Healing sanctuary · Beauty ritual · Founded by Larae
A 1920s Home. A Fourteen-Year 
A New Standard for Beauty.
The beauty and healing sanctuary that started with a single spray tan machine.
Founded by Larae Leeson in 2012 — a Licensed Florida Facial Specialist and the studio's lead educator. Today, The Bronze Lily is a six-suite beauty and healing sanctuary in Historic Kenwood and Grand Central, St. Petersburg.
- Founded 2012 · Larae Leeson — Licensed Florida Facial Specialist
- Trained at Lorraine's School of Esthetics · Advanced mentorship through the Esthetics Association
- Six service suites — Historic Kenwood and Grand Central, St. Petersburg
- Industry-first sweat-resistant spray tan formula in St. Petersburg
- Created the Root Room — a herbal tea pairing + foot soak ritual unique to the studio
- Founder + Lead Educator — The Bronze Lily Training Academy, three 1-on-1 certifications taught personally by Larae
Beauty + healing sanctuary · St. Petersburg, FL
The Bronze 
.
The Bronze Lily is a beauty and healing sanctuary in St. Petersburg, Florida, founded by Larae Leeson in 2012. Housed in a restored 1920s home in the Historic Kenwood and Grand Central neighborhood, The Bronze Lily offers professional spray tanning, Japanese head spa, lash extensions, clinical facials, bridal beauty, permanent jewelry, and teeth whitening — plus the Root Room, a herbal tea pairing and foot soak ritual unique to the studio. Larae is a Licensed Florida Facial Specialist and the founder and lead educator of The Bronze Lily Training Academy.
The Bronze Lily · the 1920s houseHer Journey
From Spray Tan 
to Wellness Visionary.
Larae was a college freshman when she walked away from her job at a tanning salon to start her own business. There was no studio, no team, no chair. There was a single spray tan machine, loaded into her car, and a list of clients who trusted her enough to let her come to them.
That was 2012. Fourteen years ago.
Back then, spray tanning was still new and still misunderstood. Most people either avoided it or accepted mediocre results. Larae chose different. She learned obsessively. She perfected her technique. She listened to her clients. And she built a reputation one person at a time.
The mobile machine became a shared suite. The shared suite became The Carriage House — a private Old Northeast rental property she ran post-Covid, a step she took to protect the work while the world reopened. The Carriage House inspired the studio she runs today: six service suites, a training academy that personally certifies every student, and the Root Room — a herbal tea pairing and foot soak ritual unique to the studio.
Larae is a Licensed Florida Facial Specialist. She's been the spray tan specialist for regional NPC competitors and bridal parties for more than a decade. She built the head spa practice from scratch. She trained on the Tricho-Analyzer. She personally selects every product line the studio stocks. In 2026, she opened the Root Room — a dedicated space for red light, herbal foot soaks, ceremonial tea, and the PODOPHARM foot treatment, designed in collaboration with herbalist Michael Fliight of Herbal Artists.
The clients she drove to in year one are still coming. Their friends are coming. Their families are coming. Because trust compounds.
What hasn't changed is the rule she started with: every client leaves better than they arrived.
Fourteen years · four spaces
The rooms have changed. The hands haven’t.
From one borrowed chair to two private suites of our own — the same artist behind every spray, the whole way here.
Photo · the shared suite
01
The shared suite
It started with a single chair in a shared salon — one spray gun, and a book of clients who kept coming back.
Photo · the carriage house
02
The carriage house
When the shutdowns lifted, I didn’t want clients sharing space with other businesses’ traffic. So we found a private carriage house in Old Northeast — a garden-and-fountain walk-up behind my parents’ place, made over into an all–Bronze Lily two-suite studio.
Photo · the 1st Avenue N building
03
Home on 1st Avenue N
Then our own building: a 1920s bungalow on 1st Avenue N downtown, grandfathered as commercial — across from Cappy’s Pizza, with our own private lot.
Photo · the Sarasota studio
04
The Sarasota chapter
We took the leap and opened a second studio in Sarasota. Two honest years in, we made the clear call to bring it all home — where the work is at its best.
Scroll the timeline →
05 · Today
Two private suites on 1st Avenue N.
Home base runs two spray suites now — the rooms you’ll walk into today, refined tan after tan.
