What you carry from one room follows you into the next. Here’s how to create a healthy, spa-like bathroom that helps you breathe more deeply, feel restored, and begin again.
Helping women entrepreneurs create healthier, more beautiful homes and workspaces through eco-conscious design, intentional living, and My Five Pillars™ for Healthy Luxury Living. — Charisse Marei
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There is a certain rhythm to summer.
We open the windows a little wider. Stay outside a little longer. Let schedules soften around the edges. And then August arrives. Not quite fall. Not quite ready to let summer go. Yet somehow, we begin to feel the shift.
Over these past few months, we’ve been spending time together in the home office. First creating a space you truly want to walk into, then looking beyond the room to the woman behind the business, and most recently, opening that closet and beginning with one drawer.
One small space. One intentional shift.
Because creating a home that supports you has never been about changing everything at once. It is about noticing. And perhaps there is something else worth noticing, too. The woman who walks into that home office doesn’t arrive there untouched by the rest of her home. She brings herself with her.
The ease, or overwhelm, of the morning. The things she couldn’t find. The visual noise she has already absorbed. The feeling of rushing before the workday has even begun.
Or, perhaps, she brings something different. A little more breathing room. A sense of being settled. A moment that helped her feel like herself before the rest of the world began asking for her attention.
What we carry from one room has a way of following us into the next.
So this month, we’re stepping outside the home office and into a room that quietly supports the woman who works there. A much more personal one.
The bathroom.
It is one of the first places we enter in the morning and one of the last we leave at night. We wash away the day there. Prepare ourselves for what is ahead. Look into the mirror. Breathe. Think. Rush sometimes, too.
And perhaps, without realizing it, return to ourselves. Yet for a room woven so intimately into our everyday lives, how often do we stop to consider how it makes us feel?
A Room I Learned to Love Long Ago
My relationship with the bathroom began long before I became an interior designer.
I can still picture myself as a young girl carrying my cassette player into the bathroom and carefully setting it on the toilet seat cover. Music on. Into the tub I went. I would wash myself, suds the walls, sing, dance a little, and before leaving, dry everything down until it shined.
I didn’t call it a ritual. I certainly didn’t call it Healthy Luxury. It was simply something that made me feel good. Later, as a preteen, I discovered another kind of magic.
- Candlelight
- Warm water
- Steam
- Quiet
An ordinary bathroom could suddenly feel like my own little spa haven. I was too young to understand why those things mattered. I only knew that the room felt different, and when it did, I felt different.
Looking back, I realize I was already responding to something I would spend much of my adult life studying, teaching, and designing around: Our surroundings affect us.
- How we feel
- How we move
- How we care for ourselves
- How clearly we think
- How freely we create
- And ultimately, how we live
Healthy Luxury Isn’t About Having More
When I speak about Healthy Luxury Living, I’m not talking about filling a bathroom with expensive things. Quite the opposite. Luxury can be having enough breathing room on the vanity to see the beautiful surface beneath it.
- Fresh air drifting through an open window
- Morning light
- A towel that feels wonderful against your skin
- A favorite scent
- Music that instantly lifts your spirit
- A pattern that makes you smile every time you enter the room
- Or five uninterrupted minutes at the end of the day when no one needs anything from you
Healthy Luxury is deeply personal. It asks us to become more intentional about what we allow into our surroundings and what we might be ready to release. This is where My Five Pillars™ for Healthy Luxury Living begin to move together.
We Simplify™ what overwhelms us.
We Healthify™ what surrounds and touches us.
We Lovify™ with the things, memories, and rituals that bring meaning.
We Beautify™ so our surroundings lift and inspire us.
And little by little, we Fortify™ the foundation supporting our well-being in the years ahead.
Not five separate things to accomplish. A rhythm. One choice flowing naturally into the next.
Begin With What You See
Stand in your bathroom doorway for a moment. Don’t fix anything yet. Simply look.
