Recharge at These 12 Great Spas in Los Angeles

The Forbes five-star spa, complete with nail bar and salon, is located within a Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills, where the clientele is particularly demanding about anti-wrinkle regimes. Those credentials alone should make anyone go see this care crew with confidence. Everything in the spa is luxurious from the white quartz crystal steam room's heated benches and silky sheets to the dark chocolate snacks. Signature treatments including Celestial Black Diamond Non-Surgical Face Lifts and Cryotherapy Sports Massages utilize results-driven products and cutting edge tech including LED therapy, HydraFacial, and 111SKIN—a skincare system developed by a renowned cosmetic surgeon.

Delivering pampering without pretense for a decade, this Atwater Village mainstay is a reliable and rejuvenating refuge. Throw on the provided robe and slippers and nibble on nuts, fresh or dried fruit, and brownies while waiting for a therapist to escort you to one of the 12 clean, comfortable rooms for to-die-for massages, mud masques, and oxygen-filled facials. Great care is taken with little details like making micro pressure adjustments and making sure you're completely comfortable. Feel free to use the complimentary toiletries after your treatments to continue the pampering for a bit longer. They offer monthly and holiday-themed specials regularly.

Gather a gaggle of girlfriends or your significant other to while away the whole day at this posh 8,000-square-foot downtown haven. It's decorated with metallic accents, starburst lights, crystal baubles, and pops of pink to evoke old Hollywood glamour and you’ll be greeted with champagne. Slip into something more comfortable like a cozy robe and rest in a contoured chaise lounge before enjoying eucalyptus-infused steam, or a cold-plunge shower. Delight your digits in the nail bar where copper basins and pulsating chairs elevate the experience. Hair and makeup can be done in the salon. Order a meal in the co-ed Sanctuary while you wait for your turn on the table for on-trend treatments like CBD facials, scrubs using ingredients from the rooftop garden, and Zodiac-inspired charcoal hot stone massages. They have one of the best-outfitted couple’s rooms in town. Finish the day with a browse in the well-curated boutique carrying sunglasses, swimsuits, beauty products, and jewelry.

Positioning it as a spa and social club, this 15,000-square-foot facility in West Hollywood’s Russian pocket neighborhood wears its "Eastern Promises" vibe with pride. You can detox with their signature four-handed massage for ultimate relaxation or go for the intense upper body-focused Russian Bear rubdown and then re-tox without ever ditching the robe thanks to an on-premises martini lounge and restaurant serving borscht, beef stroganoff, and sour cherry vareniki.

Wellness-craving birds of a feather flock to this indie spa’s dual locations. Each chapter has a tinge of boho-chic with the mish-mash of Moroccan lanterns, low rattan stools, live plants, and spiritual tchotchkes. Both offer the same general menu of massages (Thai, lomi lomi, deep tissue, and pregnancy), facials, reiki, waxing, acupuncture, and infrared Himalayan salt saunas. The Santa Monica arm is kitted out with a hammam so you can add extras like Turkish soaks in a claw-foot tub. Silver Lake houses a boutique yoga studio and offers classes in breathing, alignment, and biomechanics.

Steps from the sand in Santa Monica, Hotel Casa del Mar’s small but luxurious sanctuary made up of a relaxation lounge, aromatherapy showers, steam room, and five immaculate spaces (one for couples, one for facials, and three for massages). Supple skin and summer glow is achieved with the help of lines like Malibu’s seaweed-based OSEA and New York’s natural, organic emerginC Scientific Organics. They’ve also jumped on the magnesium trend by introducing a wellness massage that uses the essential mineral.

Hidden away in the quiet courtyard of the Rodeo Collection on the most famous shopping street in the world, this Rodeo Drive retreat offers a large array of services including CoolSculpting (a non-invasive fat freeze), cupping, HydraFacial, spray tanning, manicures, pedicures, and several types of massages and facials. After a round of reflexology, indulge the feet even further with a pedicure enhanced with a healing foot soak of chlorophyll and coconut milk to in an anti-microbial copper tub. There are also separate steam rooms for men and women.

Blending east and west wellness philosophies, this Santa Monica day spa aims to create a “restorative co-ed sanctuary.” There’s a physician, acupuncturist, and nutritionist on staff on top of massage therapists and aestheticians providing things like Korean body scrubs, 24-karat gold wraps, “bacials” (deep exfoliations for the back), and tantric bathing rituals. There are a series of therapeutic rooms: Himalayan salt, infrared, and clay. It’s also home to a green tea Jacuzzi and the controversial Goop-approved V-steam for ladies. Men can get in on the mugwort mist action with an A-steam.

Some days you don’t need all the bells and whistles; just the benefits of basic body work. On those days, head to this new Studio City concept from Drybar's founders. Like with their blowout empire, Squeeze masters one service (massages) in an Instagram-friendly environment. Massages include heat therapy, deep tissue, and aromatherapy at no extra charge. Available in 20-, 50-, or 80-minute increments, customers book, pay, and tip through the app. You can read therapist reviews and leave notes on preferences and problem areas. Another welcome element: guests set the room temperature, adjust lighting levels, and pick tunes. (They even have indie rock, reggae, or R&B playlists.) This is a great option for less-expensive massage as prices fall well below those of fancy hotel spas.

Like Squeeze, this chain specializes in one arm of self-care (facials) in stores ready for their social media close-up at far more democratizing prices and timeframes. Aestheticians work at stations in a large communal space, which helps keep prices reasonable. If you want a peel in private, this is not the place for you. Pick a style based on your skin type and concerns (teen, men’s, acne-fighting, brightening, aged skin) and add extras like dark circle reduction, LED light therapy, oxygen blasts, extractions, or waxing as needed. Or opt for the new World of Difference package, which combines four of the popular boosts with a restorative facial in a quick 55-minute format. Five locations in Southern California include Santa Monica, El Segundo, and USC Village. 

From the outside, it looks like a run-of-the-mill Brentwood mansion. But on the inside, holistic healing is happening under the direction of a gentle Ayurvedic practitioner named Martha Soffer. Beloved by celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow, Nicole Richie, and Kourtney Kardashian, Soffer first performs a personal consultation, which includes taking your pulse, examining your tongue, and analyzing your diet, and then customizes an all-encompassing program to rebalance your body inside and out in four-hour sessions on five to seven consecutive days. Soffer creates custom powders, poultices, and oils for each client and then assigns treatments like Abhyanga (four-handed oil therapy), tea enemas, the sweatbox, meditation by the Ganesh statue, or Shirodhara (streaming warm oil over the third eye). Clearly, this experience is not for the cash or time-strapped or the medically conventional. 

Another purveyor of pure relaxation set inside a high-end Beverly Hills hotel, the 20,000-square-foot Spa Montage is known for its aqua-therapy. A central atrium awash in natural light features a large mineral pool surrounded by lavish lounge furniture and opulent gilded arches and mosaics. The Moorish theme continues in the 17 treatment rooms, some designed specifically for wet treatments like Vichy showers. If you'd rather be alone, smaller whirlpools, Turkish steams, redwood saunas and deluge showers are available in the separate locker rooms or the entire place can be rented for private parties. The spa boutique offers the ultra-premium L.RAPHAEL Genève line of beauty products.