TAO Clean, short for “The Art Of Clean,” positions itself less as a traditional personal care brand and more as a design-led wellness concept. At its center is a simple but increasingly relevant premise: personal care devices should not only perform well, but also actively maintain their own cleanliness. It’s a framing that reflects a broader shift in consumer expectations around hygiene, design, and everyday health tools.
Founded in 2014 and based in Southern California, TAO Clean builds its identity around a lifestyle philosophy that blends mind, body, and spirit with an emphasis on the intersection of art and engineering. In practice, that philosophy shows up most clearly in its use of UV-C sanitization systems embedded directly into its devices—branded as Germ Shield and Germ Shield+.
Rather than treating sanitation as an accessory feature, TAO Clean integrates it into the product lifecycle itself. The standard Germ Shield system, included in its battery-powered devices, uses UV-C light to eliminate 99.9% of a range of common microorganisms found on personal care tools, including bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Salmonella, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, among others, depending on the device. The goal is straightforward: reduce bacterial buildup between uses and address a long-ignored gap in daily hygiene routines.
The more advanced Germ Shield+ system extends that approach for plug-powered devices. By increasing the UV-C intensity and exposure time, it creates a more comprehensive sterilization cycle. A 360-degree halo of light surrounds the brush head, increasing surface coverage and ensuring more complete exposure. The system is tested against additional pathogens, including Influenza A (H1N1), Human Coronavirus strain 229E, Rhinovirus 37, Streptococcus pyogenes, and Streptococcus pneumoniae.
Across categories, including its sonic toothbrush systems (UMMA Diamond and UMMA GO) and facial cleansing devices (ONA and ONA GO), TAO Clean maintains a consistent design language: minimal, functional, and built for everyday integration. The differentiator is not just the performance of the devices themselves, but the closed-loop hygiene system built around them.
At a retail price of $129.99, TAO Clean positions itself in the mid-to-premium tier of the personal care market—competing not just on cleaning performance, but on the added value of automated sanitization. In effect, the price reflects not only the device, but the infrastructure around it: a self-cleaning system designed to reduce reliance on user maintenance habits.
As consumer routines become more fluid—shared spaces, travel, and compact living environments—the relevance of built-in hygiene systems becomes clearer. TAO Clean’s approach effectively shifts sanitation from a manual task to an automated process embedded into daily use.
Viewed in that context, the brand sits at the intersection of wellness technology and industrial design. It doesn’t attempt to reinvent brushing or cleansing itself so much as it rethinks the environment those actions occur in. The result is a system built around continuity: use, sanitize, repeat—without interruption.
For more information, go to: www.taoclean.com.
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