Toronto’s best spas and beauty bars right now
Saltcave Solana
302 Lakeshore Rd. E., 905-338-5555 The purported health benefits of Himalayan salt have spawned a wellness trend embraced by star athletes (New York Giants great Tiki Barber, for instance). Solana, a tiny storefront spa in Oakville, brings the saline craze to the suburbs. Inside its 450-square-foot salt cave—built from almost 10,000 kilos of the pink stuff—true believers zone out under dim, twinkling lights. Call it the anti-shvitz: a fully clothed, blanket-cozy communion in a 70-degree chamber where the imperative is not to sweat it out but soak it in—the cave emits enough sodium in an hour to match two days seaside, and is said to treat asthma and eczema.
Her Majesty’s Pleasure
556 King St.W., 416-546-4991 In Toronto, there’s a beauty bar for every occasion, whether it’s a lunch-hour laser treatment or a boozy bridal shower. For the latter, we recommend Her Majesty’s Pleasure, an enchanting place to get primped. The shop offers a full list of spa services, including blowouts, manicures and all-natural facials, but it feels like a social club: it’s open until 10 p.m. on the weekends and the cocktail bar serves a mean blueberry mojito.
The Four Seasons Spa
60 Yorkville Ave., 416-963-6006 The 30,000-square-foot spa in the Four Seasons Hotel has raised the city standard for blissed-out beauty days. Bay Street strays pop in for treatments like gold-plumping and copper facials, or take a plunge in a sunlit indoor bromine pool that glitters with Italian glass mosaic tiles and pulses with music from an underwater sound system.
Hammam Spa
602 King St.W., 416-366-4772 Visitors to this Turkish-style spa are greeted by a billowing cloud of eucalyptus-scented mist from the hammam steam room. The 500-square-foot co-ed chamber is the showpiece: spend $55 for a luxurious steam, or get a free session when you purchase $100 worth of other services, including massages, facials and a Turkish bath treatment where patrons recline on a heated onyx table and are cleansed with hot and cool waters.
W Skincare
67 Portland St., Ste. 200, 416-599-2711 Elaine Lui, of LaineyGossip fame, calls Lorinda Zimmerman her “skin whisperer”—the woman who keeps her pores invisible and her face blemish free. At Zimmerman’s King West clinic, the signature treatment (the one favoured by Lui and many Hollywood starlets) is the cold laser combo. It’s a session of microdermabrasion followed by cold laser therapy, used to rejuvenate collagen. There’s NASA-approved science behind it, but the main takeaway is this: it’s an injection-free fountain of youth that will give you an ingenue’s glow. $250.
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