Setting Up a Home Spa

The Great Escape

Bathroom designers define the home spa as a step (or many steps) above the regular bathroom. Instead of a standard tub you'll find shapes that are extra deep or long, usually with jets or bubbles. Showers have more than one shower head, and extra fixtures offer massaging and cascading sensations. Home spa design is luxurious but meant to take you away from your everyday world, so the emphasis is on natural materials and colors. Because this is a special getaway space, unique artistic touches are also welcome.

Home spas are frequently incorporated into a house addition, usually a master suite. It's a bit easier to create a home spa in a new space, because specialized fixtures and designer surface materials usually necessitate beefed-up structure and plumbing. But many consumers are achieving the spa in the course of remodeling an existing bath. Designers are saying they see a wide cross-section of people building these private getaways, from childless professional couples with a lot of money to harried boomer parents to empty nesters who now want to focus on themselves.

Even if you're not rolling in money, you can still incorporate spa features into your existing bathroom. In the past few years, a greater number of manufacturers have been producing a wider range of bathroom fixtures, making prices competitive and products more accessible.