Garden bathtubs are summer 2025's status symbol

Times

4 hours ago

Forget twizzling sausages on a Big Green Egg (the kamado-style ceramic barbecue typically costing north of £1,400). This summer's status symbol comes in the form of a bathtub in the garden. It's decidedly more low-key compared with its energy-hungry, sometimes gauche sister (the Jacuzzi), and garden bathing enthusiasts are embracing it year-round, whether opting for a Wim Hof-inspired cold plunge in a heatwave or enveloped in steam during deliciously hot soaks on chillier days.
The ultimate in outdoorsy bathing comes courtesy of William Holland, whose Alvius bath was designed especially for the launch of Soho House's Babington House in Somerset in the late Nineties, its square-shaped aesthetic blending industrial chic with 19th-century French opulence. These tubs remain a signifier of Soho House style: you can spot them beside Lazy Lake at Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire and also at its latest opening, Soho Farmhouse Ibiza.
Corrosion-free and low-maintenance, William Holland's round metal tubs (in particular the £9,310 copper Rotundus model, which develops a beautiful patina with age) are a frequent fixture in projects by the interior designer Lisa Burdus, whose clients are demanding far more than a bath plonked next to a compost bin. 'There is nothing bland when it comes to my clients' outdoor wellness spaces — they want carefully considered areas that blend in with pops of vibrant colours,' Burdus says. The key, she explains, is the view. 'Showers, saunas and baths that have views across the Cotswold valleys are the wellness design trend of the summer.'
The style set are smitten. At Trematon Castle in Cornwall, the House of Hackney co-founders Frieda Gormley and Javvy M Royle enjoy being 'ensconced in nature' in an antique restored French tub painted pea green. At her holiday cottage on the edge of the Sandringham Estate, the interior designer Jolene Marshall describes her £3,597 double-sided tin bath from Indigenous as 'an antidote to city life'.
Splish-splashing outdoors triggers something primal — perhaps stirring an early-years memory of paddling-pool nostalgia — but there's also something undeniably sexy about a lo-fi soak under the moon. Since Bee Osborn (the creative director of the Chipping Norton-based Osborn Interiors) installed a bath hidden behind a hessian curtain in her garden three years ago, she's been one of the forerunners who made the trend mainstream and remains inundated with requests from clients (and her 240,000 Instagram devotees) to replicate the look in their own homes. 'This was a not-too-expensive way to create an intimate romantic space,' she says.
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She uses reclaimed scaffolding boards to build open-sided bath houses 'to create a rustic look, with loads of candles. It feels much more fun and sophisticated than a hot tub, which you associate with four or five people and a bottle of prosecco in an Airbnb.'
And unlike a hot tub, there's no requirement for treating the water with chemicals either, meaning the bathwater can be drained into a soak and re-used to water the garden. When filled with ice, they also serve as handy bottle-chilling devices during particularly large summer soirees, as the Cotswolds resident Victoria Spooner discovered at her 40th birthday bash.
Alice Sykes, a fashion and interiors PR representing Artfully Walls and Cath Kidston's geranium-scented line, C.Atherley, is also part of the Cotswolds contingent. 'I've always been interested in clever artistic ways to improve spaces, and my garden bath is the best thing about my home,' Sykes says. 'It's literally an old plastic bath we were chucking out when renovating the spare bathroom. I fill it with water from the hose and two minutes in there in the morning or evening or during a hot weekend, or on a cold winter day, is bliss. It's the same hit as pond swimming, without having to leave your garden. It makes you feel alive.'
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As for going au naturel or in swimwear, the Cotswolds interiors stylist Emily Mellor insists, 'Nudity is absolutely essential for bathing in the garden.' Mellor found her 'bloody heavy' freestanding cast-iron number on eBay for 99p via an estate house clearance. 'My husband was cursing me every step of the way but the result of that is a lovely bath in the veg patch that we can bathe in next to the tomatoes and whisper sweet nothings as they blush at our naked bottoms.' An underground pipe feeds the tub with hot and cold water ('really worth it on slightly chilly evenings — having a hot bath outside is just such a treat'), and Mellor heartily recommends bubbles, flowers from the garden and wine as accoutrements for an evening soak.
This is not an isolated trend for the country set, nor is it a solo endeavour but increasingly a wellness-tinged social ritual. Take Kate Goodrich, an artist and gardener from London, who nabbed her cast-iron Victorian bath on eBay for £40, calling a cold-water dip straight from the hosepipe 'a place of escape and total calm — water, nature, birds and trees overhead — not forgetting moon bathing. The garden bath is used all year round and has become the favourite spot in our garden. Friends come round for a cool dip — a Parisian pal now has her own garden bath. It's a cooling sanctuary that also waters the plants.'
Tucked away from neighbourly eyes under the branches of an evergreen magnolia grandiflora, Goodrich has 'strategically placed' potted evergreen bamboo and Phormium tenax for total privacy. After a cycle commute to Hackney from her studio where she makes large scale botanical works using cameraless photography techniques, or a long gardening job, there's nothing better than jumping in the cold and being outdoors, she says. 'It transports me away from London feelings to tropical settings instead. Keep a towel close to hand for a discreet exit!'
