Gessi Faucets Review & Rating Updated: May 22, 2025

Imported

Italy

Gessi North America, Inc.
704 North Valley Street, Suite E
Anaheim, California 92801
(714) 808 0099
cs.northamerica@gessi.com
technical.northamerica@gessi.com

Rating

Business Type

Product Range

Kitchen, Bath, Prep and Bar Faucets

Certifications

Brands
Gessi

Street Price

$406 - $4,190

Warranty Score

Two-Handle Cartridge

lifetime¹

Single-Handle Cartridge

5 years

PVD Finishes

Lifetime

Other Finishes

5 years

Mechanical Parts

Lifetime

Proof of Purchase

Required

Transferable

No

Meets U.S. Warranty
Law Requirements

No

Footnotes:

1. The term "lifetime" is not defined. We don't know what or whose lifetime is referred to.

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Download/Read/Print the Gessi warranty.

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Learn more about faucet warranties.

This Company In Brief

We have long suspected that it must be a criminal offense in Italy to make or sell an ugly faucet.

Gessi's stylish contemporary faucets are a case in point. If you are looking for a faucet with the verve of Italian design, Gessi would be a good place to start.

Unfortunately, the stylish design and sturdy construction of the faucets are offset by its relatively weak faucet warranty.

The faucets do not have a wide distribution in North America. They are sold primarily through showrooms and a few upscale web sellers such as Quality Bath, which limits their exposure.

They are fully certified to joint U.S./Canadian standards and legal to sell and install in North America.

The Company

Founded in 1992 by Umberto Ges­si, the company moved into a small factory in the Piedmont region of Italy the next year, then built a larger production facility on the same site in 2004, turning the original plant into a showroom and offices.

The factory was expanded again in 2010.

According to Ges­si, great care was taken to minimize the impact of the facility on the environment and to protect the quality of the water used in production.

Gessi Collections

Gessi bathroom fau­cets are arranged in collections that include showers, basins, toilets, mirrors, accessories, bathroom furnishings even towels and fragrances. Not every collection includes all of these accessories. Some collections include very few, while Goccia, the most complete collection, even includes bathtubs.

The kitchen collection, simply named "kitchen", is much less involved and includes, in addition to fau­cets, lotion, and soap dispensers. Ges­si does not sell kitchen sinks.

Gessi Faucet Styles

Most Gessi fau­cets are very contemporary and may be unsuited for anyone trying to achieve a period look. There is one exception in the North American catalog: the Tradizione, a traditional kitchen fau­cet in a Victorian style.

The company's designs are created in its own design studio featuring sculp­tor and designer, Prospero Rasulo. They are original with Ges­si.

The designs have won numerous design awards, and these are identified on the company website. But, some of the designs are aging, and have been around ten years or longer — long enough to be widely copied by other, less creative, fau­cet manufacturers.

A designer faucet company like Ges­si has to keep producing new designs at a fairly rapid pace to keep ahead of copy-cats and outright counterfeiters.

Protecting a design is very difficult. Most countries allow only very limited copyright or patent protection for the design elements of a fau­cet.

It is not hard to reverse engineer a successful fau­cet design, make subtle changes to avoid patent infringement, and then manufacture knock-offs in great quantities to sell at a much lower price than the original designer company can afford. I wish we could say the practice is uncommon, but unfortunately, it is not.

As a consequence, the lifespan of a successful fau­cet design is about five years, after which time it has been so widely copied that the design is no longer fresh or new.

Some of Ges­si's designs have reached this critical stage.

Gessi manufactures fau­cets for other companies as an manufacturer.

At one time, for example, Ges­si manufactured at least four fau­cets for the Swiss fau­cet company, This relationship, however, appears to have ended with the sale of Franke Water Systems to

The Gessi Website

The Gessi website is colorful, artistic, and stunningly illustrated with professional photographs – all typical characteristics of Italian fau­cet company websites.

If you live in North America, Ges­si will usually display its North American website. But, this is not a certainty. The site displayed may be for any of dozens of countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

The displayed site is identified at the top right of the page and should say "North America (USA/Canada)". If it says something else, then you need to select "North America (USA/Canada)" before proceeding further.

A great many fau­cets sold in other parts of the world don't seem to be available in the U.S. or Canada.

