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Sep 14, 2023

Ready for a Nice, Soothing Bath? Just Head to the Backyard.

Cheaper than pools and more private than hot tubs, the bathtub is leaving the

Cheaper than pools and more private than hot tubs, the bathtub is leaving the bathroom and has designs on your garden, or even your treehouse.

Leah Chisolm-Allison, an autopsy technician, relaxes by adding a floral bath tea to her outdoor bathtub in the garden of her home in Tampa, Fla.Credit...Scott McIntyre for The New York Times

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By Lia Picard

Leah Chisolm-Allison takes her morning routine seriously. On her days off, she enjoys a big breakfast along with a smoothie. She draws a bath and sprinkles in a floral bath tea. When it's ready, Ms. Chisolm-Allison heads for the backyard, because that's where her bathtub resides.

A 27-year-old autopsy technician, Ms. Chisolm-Allison lives in Tampa, Fla., and typically gets to work by 7 a.m., but a soak in her backyard bathtub on those off days soothes her. "Most of us are running around, we never really take time to slow down," said Ms. Chisolm-Allison. "So it's just a nice reminder to just be in the moment and relax and enjoy where you are."

Ms. Chisolm-Allison bought the free-standing tub in 2021 from a furniture salvage store in downtown Tampa. "It took five of us to just get it to the backyard once we got it dropped off at the house," she said. The bathtub rests in the back corner of the yard, near a palm tree, surrounded by a tropical garden planted with plumeria, passion flowers and desert roses, among other flora. A pipe connected to the house's main waterline fills the tub with hot and cold water.

An outdoor bathtub brings together two common desires: that of a backyard water feature and a place to immerse. A soak in the tub is a treat, and for some, even more of one when it takes place outdoors.

It was around last spring when Felicia Feaster, managing editor of HGTV.com, first observed outdoor bathtubs. This ranges from claw-foot tubs to ofuros (wood-sided Japanese soaking tubs), as well as outdoor-adjacent tubs where homeowners arrange a bathtub indoors but near sliding glass doors so they feel like they’re outside.

"It's in keeping with what I have seen in general post-Covid and during Covid, people wanting spaces for contemplation," Ms. Feaster said. The wellness movement permeated interior design during the pandemic, from reading nooks to yoga rooms. In the 2022 Trends Report released by the American Society of Interior Designers in March 2022, wellness was billed as a top concern of homeowners redesigning their spaces. Intentional outdoor features, like bathtubs, are an extension of that.

Traditionally, people turn to hot tubs for backyard relaxation, but those are social features. Hot tubs are usually shared with friends, perhaps with drinks in hand. "It's a more of raucous setting. I really think the phenomenon of the outdoor tub is a completely different reality," Ms. Feaster said. "To me, it's all about one person just being with nature, being with themselves, having that detox from devices and daily life."

That diversion from every day life was what Ms. Chisolm-Allison sought in her bathtub. "I call it our healing garden. I mean, with my profession, I see a lot of horrific things. And sometimes it does get to me, so I just kind of have to detach," she said. "So when I’m amongst the flowers and the plants, and just the natural greenery, I feel more grounded."

Bathing outdoors was once a necessity. Ancient examples found around the globe include the Great Bath, an archaeological site in Mohenjo-Daro, Pakistan, believed to be used for ritual bathing in the third millennium B.C. Famously, the Romans built public baths in parks and gardens where both the wealthy and poor members of society gathered to cleanse and socialize. These structures had covered and completely outdoor components.

In Japanese and Scandinavian societies, bathing outdoors in hot springs had a wellness or spiritual element in addition to cleanliness. In the United States, before the ubiquity of indoor plumbing, the general population bathed in public bath structures in gardens, and, later, in public bathhouses in cities (though the rich have seemingly always had private bathing facilities throughout history).

Indoor plumbing in the United States came about in the 1840s, but according to the United States Census Bureau, nearly half of the country's homes still didn't have plumbing (which they define, then and now, as hot and cold piped water, a bathtub or shower and a toilet) in the 1940s. As indoor plumbing's prevalence grew, in part thanks to housing codes and mass manufacturing, public bathing receded.

Today, people installing bathtubs in their yards aren't really seeking hygiene; they are seeking self-care. The therapeutic benefits of spending time in nature, or close to it, are well-known, from modern studies of public green spaces to the Finnish tradition of placing saunas within forests. Water-tinged nature is relaxing, even if that's found in a bathtub in small backyard.

