Home / Beauty Tips / Beauty: the best bath products | Sali Hughes

Beauty: the best bath products | Sali Hughes

As much as I could do without more talk of Danish hygge, the marketing phenomenon of selling back to British people what they already do exceptionally well – bugger all while the weather is foul – I can see why the concept is especially appealing now. When the US elects a rabble-rousing bigot as president, Britain decides to leave the EU, and cultural heroes are falling like skittles, it’s tempting to close the curtains, hide under a blanket or run a bath. My proclivity for the latter has evolved from habit to addiction in response to this godawful year.

One episode of Desert Island Discs has become four, my pruney toe topping up the hot water, a locked door between me and the horror. I want fat, stiff bubbles that engulf my face and for this I’m using Soaper Duper Fruity Green Tuberose Body Wash (£7.50 for a massive bottle). It’s the latest venture from Bliss founder Marcia Kilgore, who wanted affordable bath and body products without undesirable ingredients such as sulphates and microbeads. The body wash isn’t designed as bath foam but works brilliantly well as one, and smells glorious (there’s a Zingy Ginger version, should you like your baths more reviving than anaesthetising; I prefer it in the shower).

When I’m feeling particularly despairing and extravagant, I love Cowshed’s Spoilt Cow Bath Crème (£36), a thick, unctuous preparation that in one moderate glug fills the bath with softening foam scented with plant extracts. If you’re more sophisticated and prefer fine, slippery oils to my big, childish bubbles (you can’t have both – oils flatten foam), then Kneipp is a smart buy. My favourite is Almond Blossom Bath Oil (£8.50), but it also makes a great selection pack of six minis (£9.25), so you can decide for yourself. My only sadness is that its once-beautiful plain packaging has been replaced by lurid florals, but the product itself is mercifully unchanged.

One beauty design classic wisely left alone is Dr Hauschka’s Lemon Lemongrass Bath Essence (£16.50), a vegan-friendly blend of sunflower and citrus oils that leaves skin ungreasily moist. It’s also the product a bereaved Nora Ephron was referring to when she said that life is too uncertain, too short to save anything for best. “Always use the good bath oil,” she decreed. Literally and metaphorically, these are truly words to live by.

About Fashion Brief