DIY Home Spa Experience: How to replicate some of the best hotel spa experiences in your own home
Langham Place, New York
It’s hard to find time to make it to a top notch spa as often as you deserve, so replicating some of the treatments is next best. Using Langham Place Hotel in New York as my benchmark for spa fabulousness, I’m recreating the essential elements for a perfect DIY home spa experience:
1. Set the stage. Turn the lights down low (or off) and light 3 or 4 candles with relaxing scents. Caldrea makes candle tins that are filled with luxurious fragrance notes that are hard to find in ordinary candles. The holiday edition candle is spiced with clove and bergamot for a rich, sensuous scent that’ll get the DIY home spa experience going in a jiffy.
2. The right sounds. A hotel spa has the ability to pump perfectly timed soothing music into each and every room, but without a serious audio setup at home, the only portable solution is a top notch wireless bluetooth speaker system. Set your Pandora (commercial free, I hope!) to a station like The XX for modern low-key, Enya for a flashback to 90s yoga moments, or Sinatra for sophisticated calm. SONY’s SRS X3 speaker is lightweight, portable, and perfect to perch up on a high bathroom shelf for crisp, soothing sounds. It’s also perfect for those random times when you feel like embracing a mid-afternoon living room dance party, but that’s another story. Available here.
Read More: How to Use Facial Oils
3. The facial! The Spa at Langham Place, Fifth Avenue and its partner, Hydropeptide, offer the HydroPeptide Pumpkin Peel Facial for $225. It’s a combination of salicylic acid and an acne fighting peptide work synergistically to clear the skin of impurities while natural exfoliants increase cell turnover to lift signs of sun exposure and leave skin looking fresh and renewed. Clarifies, exfoliates and nourishes with peptides, vitamins, pumpkin enzymes and nutrients; leaving your skin clearer with a healthy glow. To replicate the effects of this treatment at home The Spa at Langham Place sells a variety of products that will allow the effects of the facial to continue post-treatment or which can be combined to create an at-home treatment, including the Hydropeptide Plump & Polish Peel ($78). It’s like a hug for your face after a long day, and that’s exactly the direction you want to be heading in for your DIY home spa day. To purchase the mask visit the Langham Place Hotel in NYC or call (212) 695-4005.
4. Keep the Vitamin A party going strong. Most facials end with an expert telling you “make sure you keep treating your skin from here on out!” Basically, a good facial is like prepping a canvas for a longterm art project. Your skincare routine IS that longterm art project, and if you don’t have access to prescription retinol products (they’re hard to get and SO expensive), Neutrogena has the best OTC retinol product on the market– hands down. Most people get discouraged when they don’t see results after a few weeks with skincare, but the Rapid Results line from Neutrogena is designed to deliver noticeable results in just one week (that’s quicker than my dry cleaning comes back).
A set of innovative formulas comprised of stabilized retinol and a glucose complex, Rapid Wrinkle Repair Night Moisturizer offers the fastest retinol available. The fast-acting, non-irritating Accelerated Retinol SA formulation in the Rapid Wrinkle Repair line is a combination of the following anti-aging essentials: Retinol SA to smooth wrinkles and diminish age spots, glucose complex to boost the retinol SA and diminish fine lines, hyaluronic acid to moisturize and replenish, and a generally easy to use formula. Use it nightly to stretch the time between facials and keep your glow going way longer. Available under $20 here.
5. Take care of your tootsies. No DIY home spa day would be complete without a proper pedicure, and that stretches far beyond just polish– taking care of rough feet is more than just a sugar scrub solution, it requires the beauty equivalent of a power sander. Instrumental beauty makes one of the coolest foot-filing devices I’ve ever seen, partially because it’s so easy to use and partially because it’s so affordable and easy to find at drugstores. Basically, you pop the device in your hand, repeatedly run it over your foot and watch the crackling, dry skin get sanded away. It’s brilliant, and sort of addictive. Expect a horrifying DIY video coming soon. Retails for about $30, but if you’re the kind of girl who can paint her own toenails anyway, this will save you hundreds (if not more) in spa dollars. Available here.
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6. Polish at home. While your facial is under way and your feet are already smoothed, add a fresh coat of lacquer to your toes- but make it a spa-quality, pigment-rich polish that’ll last. Julep makes some of the best shades out there, and they’re “five-free” for a healthier, spa-quality you. Check ’em out here at Sephora.
Other ideas for your DIY home spa adventure include hot herbal tea, heated towels, and the total absence of roommates, family, or a phone. And seriously, if you’re in NYC The Spa at Langham Place is worth every single minute of your time and effort. #myfave
Have other thoughts you want to share? Leave a comment below!