For Tamsin Jordan, 35, a bathtub blended into her home's rustic setting in a way that a hot tub wouldn't. Ms. Jordan, a dietitian who lives in Greenwich, Conn., bought a 25-acre property in Hyde Park, N.Y., about two hours north of Manhattan, with her husband in 2017. Originally built in the 1800s, the property was once a dairy farm and has several wooden buildings. The farmhouse was transformed into Ms. Jordan's weekend home, while another building was renovated into a one-bedroom treehouse using reclaimed siding and corrugated steel roofing.

Ms. Jordan frequently visited South Africa as a child where she encountered outdoor bathtubs and wanted one in the treehouse. She waited about a year before she found a secondhand tub that fit the bill: a cast iron claw-foot tub big enough to hold two people.

Eventually she did, for $2,000, at a house in Greenwich. "It's original from the 1920s. It weighs like 500 pounds without any water in it," Ms. Jordan said. Once the tub was settled on the treehouse's deck, she connected a faucet to the house's plumbing.

The treehouse is used as a vacation rental, but Ms. Jordan and her family still enjoy the bathtub often. "It's totally private from the rest of the property, obviously. So basically when you take the bath, you’re sitting 12 feet in the air, hearing the babbling stream going right by you," Ms. Jordan said.

An outdoor bathtub is also, simply, more affordable and obtainable than a pool. At the height of the pandemic, pools were in high demand. Everyone who could afford to build a pool wanted one — it costs around $70,000 to $100,000 — but new pool construction was hit with delays over supply shortages. People looked to smaller scale swimming options, such as plunge pools, which are still major financial and time investments. Even flimsy kiddie pools were scarce.

In the summer of 2020, Megh Wingenfeld, a home and garden content creator who lives in Cleveland, faced the supply chain dilemma, boredom and climbing temperatures. "I think I just had time on my hands. I was really working on the backyard," said Ms. Wingenfeld, 37. "It was really hot." She turned to a used bathtub that she bought about 10 years ago intended for a D.I.Y. furniture project. The heat and kiddie pool scarcity, however, drove Ms. Wingenfeld to repaint the bathtub and set it up on her patio.

Now when she needs to cool off, Ms. Wingenfeld fills the tub with her backyard hose before plunging in. A drain directs the water toward a stone pit. On the rare occasion that she wants the water to feel warm, she uses a portable water heater. "I feel like there's no one else around, even though I can see my neighbors’ houses," Ms. Wingenfeld said.

Outdoor bathtubs don't have to be rustic. In Napa, Calif., Conner Burns, 34, and his fiancé Christopher Miller, 31, wanted an outdoor bathtub that hearkens to the hotel Glen Oaks Big Sur. "They have a cabin there that has two bathtubs that are side by side outdoors," said Mr. Burns. "For my fiancé's birthday a couple of years ago, I took him down there and rented that cabin and it's just really lovely."

When they purchased their house in September 2020, Mr. Burns, a winery hospitality director, knew he wanted to install a bathtub and worked with online landscaping company Yardzen on the initial layout of the yard.

The landscape designer Owen Lynn, who owns Keystone Yards, installed the tub.

Mr. Lynn ripped out much of the existing yard and replaced it with a lawn, bocce court, lighting and pergola. It was the first time Mr. Lynn had been asked to install an exterior bathtub and the couple wanted it right outside their primary bedroom. "It's not terribly complicated," he said.

The tub, which the couple bought for about $1,500, sits perched six-inches above the ground. It's placed against the wall near the primary bedroom's window and door, and under an overhang. To run the lines and add the concrete slab under the tub was about $8,000, Mr. Lynn said. The bathtub isn't the yard's focal point, but looks cohesive with the outdoor space that suggests a wine country resort.

"We were trying to maximize what we could with a limited income and limited lifestyle," said Mr. Burns. "We wanted to make it feel as luxurious as possible in a smart, and financially reasonable way. That's something that we were able to achieve doing it this way."

Backyard tubs can be multifunctional, too. Christina Chaccour, 33, counted an outdoor bathtub as a "nonnegotiable" when she and her husband renovated their backyard in Danville, Calif., about five years ago. The double slipper tub sits on black-and-white tile with a star print, and a concrete privacy wall separates it from the side yard. It suits her minimalist aesthetic and complements her modern pool, but Ms. Chaccour, who works for a construction company, doesn't get as much solo time in the tub as she’d like now that she has two children under 3 years old.

The tub does play another role, though: drink holder. "For any event that we have in our house that's outside, we fill it up with ice and we put all the beverages in there."

Can a hot tub do that?

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