Petalby Spa: What It Is and How to Choose From It

Petalby Spa is our bath, body and sensory range: the products we know best, and the only range currently stocked. This is what is in it, how the sets differ, and how to choose without opening every page.

What Petalby Spa covers

Six groups of things, all topical or sensory — nothing to be swallowed, nothing claiming to do anything to your health.

• Skincare. Creams, balms and oils for hands, body and face, from UK makers and UK wholesale.
• Bath. Soaks, salts and melts. The category people most enjoy receiving and least often buy for themselves.
• Aromatherapy. Essential oil blends, pillow mists, room scent. Sensory rather than medicinal — we will tell you what something smells like and what it is for in the ordinary sense of the word, and no more than that.
• Soap flowers. Scented soap petals shaped into blooms. Decorative for a while, then used, which is a rare and pleasing combination.
• Candles. With stated burn times, because a candle without one is asking you not to ask.
• Wheat bags. Warmed in a microwave, laid across shoulders or knees on a cold evening. Comfort and warmth — we do not make claims beyond that.

The three ways to buy

1. A fixed Spa Edit set, when you want to know exactly what arrives

Five sets, each with a published contents list. Choose these when the gift is going to someone whose reaction you cannot afford to guess at, or when you want to see the pieces before you commit.

• Mini Pocket Pamper, £15. Hand cream, lip balm and one considered extra. Sized for the post — the answer for a colleague, a teacher, or a friend two hundred miles away.
• Essential Sanctuary, £30. A bath soak, a hand or body cream and a scented candle. The three-piece set that suits most people and most occasions.
• Signature Spa Retreat, £55. A scented candle, a bath soak, a body oil and a soft accessory, in a rigid box built to be kept. Our most-chosen set, and the one people buy twice — once as a gift, once for themselves.
• Deluxe Botanical Haven, £90. Natural soaps, a eucalyptus bundle, a candle, a body oil, in a wicker basket. For a significant occasion, or a household rather than a person.
• Ultimate Luxury Sanctuary Crate, £150. Candles, body oil, bath soak, soft furnishings, in a brass-fitted wicker crate. The largest thing we send.

2. A mystery Curated Collection, when the surprise is the point

The Bud at £22, The Bloom at £42 and The Bouquet at £74 are composed per order and draw on skincare, home essentials, stationery, home products and small treasures. You know the categories, the number of pieces and the typical contents value; you do not know the specific items. Every composition holds contents worth at least forty per cent more than the price.

3. Individual items from the Range, when you know what you want

Single products, chosen by you. Useful for replacing something a person already loves, for building a gift around one specific piece, or for buying for yourself, which a great many people do and nobody needs to justify.

Choosing, quickly

• Posting to someone else’s address: Mini Pocket Pamper, or The Bud.
• A general, safe, warm gift: Essential Sanctuary at £30.
• Something that should feel like an occasion: Signature Spa Retreat — the rigid box does a good deal of the work.
• A person who likes to be surprised: The Bloom.
• A person who very much does not: any fixed set, or a single item they can see.
• Someone with a shower and no bath: avoid the soak-led sets; build around soap, oil and a candle.
• Sensitive skin: unscented or lightly scented single items rather than a set, so you control every piece.

How we source it

Everything applied to skin comes from UK wholesale and from makers whose products are already on the GB market. That is a deliberate limit and it costs us range: it rules out a great deal of cheap imported bath and body, and it means we say no to products we like the look of. In exchange, every item has a responsible person behind it, a safety assessment, and a full ingredients list.

We curate. The makers make. We choose between them, write about them in our own words, and pack them by hand.

Practical details

• Gift boxes — Curated Collections and Spa Edit sets — ship free within the UK, always.
• Individual Range items ship free over £20; below that, delivery is £3.95.
• Dispatch is two to three working days.
• Fourteen days to change your mind.

What is not in Petalby Spa

Nothing ingestible — no teas, no supplements, no edibles — and no product that needs a medicinal claim to make sense of it. If a thing only works as a gift when someone tells you it treats something, it is not a thing we sell. Petalby Spa is about how something smells, feels and looks on a shelf. That is a smaller promise than the wellness aisle usually makes, and it has the advantage of being true.