There is a point in luxury pool design where the materials stop functioning merely as finishes and begin defining the character of the space.

For Frank Vitori, co-founder of AquaBlu Mosaics and designer of the new Sand Pearl Series, the opportunity was to rethink some of the patterns currently influencing pool and architectural design without relying on the contrasting colors traditionally used to create them.

When Pool Magazine spoke with Vitori about the collection, he explained that the idea behind Sand Pearl began with a deceptively simple question: What if the pattern could be created by light instead of color?

“The concept behind Sand Pearl was to take patterns we’re seeing throughout contemporary design—checkerboards, stripes and offset stripes—and reinterpret them through finish and light,” Vitori explained. “Instead of using contrasting colors to define the pattern, we’re using the same color in matte and iridescent glass. As the light changes, the pattern reveals itself.”

That distinction is central to understanding Sand Pearl, the latest AquaBlu Signature Collection from AquaBlu Mosaics.

Rather than simply assembling existing tile into a new assortment, AquaBlu developed Sand Pearl as an original, coordinated design collection. Each colorway brings together monochromatic glass, complementary finishes, contemporary patterns, coordinating field tile and curated grout selections to create a complete material system for pools and architectural spaces.

It is a concept rooted in what Vitori describes as a quieter approach to luxury.

“Luxury doesn’t always need to announce itself,” Vitori said. “Sometimes it’s the detail you notice as you move through a space—the way a surface changes in the light or the way water completely transforms the material.”

Reinventing Pattern Through Light

Pattern is hardly new to tile.

Checkerboards, stripes and running patterns have appeared in architecture and interior design for generations. What has changed is how designers are using them.

As contemporary tile trends move toward more intentional patterns and sophisticated material combinations, Sand Pearl approaches those familiar geometries from a different direction.

The collection does not need a dark tile beside a light tile to create a checkerboard. It does not require two opposing colors to make a stripe visible.

Instead, matte and iridescent versions of the same color work together to create the pattern.

From certain angles, the distinction can appear subtle. Then sunlight moves across the installation, the viewing angle changes or water begins flowing over the surface, and individual sections of iridescent glass catch the light differently from their matte counterparts.

Suddenly, the pattern becomes more pronounced.

The effect allows a surface to remain monochromatic while still having considerable visual depth and movement. Rather than placing the emphasis on color contrast, Sand Pearl uses reflection itself as a design element.

That becomes particularly compelling in a swimming pool, where very little about the visual environment remains static.

Sunlight changes position throughout the day. Ripples continuously alter reflections. Water depth influences perceived color. Landscaping, coping, interior finishes and surrounding architecture all contribute additional tones and reflected light.

Sand Pearl was designed to interact with those variables rather than compete with them.

The collection draws its palette from sun-bleached beaches, shallow coastal water, sea glass and other subdued coastal tones, but the coastal influence provides the backdrop rather than defining the entire concept.

The real story is what happens when pattern, finish, and changing light intersect.

Contemporary Patterns, Reinterpreted

Sand Pearl takes several of today’s most recognizable tile patterns and reconstructs them using matte and iridescent finishes.

The checkerboard pattern provides perhaps the clearest demonstration of the concept. Instead of alternating contrasting colors, the pattern alternates finishes within the same color family. The checkerboard may appear subdued under one lighting condition and considerably more pronounced under another.

The striped pattern applies the same principle in a more linear composition, creating alternating bands of matte and reflective glass. It can introduce direction and rhythm across a waterline, raised spa, feature wall or other architectural surface without introducing another color into the palette.

The offset stripe pattern adds another level of movement by shifting that linear geometry, creating a more dynamic arrangement while retaining the collection’s monochromatic character.

These patterns are complemented by two coordinating field-tile formats: stacked and staggered.

That addition gives designers considerably more flexibility when specifying the collection across an entire project.

A checkerboard, stripe or offset stripe might be used to establish a focal point on a raised spa, water feature or architectural wall, while the coordinating stacked or staggered field tile can finish the surrounding space in the same color and material language.

Alternatively, the field tile can be carried across a larger surface where a quieter treatment is desired.

The result is not simply a selection of individual mosaics. It is a coordinated collection that allows designers to change pattern and visual intensity while maintaining continuity of color and material.

Six Coastal-Inspired Colorways

Sand Pearl is offered in six primary colorways—Marelle, Caspia, Brisa, Calista, Marea and Aurelia—ranging from luminous whites and soft sand tones to aqua, sea-glass greens and deeper coastal blues and grays.

Caspia provides one of the collection’s lightest treatments with a pearlescent white appearance suited to bright contemporary environments. Brisa moves toward tropical aqua, while Marea introduces softer sea-glass tones. Marelle and Calista bring cooler, deeper shades into the collection, while Aurelia introduces the warmth of sand and champagne.