You can, for example, select from a much wider range of Ges­si fau­cets in Albania. The same wider selection, according to the website, is available in Saipan or American Samoa, both U. S. Territories in the western Pacific, but not available in the continental United States, Hawaii, or Alaska.

the site has a search feature, but it is useful only in finding products and some product features. For example, you can search on a finish to find every product in that finish, which is very useful in putting toegther a coordinated set of related products.

How­e­ver, a search on "sigle-handle" produced no results. Nor did a search on "LED", "hands-free", or "sensor."

Searches on non-product terms like "warranty," are likewise unproductive.

Once you find a suitable fau­cet, much of the information needed to make an informed fau­cet decision is missing.

For the Art. 60120 kitchen fau­cet, as an example, these are the specifications:

The finishes in which the fau­cet is available are displayed in thumbnails much too small to be very useful for visualizing the finish.

The site also links to installation instructions, a dimensioned drawing, and an exploded parts diagram, but no detailed specification sheet and no link to the warranty that applies to the fau­cet.

The listing does not identify the type or source of the fau­cet's valve or aerator, the fau­cet's certifications, primary and secondary fau­cet materials, or spray head materials – all important considerations when choosing a fau­cet.

The cartridge valve and aerator information is particularly important to the long-term functioning of the fau­cet.

We rate the site B+ for presentation. The site's emphasis on presentation gets in the war of communication. It's artsy and stylish but short on hard information. More words and fewer images would be batter.

Navigation takes a little practice. To get to anything useful on the site you usually have to scroll past page after page of pretty pictures. We rate it a B.

For providing the information needed for an informed buying decision, the company get an F. Over 40% of the required information is missing entirely.

Gessi Faucet Finishes

A few years ago, Gessi fau­cets were available in just a handful of finishes.

Most could be finished in polished chrome. Some bath fau­cets are also offered in satin chrome, gold, satin gold, finox, and white or black powder coatings. Kitchen fau­cet finishes were more limited: polished chrome and some in finox. No other finishes were available.

Gessi's finish palette has greatly expanded since those early days. Twenty-three finishes are in Ges­si's current chart and dozens more as special finishes. (View the entire rainbow of Gessi finishes, including detailed information and care requirements for each finish.)

Eight of these are the nearly indestructible (PVD) finishes. Four are a that Ges­si calls the "Ges­si High Resistance Coating" (GHRC).

Other finishes such as Aged Brass and Antique Brass are also powder coatings, but not identified by Ges­si as the more durable GHRC coatings.

Chrome and nickel finishes are . The stainless steels are just the steel material of the fau­cet polished or brushed so it looks nice, not to be confused with "finox" which is an applied coating over brass that looks like stainless steel.

Gold and Brushed Gold are identified as finishes created using a "Cob­alt Coat­ing Pro­cess" process. Ac­cord­ing to U.S. Cob­alt, the process

The result is a finish that is exceptionally hard and resistant to damage from daily use.

Electroplated (including CCP) and PVD finishes are durable but, of the two, PVD is by far the more durable. By some estimates, it is 10-20 times more scratch- and mar-resistant than standard polished chrome.

Floor and Ceiling Mounting

Most Gessi fau­cets are designed for the usual wall or countertop mounting (the industry term is "deck" mounting).

Some, however, attach to the ceiling and some to the floor. It is a creative and interesting look.

Our architectural historian in residence tells us that floor-mounted sink fau­cets were fairly common in the late Victorian Era. Floor-mounted clawfoot tub fillers were simply adapted to feed lavatory sinks. Some early 1900's Hajoca catalogs show floor-mounted sink fillers. But, it is not a design that has been seen very often since the 1920s.

Floor mounting will not work in every bath but where it will work, it would create a unique design statement.

Ceiling mounting has been around in Europe for a couple of decades. It does not seem to have caught on to any great extent in North America.

It may get a little more attention in the future as a result of the introduction by of a ceiling-mounted kitchen fau­cet that itcalls the Suspend in its popular Purist collection.

Gessi Faucet Valve Cartridges

Gessi uses a lot of different ceramic cartridge valves in its fau­cets, more so than most other companies that tend to engineer their fau­cets around one or two valves to reduce inventory.

Gessi, by contrast, seems to design its fau­cets first, then select the cartridge valve that best fits the fau­cet's design. It gives the company much more design flexibility but vastly increases the number of different valves in inventory which can become a massive logistical headache.

Most of these, as one would expect, are made in Italy.

