Most Expensive Toilet

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If someone were to say, “I just bought a Toto,” you might think they’d purchased a little black Terrier and named it after the Wizard of Oz costar. They could, on the other hand, be the proud owner of one of the world’s most expensive toilets.

What more do you need, when doing your business, than your standard lavatory offers? Toto’s most expensive toilet, the Neorest 600, has a wide range of features to answer that question. For starters, the lid automatically opens whenever you approach the toilet. As soon as you rise from your state of the art porcelain throne, it automatically engages its Power Catalytic Air Purifier function. Six seconds after you’re out of range of the toilet’s sensor zone, it will automatically flush and close both the lid and the seat.

For those functions that aren’t automatic, there’s a wireless remote control. A button-press can open, close or warm the seat, change the water temperature, perform a powerful “Cyclone flush” instead of the automatic light flush or control the Washlet functions you’ll use to tidy yourself up after using the expensive toilet.

Despite the Japanese company’s lack of exposure in the Western world, Toto is the world’s largest toilet manufacturer. The Neorest 600 can be purchased in the US for around $5,000, making it the most expensive toilet on the market.

It isn’t the world’s most expensive toilet, however. A toilet hidden in a cave in Shanghai’s Moon River Art Park cost 5 million yuan (over $600 million USD). The cave is manmade and decked out like a grotto. While the entrance to the park costs 30 yuan, using the toilet is free. It may be difficult to get in, though. Toilet cleaners reported people waiting in line up to two hours when the toilet was first opened in 2005.

The most expensive toilet ever built, however, isn’t the world’s most expensive toilet. That’s because it’s being launched into space! The toilet system NASA had built by Russians is set to be delivered to the International Space Station sometime this year. The system, the same as the one in place on the Russian side of the station, recycles urine into water.

In total, the most expensive toilet ever built cost $19 million—less than it would’ve cost for NASA to develop and build on their own.