The Standard Spa, Miami Beach

If you’re expecting The Standard Spa, Miami Beach to be a carbon copy of the LA Standards, you’re in for a bit of a surprise. Still intact is the Standard’s house brand of low-key luxury — itself enough to raise an eyebrow or two in shamelessly glam Miami Beach — and unique to this particular Standard are a few novel solutions to the problem of shoehorning another big-deal hotel into the already packed South Beach scene.

First, the hotel is located off the main drag, on the quiet and mostly residential Belle Isle, along the Venetian Causeway just short of Miami Beach proper. You can find yourself very much in the thick of it within minutes, but The Standard makes the most of its slight remove, such that it may furnish the kind of peace and tranquility that’s long since departed Collins Avenue. Well, relative peace and tranquility, anyway — The Standard’s typical guests are not exactly wallflowers, and there’s always something going on in the bar; but compared to South Beach proper, this is practically transcendental meditation.

Second, and certainly related, is the spa, not at all a given in The Standard’s universe. Here not only are you comfortably sequestered from all the ballyhoo on the beachfront, but you’re surrounded by guests in Standard-issue white bathrobes, participating in the communal bathhouse culture of the place and indulging in mud wraps, steam baths, and the occasional swim in the chlorine-free Sound Pool.

Accommodations are smart and stylish — not oversized or particularly decadent, but very much more than adequate given that it’s easily possible to spend four times as much elsewhere in town. The décor is familiarly modern, in whites and blonde woods, and the look is familiar as well, blending mid-century Miami modernism with Scandinavian furniture from the same period — a look that is back in style all round the world, but resonates that much more strongly so close to South Beach.

Please note: The Standard Spa, Miami Beach can only accommodate guests over the age of 18.