We identified cartridges from Studio Tecnico Sviluppo e Ricerche (STSR) S.r.l. and Hydroplast, S.r.L., both excellent Italian cartridge makers, and several cartridges from Galatron Plast S.p.a., an Italian technical ceramics company that is credited with developing standardized designs used in most modern ceramic fau­cet cartridge.^[2]

We did not find any cartridges that we could identify as made in Asia or that are proprietary to Gessi.

Gessi Faucet Warranty

Despite what appear to be excellent valve cartridges for its single-handle faucets, Gessi does not seem to have much faith in their longevity. They are guaranteed in its warranty for just five years. Most other faucet companies warranty these cartridges for a lifetime.

The Gessi warranty overall is substandard for a North American fau­cet warranty but stronger than the warranties provided by most Italian fau­cet companies.

Short-Term Italian Warranties

As a group, the Italian fau­cet companies like that migrated their products to North America also migrated their skimpy European-standard 3- and 5-year European warranties.

There is a story behind Europe's short-term warranties.

They are the result of European laws in countries that historically do not provide long warranties on consumer products. All Western European countries require a minimum warranty on fau­cets of between one and five years depending on the country and the product, so that's what manufacturers provide, not because they want to, but because they have to.

Lifetime North American Warranties

North America's lifetime fau­cet warranties have a different genesis resulting from competitive pressures, not legal mandates.

In the early days of the fau­cet industry, warranties, if they were offered at all, were usually fairly short-term. The "lifetime" warranty started with (now just Pfister).

It introduced its "Pforever" fau­cet warranty to the North American market in the 1960s as a means of competing with then an upstart company that had introduced its “washerless” single handle fau­cet cartridge and was revolutionizing the industry."

Not having a washerless cartridge of its own, Pfister figured that a “lifetime” warranty on its fau­cets would help it offset the marketing edge resulting from Moen's new technology.

The gambit failed, however.

Moen, and then "Lifetime," almost overnight, became the standard for American fau­cet warranties.

Italian faucet companies didn't compete with Pfister or Moen in Europe, so they kept their traditional, short-term warranties and when they started selling in North America failed to adapt their warranties to the new market.

Many seem to be of the mindset that they are competing only among themselves, so the standard 1- to 5-year Europ­ean warranty is adequate.

It's not, and if they want to continue to compete on anything like an even footing with Amer­ican fau­cet companies like that offer lifetime warranties, they will need to adopt a much more robust warranty.

The Gessi Warranty

Gessi, having seen the light, has strengthened its warranty for U.S. and Canadian customers to a "lifetime" warranty but only on certain parts of its fau­cets.

These include valve cartridges for its two-handle fau­cets, but it not its single-handle faucets on which the warranty ends at five years.

Its PVD finishes are protected by by a lifetime warranty but its highly-touted Ges­si High Re­sis­tance Coatings (GHRC) poweder-coated finishes are guaranteed for just five years.

What is the problem with its cartridges in single-handle faucets and its non-PVD finishes, we don't know. But, something, else management would have more confidence in their longevity.

With its flaws, however, the warranty is still much better than that of most of its Italian cousins. Nevertheless, we rate the Ges­si warranty sub-standard for the North American market. We applaud the lifetime component. But the warranty loses points for …

• The anemic five-year warranty on mixing cartridges and finishes other than PVD finishes,
• Its failure to fully comply with the federal Mag­nu­son-Moss War­ranty Act (15 U.S.C. §2301), and

• The company's convoluted and unnecessarily complicated claims process.

The warranty is available online from Pimcore but not linked from the company's website or, if it is linked, we could not find the link, and we tried everything we could think of.

Most warranty writing is awful but Ges­si's is especially obtuse.

It is clearly a cut-and-paste mixture of provisions taken from other warranties without regard to whether the language is legally sufficient or even internally consistent.

It contains multiple redundancies which add nothing to the clarity of the document.

For example, the warranty proclaims itself to be the exclusive warranty with this language:

"This warranty is the sole and ex­clu­sive war­ranty granted by Ges­si and is in lieu of all other war­ran­ties ex­pressed or im­plied in­clud­ing the im­plied war­ran­ty of mer­chant­a­bili­ty or &hellip fit­ness for a par­ti­cu­lar purpose."

Later, in the same paragraph, it states

"The foregoing war­ran­ties are in lieu of all othr war­ran­ties ex­press or im­plied, including but not limited to the im­plied war­rant­ies of mer­chant­abil­i­ty and fit­ness for a par­tic­u­lar pur­pose."