Over time, things accumulate. The products we use, the ones we meant to try, the things we keep within reach simply because they’ve always been there. Little by little, what once felt useful can begin to feel like visual noise.
A beautiful space can still stop supporting us when too much begins to accumulate.
What is the first thing your eye lands on?
Is the vanity crowded with bottles and products you’ve stopped noticing?
Are there things tucked beneath the sink that you haven’t used in years?
Is there something sitting there simply because it has always been there?
Does the room allow your eye somewhere to rest?
Does it allow you somewhere to rest?
This isn’t about judging the room, or yourself. And it certainly isn’t about emptying everything onto the floor and turning Saturday into another project.
Choose one small area. Perhaps it is the vanity. Clear it. Clean it. Then return what deserves to be there. Not because you need to become more disciplined. Because every object we remove from our visual field creates a little more room for something else.
- Space
- Ease
- Beauty
- A deeper breath
You may be surprised by how different the room feels when it has a little space to breathe. And how different you feel in it.
Notice What You Don’t See
Then there are the elements we experience every day but rarely stop to notice.
The air. The light. The water. The products meeting our skin. The materials beneath our feet and surrounding us. This is where my background in Building Biology has taught me to look beyond how beautiful a room appears and ask a deeper question:
How is this room supporting the person who lives here?
Open the window if you can and allow fresh air to move through. Notice the light you wake to in the morning and the light surrounding you as you prepare for sleep.
Look beneath the sink. Read a label you haven’t read before. Notice what you’re breathing, touching, applying, and bringing into this small and very personal environment.
You don’t have to change everything today. Awareness comes first. Then choice. And small, conscious choices, made once, can quietly support us every day after.
That is where a truly healthy, spa-like bathroom begins. Not with more things, but with greater awareness of what surrounds you and how it makes you feel.
Then, Bring In Something You Love
This may be my favorite part.
Once we’ve made a little room, we can begin adding back with intention. Not simply decorating. Creating a feeling.
A room should contain something that delights you. Something that catches your eye and lifts you, even for a moment. For me, pattern has always had that ability. Which is one reason I’m so delighted to introduce my newest collection, Petal Hearts & Clover.
Petal hearts, whimsical clover, and cabana-inspired stripes move together in a playful, airy rhythm. Sage green. Aqua sky. Navy. Coral pink. Golden sand. Meadow blue. There is structure. There is softness. There is a touch of the coast and a touch of the garden. And there is joy.
I can imagine the Coastal Petal Heart Resort Stripe creating a beautiful wallpaper moment behind a vanity. The Tossed Botanical Clover softening a shower curtain. Or perhaps one patterned accent is all the room needs.
Because beauty doesn’t always need to announce itself. Sometimes it is simply the detail that makes you happy to be there. And isn’t that what our homes should do?
Explore Petal Hearts & Clover →
Create Your Own Mini Spa Haven
I think back to that young girl with her cassette player on the toilet seat. And later, the preteen who discovered what candlelight, steam, and quiet could do to an ordinary room. Neither one was trying to create a beautiful bathroom. She was creating a feeling.
I understand that now. And it is something we can so easily lose as adults. Our routines become efficient. Get ready. Get out the door, or these days, perhaps down the hall to the home office. Wash the day away. Go to bed. Repeat.
But what happens when we allow a little ritual back in?
Tonight, before you automatically move through your usual routine, linger a little. Turn down the overhead light. Light a candle. Put on music you love. Take a warm bath or shower. Wrap yourself in a towel that feels beautiful.
And notice what happens when the room asks nothing of you except to be there. To release. To renew. To revitalize. This isn’t indulgence for indulgence’s sake. It is restoration.
The bathroom gives us a natural place to transition, from sleep into the day, from work back into ourselves, from doing into simply being.
That is a kind of luxury I believe we need more of.
