Dressed in a pastel striped sundress, 32-year-old Brittany Almeroth holds a white-patterned umbrella while patiently sitting on the front porch of Tucson’s newest skincare space — the Daydream Skincare Cottage — as she waits for the day’s clients to arrive for their appointments.
The porch, adorned with a small wooden desk and a bar cart filled with fresh strawberry water, is where you can find Almeroth, an esthetician and the owner of the skincare cottage, when the Tucson weather is sunny and breezy.
As two of the clients arrive for their afternoon appointments, she cheerfully greets them, checks them in and offers refreshments before they walk through a small vine archway surrounding the front door and head inside the mystical cottage for skincare services.
But the outside of the tiny white “cottage” near Historic Fourth Avenue and the University of Arizona is only a taste of the fairytale-like spa that awaits clients on the inside.
After six years of dreaming about opening up her own skincare space and a year of completely restoring, renovating and converting a 117-year-old historic home into a skincare haven, the Daydream Skincare Cottage officially opened its doors at 621 N. Sixth Ave. on March 14.
“It's been an emotional couple of days because this has been my dream for six years,” Almeroth said a few days after opening. “And I've been saving and working toward it.”
Esthetician and owner of the Daydream Skincare Cottage, Brittany Almeroth, poses with the glass jar that inspired the decor of the skincare space. She found the jar at a local thrift store.
On the inside of the skincare cottage, the walls are painted in cotton candy shades of pastel pink, purple, green and blue. The design was inspired by a small color-shifting glass jar that Almeroth picked up from the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store on South Sixth Avenue. The jar is now used as a small vase and proudly sits on a shelf in one of the spa rooms.
A small tarnished coin that reads “Arizona State Tax Commission” sits in a golden frame on a counter in the bathroom. Almeroth found the 100-year-old coin hidden underneath the floorboards of the cottage during the renovation. She says the coin is “a very cool part of Tucson’s history.”
In addition to the homage to Tucson’s past and the soft pastel paint, the cottage’s three rooms are filled with plants, crystals and skincare products to help Tucsonans feel confident in their skin.
Some skincare treatments include facials, peels, microneedling and dermaplaning, an exfoliating treatment that safely removes dead skin and peach fuzz with a blade. Dermaplaning is the spa’s most popular treatment and accounts for nearly 80% of their appointments.
Daydream Skincare Cottage also offers an acne-clearing treatment program using Face Reality Skincare that has a 90% success rate, according to Almeroth.
The inside of another spa room at the Daydream Skincare Cottage, located at 621 N. Sixth Ave. in Tucson.
If you’re looking for something more unique, the cottage offers a chakra-balancing facial that includes a quiz to help find which chakra needs to be opened, a full facial featuring water that’s been charged under a full moon, crystal therapy, aromatherapy, pressure points and an upper body massage.
Skincare treatments and services at the cottage range between $60 to $270.
“I just want this to be such a fun, safe spot for women,” Almeroth says. “Because we are constantly taking care of everybody and putting ourselves last. And when they come here, they get one hour where no one asks anything of them. No one interrupts them. No one's calling. They just get one hour of us caring for them. And so I want this to become like the place where Tucson women want to go to feel better.”
A Georgia peach finds her way to Tucson 🍑
Daydream Skincare Cottage owner Brittany Almeroth poses for a photo in front of the skincare haven in Tucson on March 17, 2022.
Before Almeroth’s deep dive into the world of skincare, she was raised in Savannah, Georgia, in what she calls a religious cult.
“My family actually made me drop out of high school,” she says. “Because women don't become anything, they just live to serve the men. So at 16, I dropped out of high school.”
Soon after, she moved to Tucson for a “cute boy” who became her husband at 18 and the Old Pueblo has been her home for almost 15 years.
During her time in Tucson, she met Hannah Lang, a fellow esthetician who Almeroth considers a best friend and mentor. When Lang opened her own beauty space, SELAH, Almeroth opted to rent rooms at Lang’s space to perform skincare treatments on her clients as "Skincare at Selah."
Beyond the skincare, as Almeroth experienced PTSD from her upbringing in Georgia she initially turned to what she loved most: making women feel stress-free. So, she started an esthetician meme account on Instagram called Your Esty Bestie that features funny memes about estheticians and clients. The account recently hit 100,000 followers.
Although the meme page has helped her cope, Almeroth decided to take on a different role when she opened the Daydream Skincare Cottage’s doors — to be a mentor to the four estheticians who work there, just as Lang was to her several years ago.
“I wasn't sure if I would share it,” Almeroth says of her Georgia upbringing. “But it's truly a huge part of why I even own this. The skincare is secondary, the helping women is primary.”
‘I've been daydreaming about this place for a very long time.’ 💭
Both Almeroth and Lang made the move from their previous location at 510 N. Seventh Ave. to their new locations on North Sixth Avenue due to the Downtown Links construction that Almeroth says ripped up their previous parking lot, making it difficult for clients to access the building.
In true bestie fashion, the Daydream Skincare Cottage and the new SELAH location are right next door to each other in what Lang calls “the beauty block.”
“My dream was to start SELAH in my own space,” Lang says. “So I've always supported people who've wanted to branch out that way. And we've known for a long time that this was just, like, in Brittany’s soul to do, so we're thrilled and I think we're more thrilled that we get to be neighbors.”
For Almeroth, she says she’s “been daydreaming about this place for a very long time,” which was the inspiration behind the cottage's name because it’s “not always a bad thing” to daydream.
The Daydream Skincare Cottage features a small shop where clients can stock up on skincare goodies.
Although the cottage is her daydream, she also hopes the calming environment and relaxing skincare treatments can make Tucsonans feel like they’re in a daydream (even if it’s only for an hour or two).
With all of her focus on surviving the challenges of running a business during COVID-19 and getting the new cottage up and running, she hasn’t had much time to think about what’s next for the mystical cottage. But she says she aspires to open a few more cottages around the city in the future to be “more accessible to everybody in Tucson.”
“They (Tucsonans) deserve it,” Almeroth says. “You deserve one hour to yourself. You don't have to feel guilty. You don't have to feel like you're lazy for taking an hour off of work and all your responsibilities. You're worth it.”
