Pamper yourself like Paltrow at home

Want inspiration for an enviable home spa? Look no further than the queen of self-care, the Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow. At her home in Montecito, California, she has a luxurious sauna, hot tub, steam room and plunge pool.
Her wellness ritual starts with a dry body brush followed by a leave-in hair treatment prior to a sauna. “I love a good sauna schvitz,” she says, adding that her husband, Brad Falchuk, is an “obsessive” cold plunger. “I come in here every day and whenever I’m here I’m like, pinch me — I cannot believe this is our house and we live here.”
Paltrow isn’t alone in wanting to create a sumptuous spa environment at home. Interior designers are reporting an increase in demand for home spas and bathrooms built for pampering, as clients seek to incorporate wellness and relaxation into their lifestyle and prioritise mental health. The British interior designer Katharine Pooley, who has worked on some seriously high-end homes, believes that people with busy schedules have become better at looking after themselves.
“Home is where you’re meant to feel most comfortable,” she says. “There is now more interest in spas or treatment rooms at home, whether that’s a massage room, infrared sauna, eucalyptus steam room or ice-cold plunge pool. Having a spa at home can be a treasured sanctuary.”
Many of her clients want to have a spa experience at home that transports them to a completely different world, she adds. Often home spas are located in a gloomy basement or in a separate building. Pooley’s recent commissions have included spas in the English countryside, Sardinia and Cannes, and featured scented rain showers, walls and bathing areas made from rose quartz, travertine and agate, and the latest technology. For the sleekest saunas and spas she often uses the Italian brand Effe. For outdoor showers she loves Ama, while for the most zen pools she turns to the British specialist Aqua Platinum.
In one project, Pooley installed an indoor pool framed by a living moss wall bathed in natural light, and featuring a sculpture of two steel mesh diving figures by Nikki Taylor, a British sculptor. Another client asked her to recreate the sculptural heated marble loungers in the luxury spa at the Corinthia London hotel.
She adds that ice baths and plunge pools have been popular requests from clients recently, often to be installed outside, “wherever the view is most beautiful”.
But to enjoy a home spa experience, you don’t necessarily need a spa, although it is nice to have. A bathroom, no matter how small, can be transformed into your own sanctuary. So says Chris Pask, director at Charlton Brown, a London-based architecture and interiors company.
Pask advises his clients to use “minimal layering” to create a spa-like environment. “You want the space to be relaxing and not overcrowded, so when layering with materials, textures and colours, these have to be subtle contrasts,” he says. For instance, at Soutar House, an early-1900s family home in Hampstead Garden Suburb, north London, the bathroom was created in stone and off-white tones to create a calm atmosphere, along with natural materials such as a tadelakt (polished plaster) finish on the walls. “Add in organic sculptures, vases, pots and leafy plants to give an outside-inside feel to the space, grounding the room,” Pask says.
When Mel Gilmore designed the en suite bathroom in her new home, she had a blank canvas — a prospect at once exciting and intimidating. She and her husband had bought the Victorian house in Wandsworth, southwest London, while they were living in Asia, so had time to contemplate the perfect spa bathroom.
“The bathroom is where I retreat to once the kids are in bed, to enjoy some me time,” says Gilmore, who has two young sons and works for a non-profit organisation. “We’ve stayed at many luxury spa hotels in Asia with beautiful bathrooms. We wanted to recreate that sense of pampering every time you walk in.”
The priority was having supersonic water pressure, not easy with Victorian plumbing. So Gilmore installed an extra boiler as well as a water pressure booster to create a hydrotherapy experience.
To achieve the designer look, she opted for palissandro marble in the shower, book-matched by an expert — book-matched marble is where the slabs are cut so the adjoining pieces perfectly mirror each other, like an open book. “It showcases the true beauty of the veins of the marble,” she says.
The Thassos marble tiles from Greece were laid to a design by Pernille Lind, a Danish-Thai interior designer. Gilmore’s husband spotted them on the floor of a luxury hotel he was staying at in Copenhagen — Hotel Sanders, which has won several awards for its design.
The couple had originally wanted a vintage vanity unit, but couldn’t find one to fit the space, so Blake Architects made a custom vintage-style one from bespoke fluted oak, with a marble top, complete with brass tassel-style handles. The lights and mirror are vintage, while the shower head and taps are antique reproductions by the Water Monopoly.
Gilmore spent hours researching the perfect bathmats too. She eventually opted for diamond-patterned ones made from recycled fibres by Cologne & Cotton. Her bathroom ritual is sacred — after locking the door, she slips into her Babington House spa robe, lights a Jo Malone candle and enjoys a soothing shower using Messiah and Eve’s vegan bodycare range.
“It is my peaceful sanctuary,” she says.