The restrained palette is intentional.

Because the visual interest is being created through the relationship between matte and iridescent finishes, the colors themselves do not need to compete for attention. That allows designers to select a palette based on the architecture and surrounding environment while allowing changing light to bring the pattern forward.

Grout Becomes Part of the Design

AquaBlu has taken that coordination one step further by pairing Sand Pearl designs with curated Starlike PRO grout selections.

That is an important detail because grout can substantially change the appearance of a mosaic installation. With small-format glass tile in particular, grout becomes part of the visible composition rather than simply the material filling the joints.

For Sand Pearl, the grout selection is treated as another component of the design.

Each recommended grout is chosen to complement the intended color and pattern combination, helping maintain the collection’s monochromatic character rather than introducing an unintended grid or competing visual element.

The curated Starlike PRO grout options give designers and installers a defined starting point for achieving the intended finished appearance.

That level of coordination reinforces Sand Pearl’s position as an AquaBlu Signature Collection. The concept extends beyond selecting an attractive glass tile. Color, finish, pattern, field tile and grout are considered together as parts of the same visual system.

Designed for Water, Architecture and Quiet Luxury

The interaction between matte and iridescent glass becomes especially interesting when Sand Pearl enters an aquatic environment.

Water is constantly changing what we see.

Glass naturally reflects and refracts light differently than many conventional pool finishes. An iridescent surface introduces another variable because its appearance changes depending on viewing angle and illumination.

Combine those characteristics with moving water and a monochromatic pattern can behave differently from one moment to the next.

In an infinity-edge pool, the effect can help visually connect the tile with an ocean, lake or distant horizon. On raised spas, water walls, spillways and perimeter-overflow details, moving water continuously changes which portions of the pattern catch and return light.

Even a traditional waterline can become more dimensional because the pattern is not dependent on a fixed contrast between two colors.

The installation effectively changes throughout the day.

That ability gives pool builders and designers another way to create visual interest without adding more colors, decorative elements or competing materials to the project.

More Than a Waterline Tile

Although glass mosaic remains closely associated with swimming pool waterlines, Sand Pearl was developed for considerably broader use.

The collection can extend across pools and spas as well as kitchens, backsplashes and architectural feature walls, allowing designers to carry the same material language between indoor and outdoor environments.

That continuity has become increasingly relevant as homeowners treat outdoor living areas as extensions of the home.

Large sliding and folding glass doors have blurred the traditional boundary between interior and exterior spaces. Outdoor kitchens increasingly mirror their indoor counterparts. Pool houses, cabanas, fire features and covered entertaining areas are frequently designed as elements of a single architectural composition.

Sand Pearl’s coordinating patterns and field tiles make it possible to continue a color throughout those spaces while adjusting the intensity of the pattern according to the application.

A feature wall might employ the checkerboard or offset stripe as a stronger architectural statement. A surrounding surface could transition into stacked or staggered field tile. A raised spa or water feature could then reintroduce the pattern outside.

The material remains connected even as its role changes.

For pool builders and designers, glass mosaics also offer opportunities far beyond a six-inch waterline. Raised bond beams, vanishing edges, spillways, fountains, spas and other water features can become integral parts of the architecture when tile is allowed to play a larger role in the overall design.

Sand Pearl’s monochromatic approach makes that possible without requiring the tile to dominate the project.

Built for Aquatic Environments

Visual design is only part of the equation when specifying tile for a swimming pool.

Materials used in aquatic environments must tolerate constant water exposure, pool chemicals, temperature changes and, depending on the application, continuous submersion.

Sand Pearl is crafted in the United States and TCNA-tested for performance, positioning the collection for demanding aquatic installations as well as interior architectural applications.

Proper installation remains critical with any glass mosaic. Substrate preparation, setting materials, grout selection, expansion considerations and adherence to manufacturer installation requirements can ultimately matter just as much as the tile itself.

For homeowners considering glass, working with a qualified pool professional or experienced tile installer remains particularly important.

A Different Expression of Quiet Luxury

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Sand Pearl is how naturally the collection fits within the broader movement toward quiet luxury in residential design.

Luxury does not necessarily have to announce itself.

Some of today’s most sophisticated swimming pools rely on relatively simple geometry, carefully selected materials and exceptional craftsmanship rather than an abundance of decorative features. Their visual interest comes from proportion, texture and the way materials respond to the surrounding environment.

Sand Pearl applies that philosophy directly to mosaic tile.

There is shimmer, but it is controlled.

There is pattern, but it does not depend on dramatic color contrast.

There is movement, but much of it comes from the environment itself.

A checkerboard can almost disappear before sunlight reveals it again. An iridescent stripe becomes more pronounced as the viewer changes position. Water moving across a raised spa can alter the appearance of an offset pattern from one second to the next.

What appears restrained on a sample board can become surprisingly dynamic once installed in the environment for which it was designed.