And, just in case you missed it the first two times, 'way down at the very bottom of the document is the following notice:

"This is the Ges­si exclusive written warranty to the consumer."

Hopefully, by now you will have gotten the message.

Unfortunately, however, the disclaimer is illegal, and no matter how many times it is restated, it stays illegal. (See the sidebar Legal Defects in Gessi's Warranty for more information.)

The Gessi Warranty Claims Process

The Ges­si warranty claims process is unduly complicated and not very clearly explained.

You have to return the fau­cet along with a copy of the sales receipt not to Ges­si but to the retailer from which you bought the fau­cet (which probably already has a copy of the sales receipt on file).

Once the retailer has the fau­cet, a Return Goods Authorization (RGA) must be requested from Gessi (presumably by the retailer, but the warranty does not say).

The faucet must then be sent to Ges­si North America with an approved RGA number.

What this means is that even if the problem is a leaking cartridge – a component that can be replaced without uninstalling the fau­cet, the faucet has t obe …

• uninstalled and returned to the dealer and an RGA requested from and issued by Gessi,

• sent to Gessi by the dealer,

• repaired,

• returned by Gessi, to the dealer,

• returned to you by the dealer, and finally

• reinstalled.

How this works if the fau­cet is bought online froma company like Quality Bath, is never addressed.

The involved and cumbersome process seems designed to leave you puzzled and without a working fau­cet for weeks at a time.

Compare this unwieldy, overly-bur­eau­cra­tic procedure to the simplified Mo­en process of getting replacement parts under warranty. It will help you better understand the difference between first-class and worst-class warranty service.

• Moen handles everything by telephone directly between customer service and Mo­en. No retailer or other third party is involved.

• It does not require the faucet be dismounted and returned to Moen.

• Moen rarely asks for proof of purchase, sensibly assuming that you would not be asking for warranty service on a Mo­en fau­cet if you did not, in fact, own a Mo­en fau­cet.

• Agents will sometimes ask for photographs of the fau­cet – not because they doubt there is a problem, but to clearly identify the problem so they can send the right parts.

• The parts usually arrive within three to five days by mail. Expedited shipping is available but it will cost you.

Moen views every warranty claim as a golden marketing opportunity, a chance to cement a relationship with a customer that fosters future sales – one reason Mone customers tend to stay Moen customers.

Gessi sees a warranty claim as an unwanted financial nuisance to be minimized to the extent possible by making it abureaucratic and burdensome. Gessi should take its cue from Moen's playbook.

BBB Rating

The Better Business Bureau has not assigned Gessi a rating because the "… BBB does not have sufficient information to issue a rating. However, it also means tha Gessi has never had a problem escalated to the BBB, else there would be a rating.

Gessi is not accredited by the BBB and not pledged to its strict code of business ethics.

Testing & Certification

CalGreen^® Certified: At least some Gessi faucets comply with the energy-saving requirements of the California Green Building Standards Code. For a fau­cet to display the CalGreen label, it must have been tested for compliance with CALGreen Chapter 4, Residential Mandatory Measures, Section 4.303 Indoor Water Use, and certified by an independent testing organization.

Comparable Faucets

North American and European fau­cets of Italian design comparable to Ges­si are also sold by:

Many of these companies provide a stronger warranty, but very few of them have Ges­si's design chops.

Conclusions

Overall, we judge the fau­cets to offer a good value that is at least equal to and often somewhat better than the value you will get from other major Italian fau­cet companies like

It is a line of fau­cets worth consideration by those looking specifically for a stylish, contemporary, Italian-designed and -manufactured fau­cet. Its complete compliance with North American certification requirements and U.S.-based warranty and parts support helped boost the company's overall rating.

Gessi's warranty, however, is relatively week and and its warranty claims process complex and time-consuming. Gessi is also not at all bashful about charging what the market will bear for its replacement cartridges. We do not know about other replacement parts. We did not check. However, the same pricing practices may apply.

You may get good design with a stronger warranty from some of the North American importers of certified Italian fau­cets such as All of these importers offer a lifetime warranty without Ges­si's elaborate process for making a warranty claim.

Continuing Research

We are continuing to research the company. If you have experience with Ges­si fau­cets, good, bad, or indifferent, we would like to hear about it, so please post a comment below or send uf an email at starcraftreviews@yahoo.com. Please note that we do not answer questions posted in Comments unless the answer would be of general interest. If you have a specific question, please email us.

Footnotes: