Beauty & Spas in Ansonia

At Shelton-Saxe Aesthetics, the road to supple skin is paved with customized masks, nourishing vitamins, and repairing enzymes. Andrea Ward, the center’s aesthetician, spent eight years at the luxurious Bellagio hotel and spa in Las Vegas creating in-depth facials for guests. Here, she offers high-end hospitality with a clinical edge, customizing treatments to each client's skin type regardless of whether she’s using natural enzymes to repair past skin damage or aromatherapy oils to enliven the senses. Aside from the extensive menu of facials, Shelton-Saxe Aesthetics offers therapeutic massage and waxing services.

You open your eyes. The atmosphere is relaxing, sterile. Whiteness extends into infinity. You're either at Skin and Beauty Lounge or in prison with THX 1138. Luckily for you and for your skin, it's the former.

Linda Martinez, a medical aesthetician with 30 years of skincare experience, is the mastermind behind the new-concept spa. Her life-affirming attitude creates a fun and friendly environment amid the contemporary furnishings and amenities, which include a cupcake bar stocked with complimentary treats. In private treatment rooms, the spa's professionals administer expert services, such as custom facials, med-spa treatments, waxing services, and spray-tanning sessions. They encourage guests to bring their personal iPods or MP3 players—treatment rooms are equipped with docks and speakers—to further customize and enhance their experience.

Winner of a 2011 Best of Monroe Award by the US Commerce Association, Salon DARIN refreshes stale styles for men and women. The staff deals in hair’s many dimensions, sprucing up color, updating texture with smoothing treatments, and shaping styles to compliment clients’ lifestyles. Through each service, stylists douse hair in professional products such as Moroccanoil, which washes away traces of residue and protects individual strands with essential-oil ingredients.

But the salon’s blue walls bear witness to more than just hair clippings abandoning heads for more lucrative work within a trashcan. Aestheticians refresh faces with Plantogen products or wax away unwanted hair, and massage therapists usurp strained muscles in private treatment rooms.

Owner and stylist Frank Sisbarro brings 25 years of experience to the helm of Flip Salon and Boutique, where highly trained cosmetologists wield Redken products while clipping and coloring manes to meet each client's personal specifications and style. Smoothing keratin treatments, coloring services, and hair-tinsel extensions transform ho-hum hair into dynamic ’dos, as women, men, and children lounge amid the salon’s square mirrors and framed black-and-white prints. The staff artistically applies Mehron makeup to soon-to-be-rosy cheeks and lids, and custom Jon Renau wigs frame faces or attach to teddy bears for more realistic tea parties.

The experienced aestheticians at Vaira's European Holistic Skin Care pamper the epidermis with European spa treatments and a natural harvest of soothing herbs and scrubs. Exfoliating facial creams brim with natural ingredients such as collagen, essential oils, and vitamin C enzymes, all of which team up to imbue skin with the softness and sleekness of a laminated teddy bear. Aromatherapy calms the senses as aestheticians buff away blemishes and expired skin cells during herbal body treatments and revitalizing sea-salt scrubs. Vaira's uses HydraFacial products to resurface and tighten skin with a multi-step process.