Making Your Home Bathroom Feel like a Spa Experience

Going to a sumptuous spa for professional treatments was once a luxury reserved for the pampered wealthy portion of society. We now finding more and more middle income professionals taking advantage of the spa experience to off-set the daily stresses we experience in our fast-paced lifestyles. Now elevated to a mental health necessity, many of us prefer to convert our home bathrooms, providing that spa serenity without leaving our homes.

HOW: Depending on your situation and the feasibility of your home's confines, the first place to start is choosing a designer and contractor. This is especially true if this conversion requires the shifting of walls in an existing structure. The designer assists in choosing an overall theme, insuring the fixtures and decor mesh. The contractor is necessary to make this project comply with building and renovation codes.

WHAT: Ask yourself what overall "theme" or motif you wish to create. Perhaps you envision a clean, cool, contemporary space that borders on clinical. Or your spa style may be tropical, including natural plants and botanicals with a water feature. Whatever your style, clip pictures, jot notes and visit bath suppliers' model bathrooms to take photos. Assemble all this material in a book or poster to create a story board of your dream spa bath.

FIXTURES: Once you have established the design direction, choosing fixtures becomes an innate action. All fixtures and appointments should be high-end, luxury pieces that drive the motif. Whether clean chrome contemporary fixtures, or warm and organically inspired, these luxury purchases become the foundation of your home spa. Rainforest showerheads, soaking tubs, heated floors and so forth are only some of the technical advances now available for home renovations.

ACCESSORIES: This is an area where an interior designer can become invaluable. Some of us have an eye for color, fabric and texture -- but some of us do not. Choosing containers, fabrics, carpet or rugs improperly can circumvent your path to luxury. Towels, shower curtains, window treatments, right down to the "jewel box" accessories like drinking glasses, soap dishes and the like, serve to propel your theme's overall "feel."

 
Luxuriating in the spa experience in your own home will provide many relaxing, satisfying hours for years to come. In fact, you are eliminating an area of stress simply by not having to make appointments, drive to the spa, and generally work it into your tight schedule. With luxury bath accessories collections and a clear vision of what serenity means to you, relaxation and improved mental health reside within the walls of your own home.