Review: Voya Lazy Days Seaweed Bath

Disclosure: PR sample

Voya are an Irish company who make products that harness the goodness of seaweed.  The Lazy Days product is a sort of home spa treatment, which uses seaweed to soothe and condition the skin.  And when I say "uses seaweed", I don't mean extract of seaweed, oh no.  The product is simply a bag of dried seaweed (plus some sea salts) which you rehydrate in a hot bath.

Having been slightly scared by the caveat on the box that the bag might contain sand, shell fragments, or indeed small crustaceans (!), I plopped the bag into a hot bath.  I'll admit that this isn't the nicest looking product.  A bag of seaweed is going to look pretty disgusting floating around in your bath, and if the aesthetic of a home spa treatment is important to you, this is probably one to skip.  If you're a lover of the sea, though, and can look past the trailing green stuff, you're in for a real treat: once thrown in the bath and rehydrated, this product definitely recreates the scent of the sea.  Salty, tangy, seaweedy and slightly sour, I found it very comforting - with the added bonus that it smells entirely authentic (unsurprisingly); no chemical scents here.

So, scent and appearance aside, what's the point of bathing with a bag of seaweed?  The instructions say that the gel released by the rehydrated seaweed has conditioning and soothing properties, and has been known to help with anti-ageing and cellulite too.  I can't really comment on the anti-ageing and cellulite claims, but I can definitely attest to the soothing properties of the seaweed.

Having squished the bag of seaweed under my feet to ensure that the maximum amount of gel was released, I found that it turned the water incredibly silky.  Silkier than any bath oil I've ever tried.  This is a strange sensation to describe; suffice to say that the water felt like it was gliding over my skin rather than running over it, and that it felt so lovely that I couldn't stop taking handfuls of water and running them down my shoulders.

I emerged from the bath feeling very relaxed.  The persistent rash I've had on my ring finger was significantly less red and itchy after my bath, and my dry heels felt smoother and softer.  While my skin didn't feel obviously more moisturised or coated, it did feel calm and happy.  I'd guess that this would be an excellent treatment bath for sensitive or irritated skin; while I'm not sure that my generally fairly hardy skin will require it very often, I'll definitely repurchase should I get sunburned or develop an itchy rash.

If you'd like to try a seaweed bath out for yourself, you can buy Lazy Days directly from Voya, where it will cost you a fairly reasonable €16.00, which works out at about £13.  It's not billed as a single use product; Voya say you can allow it to dry out again and reuse it within three days, which I unfortunately wasn't able to do thanks to my husband leaving it in the bath while he had his morning shower and re-wetting it!


What do you think?  Would you laze in a bath of seaweed?