A Room Worth Understanding
Perhaps that is also why the bathroom became the subject of my first book in the One Room at a Time series, The Bathroom: Your Essential Guide to a Beautiful Healthy Living Lifestyle.
I wrote 358 pages about this one room because there is so much more happening here than we realize.
Beauty · Health · Water · Materials · Organization · Design · Ritual · Well-being
All meeting us in one relatively small space.
The book is both a guide and workbook, designed to help you understand your bathroom differently and make choices that support the way you want to live.
Not another makeover. Not another list of things you have to get right. A guide. A place to begin. Because sometimes the hardest part of changing a space isn’t knowing that something feels off.
It’s knowing what to do next.
Wander through my Spoonflower collections of original wallpaper, textile, and homegoods to create a deeper connection to the spaces we call home.
One Small Shift
As summer begins its gentle turn toward fall, I don’t want to give you another project. You have enough of those. And creating a home that supports the life you’re building isn’t about finally becoming more organized, more disciplined, or better at keeping everything just so.
It begins much more gently than that. With noticing. Tonight, walk into your bathroom as though you are seeing it for the first time.
What helps you breathe a little more deeply?
What creates noise you no longer need?
What feels beautiful?
What feels like you?
And what one small shift might make tomorrow morning feel just a little different?
Perhaps you clear the vanity. Open the window. Bring out the towel you’ve been saving for guests. Turn on the music. Light the candle. Or do nothing at all tonight except notice.
Because the goal isn’t a perfect bathroom. It’s creating a home that gives something back to you. A home that helps you breathe more deeply. Think more clearly. Create more freely. And move into what is next with a little more joy, confidence, and ease.
So when you eventually make your way back to the home office, to the idea waiting to be explored, the client waiting for your insight, the business and future you are creating, you arrive a little lighter.
A little more inspired. A little more you.
And tomorrow? We begin again.
In the room where we return to ourselves.
Ready to Begin?
What we’ve explored here goes much deeper inside my book, One Room at a Time, The Bathroom: Your Essential Guide to a Beautiful Eco-Conscious, Healthy Living Lifestyle.
Inside, the bathroom becomes our teaching room, a beautifully contained place to look more closely at how your surroundings affect the way you feel, move, and live. You’ll find the complete Clearing the Clutter chapter, along with guided worksheets to help you identify your clearing goal, uncover your clutter sources, explore your 5R solutions and seasonal keys, and make space for your own story along the way.
But what you learn there doesn’t stay in the bathroom.
That’s the beauty of One Room at a Time.
Today, it may begin at your vanity. Tomorrow, it may travel with you into your bedroom, your kitchen, your studio—or back into the home office where we began our summer together.
Learn it once, and it begins to change the way you see your whole home.
Part guide, part workbook, part story, The Bathroom is yours to move through at your own rhythm—one room, one choice, one small shift at a time.
Begin with The Bathroom → Each copy personally signed and available in limited quantities.
Books . . .
Together, these books offer both the inspiration and the practical guidance to help you create a home that feels more intentional, beautiful, healthy—and more like the person you are today.
For those who wish to deepen the journey, A Timeless Keepsake serves as a companion guide for reflection, discovery, and capturing meaningful moments, insights, and transformations along the way.
And if you find yourself wishing for someone beside you as you begin, my one-on-one Clutter-to-Clarity Sessions are an open door. We begin simply: schedule a complimentary 15-minute call, tell me about the space that isn’t quite supporting you, and together we’ll see if working together feels like the right next step.
Because you don’t have to change everything. You simply have to know where to begin.
You’ve got this.
About the Author
Charisse Marei is an Eco-Conscious Interior Designer, Building Biology practitioner, Surface Pattern Designer, educator, and author. Through her One Room at a Time approach and My Five Pillars™ for Healthy Luxury Living, she helps women create healthier, more beautiful environments that support well-being, creativity, and purpose.
One room. One intentional choice. One beautiful step forward.
One Room at a Time.
Charisse Marei
