What’s the best type of outdoor spa for you? Here are some tips to help you decide.

If you’re planning a new swimming pool and installing a spa is part of the picture, you may want to combine the two. Adding an outdoor spa into the design of the pool is the best way to create visual symmetry, as the interior, colour and surrounds can all match. Great effects can be created by using wet edges on a spa that spills over into the pool.

What you choose will depend on your requirements, or maybe the requirements of the family. As well as looking good, the combined spa and pool can be a lot less fuss in some ways. Small children can play in these shallow, modest spas while older swimmers watch on from the pool. Complex freestanding spa units are generally an adults-only space.

It can be difficult to have separate heating systems for spas and pools when they’re combined, although more expensive heat pumps are able to control each body of water separately. If you are working from the one system, heating such a large body of water as a pool would take a lot longer and, by that rationale, more energy than an individual spa.

Swim spas are a meeting of worlds and considered by some to be the best choice of spa. Sold as complete units, there’s not much versatility with the fibreglass interior, but if you’re more interested in practicality, the swim spa has it all. With its current-like jets, you can get a vigorous swim out of a very small space. Adjust the jet for a therapeutic soak once you’re done and you’ve really got it all.

Hot tubs and standalone units are for the serious spa user. The main purpose of a hot tub is to improve general health and wellbeing. The jets gently massage the body, helping to relieve tension from exercise and stress. There is a lot of flexibility in the type of bubbles and intensity and style of the jets, which achieve different hydrotherapeutic effects.

Okay, so they’re big and bulky, but portable spas for the outdoors don’t have to be ugly. Many models have wooden exteriors than combine well with deck areas or gazebos. The interiors also come in a range of colours, from deep green to crystal white.

Bearing all of this in mind, take a look at your outdoor spa options before taking the (warm, therapeutic, luxurious) plunge.