That is ultimately what distinguishes the collection.

Designed by Frank Vitori, co-founder of AquaBlu Mosaics, the AquaBlu Signature Collection reinterprets contemporary tile patterns by allowing finish, reflection, and changing light to create the contrast.

Robotic pool cleaners have become one of the fastest-moving equipment categories in the pool industry. Cordless operation, smarter navigation, app connectivity and increasingly autonomous cleaning have changed what pool owners expect from these machines—and created an increasingly crowded field of manufacturers looking for their attention.

WYBOT may appear to be one of the newer names competing for a piece of that market. The company behind the brand, however, is anything but new to robotic pool cleaning.

“We’ve actually been around for 20-plus years manufacturing robotic pool cleaners,” said Nathaniel Michaelis, General Manager and Vice President of the Americas for WYBOT. “About three years ago, we were innovating on behalf of other brands and we said, ‘Hey, why aren’t we doing this for ourselves?’”

That decision marked an important change in strategy. Rather than continuing to put its newest engineering behind other brands, the company began concentrating those innovations under WYBOT. Michaelis said the company continues to manufacture for some well-known brands in the pool industry, but its latest technology is now being developed for its own product lineup.

That history provides some useful context in a category where new robotic cleaner brands seem to appear almost overnight. WYBOT is a relatively young consumer-facing brand backed by considerably older manufacturing and engineering experience.

The bigger question is how the company intends to distinguish itself in an increasingly competitive market.

Where WYBOT Achieves Differentiation

Michaelis points to what WYBOT calls “meaningful innovation”—features designed to eliminate an actual step in pool maintenance rather than simply adding another feature or gimmick.

“I think the perfect example there is our newest launch, the WYBOT S3, which is the first self-emptying robotic pool cleaner,” Michaelis said. “So it’ll actually go out, clean your pool, come back, dock itself in the water, and empty all the debris that it just picked up.”

For Michaelis, that is representative of WYBOT’s larger philosophy.

“That tells the story of who we are and how we’re differentiating ourselves,” he said, describing an approach centered on meaningful innovation that improves the overall pool ownership experience.

That philosophy becomes easier to understand when looking at WYBOT’s two principal product families, the C Series and S Series.

While there is some crossover in technology, they occupy distinctly different positions in the lineup.

“The C Series is our core,” Michaelis explained. “C stands for core. And the C Series is where we try to bring the most meaningful innovation at the most accessible price points.”

In practical terms, the C Series is designed around the everyday residential pool owner. These are self-contained, battery-powered robotic cleaners intended to provide many of the capabilities consumers increasingly expect from cordless cleaners without moving into the price and feature territory of WYBOT’s flagship models.

That includes technology such as AI Vision, which Michaelis said allows the cleaner to identify and prioritize dirtier areas of the pool rather than treating every section of the vessel exactly the same.

“When you take a step up into the S Series, that’s when you get into our more premium products,” Michaelis said. “So you’ll get longer run times and battery life, more square footage for larger pools, and then that’s where we start to introduce some of those really cool features like in-the-water charging and self-emptying.”

Cutting the Cord Was Only the Beginning

Cordless operation itself represents an important shift in robotic pool cleaning. Traditional suction-side cleaners require hoses, while earlier generations of robotic cleaners remained tethered to power supplies. Removing those connections changes the ownership experience.

With WYBOT’s cordless technology, the process is intentionally straightforward: charge the cleaner, place it in the pool and select the appropriate cleaning mode. Depending on the model and setting, the robot can address the pool floor, walls, waterline and steps.

Once cleaning is complete, it returns to its retrieval point. WYBOT includes a hook that attaches to a standard pool pole, allowing the cleaner to be brought to the surface.

“What we’re trying to do with cordless technology is really simplify that experience of cleaning the pool,” Michaelis said.

The S Series starts from that cordless foundation and asks a different question: how many of those remaining interactions can be eliminated too?

Cordless cleaners solved the cord problem, but they created another routine. The cleaner still has to be removed from the pool to recharge.

Michaelis said WYBOT heard that complaint directly from customers.

“Yeah, it’s great that I don’t have a hose, which is truly something I’m looking for, but that one step further that I wish I didn’t have to take is removing the cleaner from the pool every time that it needs to be charged.”

That feedback led to the S2 Solar and S2 Solar Vision.

Instead of requiring the owner to retrieve the cleaner and connect it to a charger after each cycle, the robots can dock themselves along the side of the pool. A solar-powered dock charges the cleaner while it remains in the water.

“The sun charges the base. The base then charges the robot,” Michaelis explained. “The robot then can be set on a schedule to run Monday, Wednesday, Friday or however many days the pool owner would like it to run during the week.”

The result is a robotic cleaner beginning to function more like permanent automated pool equipment than an accessory that must manually be deployed and retrieved.

