paint. This immediately reduced the emission of gases and chemicals escaping into the air as indoor pollutants. Perhaps those seeking immortality should focus less on nutritional supplements and plasma transfusions, and more on the sheets they sleep on.
This story appears in the July 2026 issue of The Hollywood Reporter entitled “The New Face of Hollywood.” Click here to read more.
