Home Design: 8 Ways to Spa-ify Your Bathroom

By Vanessa Voltolina

It’s important to have a place where you can clear your mind and replenish. When you can’t make it to a spa, the main bathroom in your home takes the cake for fulfilling these needs, acting as a place of relaxation, Zen and your personal sanctuary—if done right.

“By marrying the sensible with the sensual, you’ll create a bathroom that offers a sanctuary experience, just as a spa offers an escape from the stressful public world into one of privacy, quiet and calm,” says Clodagh, founder of New York-based design services studios Clodagh Design. To begin updating your space, be mindful of how you use the space and what makes you comfortable and happy, adds Clodagh, who has designed Miraval Resort & Spa in Tuscon, Arizona, Nemacolin Woodlands Resort & Spa, Farmington, Pennsylvania, and more.

Update your bathroom by filling it with apple-cinnamon potpourri, baking a new treat and enjoying it in a tub, or adding a “fluffy robe” and “make up/shaving mirror” to your naughty-or-nice list. Clodagh offers eight easy tips, products and ideas to spa-ify your bathroom.

Easy Ideas To Spa-ify Your Bathroom:

1.  Keep surfaces clear and cut down on the visual clutter. Clutter is “anathema to peace and recovery,” says Clodagh. “Every item in a bathroom must have its place.” Do this by cleaning up clutter and placing items like cotton balls and make-up brushes into coordinated jars and containers. Also implement vertical storage devices, such as towel bars and medicine cabinets, and hidden storage.

2. Use calming colors. Surface colors that are calm, comfortable and understated work well in a bathroom. (Try soft blues and try repainting “in the softest whisper grey,” says Clodagh.)

3. Put dimmers on your light sources. As Clodagh explains, two types of light are essential for every bathroom — one for grooming and one for winding down.  “When you’re relaxing, dim lights low,” she says. “A statement light fixture and electrical lit mirrors are functional and add a sense of luxury.”

4. Indulge with a bathroom fireplace. Love the idea of a warm fire alongside your bath on a cold winter’s day? “There are many beautiful compact gas burning fireplaces on the market,” she says. However, if this isn’t an option for your bathroom or pocketbook, ignite a fragrant candle instead.

5. Use scented oils or natural plants. Give indoor bathrooms a sense of the outdoors by planting a favorite aromatic healing herb in a small window box. Enjoy aroma-therapeutic scents by cultivating rosemary, lavender or lilacs. For a colorful added touch, add a vase of fresh flowers.

6. Play a personal soundtrack. A small radio, CD player or speakers from your central sound system can bring in the music of your choice into your spa-like bathroom.

7. Add a chaise lounge. If you have the space, “this is one of the simplest pleasures,” says Clodagh. She also recommends considering tucking a refrigerator into an under used corner of the bathroom or in a base of a storage column. Use it to store special treats.

8. Invest in a towel-warming bar. This special detail will add further to the sense of luxury. Also purchase good quality, fluffy matching towels.

How To Get Started

To get started thinking about what updates are right for your bathroom, use this formula, which Clodagh uses with all of her clients: contemplate, cleanse, clarify and create.

• Contemplate your bathroom. How does it make you feel now and how do you function in it?
• Cleanse your room. Two things nearly all of us could use more of are space and time. Emptiness lets a room grow and allows you to grow in it.
• Clarify your goals, needs and desires. This is the mental counterpart to clearing away physical clutter. What do you desire? What will make you feel happier?
• Create. Now you can begin to create a space that is yours at its core.

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