But WYBOT kept listening, and customers identified yet another point of friction.

“Our customers said, that’s great that it’s charging in the water,” Michaelis recalled hearing, “but I have to take the robot out to clean the basket.”

That became the problem targeted with the latest iteration, the S3, which incorporates the functionality of the S2 Solar Vision and now adds self-emptying capability. After completing its cleaning cycle, the robot returns to the dock and transfers collected debris into a separate poolside bin.

“All the pool owner or the pool pro is doing is taking that tray out and emptying that tray of all the debris and putting that tray back in,” Michaelis explained.

It’s a relatively simple action, but it represents something bigger happening within the category. First the hose disappeared. Then the power cord. Now charging, scheduling, docking and even emptying the onboard debris basket are becoming automated.

The Push Toward Less Human Interaction

That trajectory is familiar territory for Michaelis, whose background before joining WYBOT was in consumer robotics at iRobot.

“In any robotics industry, your goal is to make the user experience as autonomous as possible,” he said. “You want as little human interaction with your robots.”

The pool industry is beginning to follow the same path already seen in other consumer robotics categories. Navigation is becoming more sophisticated. AI-assisted systems can influence where a cleaner goes and how it approaches the pool. Battery technology has removed the tether. App connectivity provides another layer of control, while docking, solar charging and scheduled cleaning are reducing the need for owners to deploy equipment manually.

“Where I see the robotic pool cleaning industry heading is trying to make it as autonomous as possible,” Michaelis said, “trying to reduce the amount of human interaction that you have with your robots, and ensuring that they’re doing the jobs that they’re set out to do.”

For homeowners, that means convenience. For pool professionals, it can have an entirely different value proposition.

A Better Ownership Experience Builders Can Sell

For builders trying to connect with increasingly tech-savvy pool buyers, equipment has become another opportunity to differentiate the finished project.

A self-parking, self-charging and self-emptying robotic pool cleaner isn’t simply another piece of equipment sitting in the pool. It’s the kind of feature a builder can demonstrate during turnover and immediately show a customer how much of the routine maintenance process can happen automatically.

Michaelis sees that as a potential finishing touch on a premium pool package.

“On the builder side, it’s really going back to that innovation piece,” he said. “It’s a surprise and delight moment at the time of purchase.”

When builders are assembling an equipment package for a prospective pool owner, he said, “adding some self-emptying robotic pool cleaner is just the cherry on top for that customer and really provides that top-notch experience.”

That’s an important part of WYBOT’s positioning. The company isn’t simply trying to connect with consumers shopping online for another cleaner. It’s developing features that builders, retailers, and service professionals can put in front of their own customers as part of a better pool ownership experience.

For service companies, meanwhile, the conversation moves from convenience to productivity.

Why Service Pros Are Paying Attention

Discerning service companies looking to recommend best-in-class robotic cleaning technology have good reason to gravitate toward products offering greater autonomy and less human interaction.

The robot isn’t replacing the service professional. Instead, it can work in the background during the six days between weekly service visits, continually handling a portion of the physical cleaning workload before the technician ever arrives.

Michaelis said some pool companies already view robotic cleaners as an efficiency tool rather than an optional accessory.

“We constantly hear feedback from service companies on how many more doors they’re able to service, how many more pools they’re able to service, how quickly they can get pools done so that they can get to the next customer, and how many more they can fit within their route,” he said.

In fact, some have made automated cleaning a prerequisite for taking on a customer.

“We actually have some service companies that actually won’t service clients unless they have some sort of robotic cleaner in their pool so that they can be the most efficient when they’re stopping by on a weekly basis,” Michaelis said.

That changes the role a robotic cleaner can play in the relationship between the pool professional and homeowner.

A service company recommending a premium robotic cleaner isn’t necessarily selling its customer a replacement for professional service. It’s giving that customer a machine capable of working between visits while simultaneously giving its technicians a cleaner pool to work with when they arrive.

And as those robots become increasingly autonomous, the value proposition gets stronger.

A cleaner that has to be manually deployed, retrieved, charged, and emptied still asks quite a bit from the homeowner. A cleaner capable of following a schedule, parking itself, recharging and transferring its own debris asks considerably less.

For WYBOT, that’s where the S Series—and particularly products such as the S3—begins to stand out. It’s also where two decades of manufacturing robotic cleaners starts to matter more than how recently consumers began seeing the WYBOT name.

The brand may be relatively new to some pool owners and professionals, but the company behind it isn’t. Now, rather than innovating behind the scenes for other brands, WYBOT is putting that experience behind products designed to connect directly with homeowners and the professionals serving them.

Ready to take a deeper dive?

Listen to our entire conversation with Nathaniel Michaelis, General Manager and Vice President of the Americas for WYBOT on the Pool Magazine Podcast.