Tour reveals the secrets of the seal

By ROBIN STANSBURY

The Good Housekeeping Research Institute is offering tours for the first time.

NEW YORK — It doesn’t look like a home.

But the Good Housekeeping Research Institute has just about everything to test the quality of what’s in yours – from more than one fully equipped kitchen to washers and dryers, vacuums and carpets and even a multi-headed shower.

This all exists on the 29th floor of the Hearst Tower in New York City, and, for the first time, it’s all open to the public for free tours. But hurry. The tours are offered only once a month and only this year, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Good Housekeeping Seal.

Fans of Good Housekeeping magazine will love the behind-the-scenes peek at the inner-workings of the institute, which tests all products featured in the magazine as well as those in advertisements.

“Our seal helps people know what’s worth it and what’s not,” Miriam Arond, director of the institute, said at one recent tour. “And we are making sure that a product performs as it says it does.”

The magazine stands behind that seal. It backs any product awarded the Good Housekeeping Seal with a two-year warranty, guaranteeing they will replace or refund your money (with a receipt). Ads are backed by a one-year guarantee.

The Good Housekeeping Institute got its start in 1900 in response to those newfangled inventions called home appliances. The seal was born in 1909.

The tour, which lasts more than an hour, gives a sometimes intriguing look into what goes into the awarding of the seal and how products are tested and approved in one of the six labs and test kitchens – all modern rooms with gleaming white cabinets.

For one review of shampoos, for instance, testers purchased hair with split-ends and repeatedly washed and dried sections, only to find that none of the shampoos worked well. The magazine concluded that the best advice for treating split ends is to get a trim.

The test kitchen drew the most oohs and ahs from the guests, perhaps because it was one area where there was work in progress – the testing of a quick tortellini dish being prepared, in part, by Sam Seneviratne, assistant food editor at the institute.

The test kitchen, like the rest of the institute, works about six months in advance, so they were already testing recipes and products for the August issue of the magazine.

XFree tours of the Good Housekeeping Research Institute are offered the second Friday of each month for the rest of the year, starting at 10 a.m. For more information and to sign up for a tour, go to www.goodhousekeeping.com/product-testing or call (212) 649-5000.