Mark Shaw, an architect who scooped a Riba London 2025 award for his Walthamstow home built on the site of a former MoT garage earlier this year, has followed a different direction with his sunken outdoor bath, taking cues from hotels in Thailand and Japanese onsens.
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'I didn't have space for an en suite bathroom in the 100 sq m property and I thought, why don't I really blur those boundaries between inside and out?' explains the founder of the Studioshaw practice. 'Water for me is like therapy, but I hate hot tubs. I wanted [the bath] to be really simple and relaxing — and big enough for two people.' So Shaw designed the bath as a stainless-steel box, which he had made bespoke by the fabricator who built his kitchen, and plumbed in hot and cold water. It's shaded by the huge, deeply lobed leaves of the rice-paper tree (Tetrapanax papyrifer 'Rex') planted on the advice of the landscape gardener Charlie Hawkes for bathing bliss in London's zone 3.@kate_goodrich_studio
James Brown on his unexpected garden haven, which offers a surprisingly relaxing retreat under the stars
Sometimes it takes seeing great things that others have to appreciate what you already have yourself. I recently saw an indoor sauna in an outdoor garden office that was so ergonomically designed, it folded into its surroundings, almost invisible to the passer-by. The office was quite something — great shape, obviously, interestingly clad, view out to the sea but, most notably, the piles of papers and shelves of box files all smelt of sauna. In a nice way.
Heading home, I was so impressed that I phoned my girlfriend to discuss the possibility of having an outdoor sauna myself and, before you know it, my Instagram timeline was full of saunas.
I'd quickly worked out where I would put it in my shingle garden: in the corner just below the outdoor bath. And then it struck me. What the hell did I need a sauna for when I have an outdoor bath? A fast-filling, instant-hot-and-cold, two-steps-across-the-back-deck-from-my-shower-room outdoor bath.
I went home that night, filled it to the very top and spent three hours in it until just gone midnight. The pin-pricked sky stretched out above — no light pollution over Rye Bay, East Sussex, just years and years of stars above.
Did it get cold? No, never, because as I said, you can constantly refill it with very hot water. About ten years ago it occurred to me that, given all that was beneath the bath was decking and shingle, it was essentially an infinity bath — I could fill it to overflowing, fully submerged, and that's something you can't do in an indoor bath. Even more relaxing.
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The bath was there when I bought the place. I realised at some point that, before then, it had lived in the back bedroom because there was a round hole under the bed where an outflow pipe must have been. I don't know whose idea the outdoor bath was but it was at least 19 years ago so they were well ahead of the times.
It's a white Victorian-style bath with a horizontal surround and two basic brass taps screwed into a piece of driftwood that's fixed to the wooden handrail surrounding the corners of the back deck. When I first arrived that's all there was, but since then I've enclosed it with large dimpled French garden tubs full of mint and lavender, and there's an elderflower bush that's grown up the frame around it.
Behind the tubs there's a row of dense evergreens that divides my house from that of my neighbours, Billy and Alison. It's close enough for me to hear them chatting and gardening but thick enough for them to not have to witness me getting in and out.
For quite a long time, when the assorted bushes lost their leaves and flowers, I'd lean down, scoop them all out and throw them into the foot of the trees. Then one day I realised: 'Mint, lavender, elderflower, evergreens … this is basically what it says on the side of plastic bottles full of bathroom products.'
I was chucking out what people normally pay for in their brightly coloured, gloopy, chemically enhanced versions and since then I haven't bothered any more. The fragrance adds to the experience. You can bring some hot water in a cup and then just pull off some huge fresh mint leaves for tea. I leave it on the bathside table with books, towels, laptop.
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I've spent a lot of time in there watching football matches, reading books and thinking about writing them. And with a pile of books on a chair stationed a foot or so away, there's enough shade for the screen to be very clear.
Because I rent the house out when I'm not there, the outdoor bath has become a talking point and it's often mentioned as something new guests' friends have told them about. A couple of guys who stayed have since moved in down the lane and recreated it in their own back garden, and of course guests have posted lots of photographs of it.
One couple sent a shot of them both in it celebrating an anniversary, another lady sent me her whole family in it and a third guest kindly posted a picture of her drying her dog in it with my favourite Paul Smith towel, which someone had bought me for my birthday.
To make it even more private I recently closed one end off with a woven hazel panel, which pretty much makes it an outdoor bathroom now, just with no roof. It's two steps away from the real bathroom, which has a great shower but no bath.
No one has ever come round when I'm in it and I can't really think of anywhere more relaxing to soak. I've sadly never been there when it's snowing but you can't have everything. Or can you? Run two taps, climb in and you're away, no infrared cabin in sight.