Video · spray suite one
Video · spray suite two
The Brand
The Bronze — A Name with a Lineage.
Every name has a story. The Bronze Lily has two.
The first is family. Larae's mother used to own a business of her own — one whose name was built around a flower motif. When Larae founded her own studio, she went looking for a name that would carry that lineage forward. A flower. A nod. A through-line from her mother's path to her own.
The second is the work itself.
Bronze speaks to Larae's roots — spray tanning, that beautiful golden glow that makes skin look luminous and healthy. It's warmth. It's radiance. It's the confidence that comes from feeling good in your own skin.
Lily is about resilience and beauty emerging from unexpected places. Lilies grow in challenging conditions. They're elegant, intricate, and unmistakably powerful. They symbolize renewal, transformation, and the quiet strength it takes to bloom.
Together, The Bronze Lily is a promise: a place where you come to feel radiant, grounded, and renewed.
A nod to her mother. A name for the work. A home for what comes next.
Setting the Scene
The Space — A Home, 
The Bronze Lily lives in a 1920s home in Historic Kenwood and Grand Central, St. Petersburg. Not a strip mall. Not a med-spa suite in a commercial building. A home.
The building has character. Art lines the walls — thoughtfully curated pieces that make you feel like you're visiting someone's home, not checking into a clinic. Neon signs glow softly. A mural catches your eye. Inside, the rooms keep their original bones: high ceilings, plaster details, hardwood floors.
Each of the six service suites is built for a different kind of care. Two spray tan suites. Two head spa suites, side by side. The main treatment suite — our "fairy forest" green room on the ground floor — holds two lash stations, each with its own wax pot for brows. And the Root Room: dim, warm, and layered with herbs.
The interior is the brand's native environment — dark, moody, intentional. That's why the website is dark by default. The Bronze Lily isn't "dark mode" as a preference. It's the brand.
When you step inside, you don't feel like a client. You feel like you've discovered something special.
The Philosophy
The Rule — "
"
There's no category for this. Most beauty businesses choose: clinical OR intuitive, fast OR slow, beauty OR wellness.
The Bronze Lily chose And.
Craft and calm. Science and ceremony. Results and rest. Every service is run by a practitioner who was trained, licensed, mentored, and given the time to do the work properly.
The cancellation policy reflects this directly. It is the studio's most quoted sentence, and it is the philosophy in six words:
" Our artists make it our career to service you.
It isour hobby. "
Inclusive by design
Every body. 
Beauty is not one size. Every service at The Bronze Lily is calibrated to who is sitting in the chair — not what fits the chair best.
That means custom blending for vitiligo, mature scars, post-surgical and burn-recovery skin, mastectomy scars, and stretch marks. It means pregnancy-safe formulas and adjusted protocols for expecting clients. It means scalp-condition-specific treatments for psoriasis, alopecia, thinning hair, and sensitive scalps. It means a lash rehab program for clients with damaged or sensitivity-reactive lashes. It means free consultations and free patch tests for anyone who wants peace of mind before booking. And it means working with chemotherapy clients with their oncology team's clearance — carefully, around ports and scars, with our skincare-grade organic formula that one client's oncologist approved by reviewing the ingredient list.
This isn't an add-on. It's the standard. Larae's own healing journey, and the clients who have walked through the door over fourteen years, are why the studio runs this way.
If you have a condition or concern you're not sure we can accommodate — text us at (727) 218-7045. The conversation is the first appointment.
Meet the Frenchies
Meet and 
LilyPhase 3 · Mooi Social
Lily — the namesake-adjacent.
Lily is a white French bulldog with tan spots that look, Larae jokes, like she got into the spray tan solution. She didn't — but the name stuck. The Bronze Lily isn't named after her directly (the name predates her), but the brand's love of the playful, warm, imperfect bronzing moment lives in her.
LulaPhase 3 · Mooi Social · PEMF bed
Lula — the healer.
Lula is a tri-color merle French bulldog. She turned four in March. In December of 2025 she was diagnosed with stage 5 IVDD — a degenerative spinal condition that usually ends in surgery. Larae chose a different path: electromagnetic acupuncture, PEMF, cold laser, water therapy, physical therapy, Chinese herbs. Lula comes to the studio every day and rests on the PEMF bed in the back room. Deep pain sensation has returned. Mobility is slowly returning. She is quiet, living proof of the wellness philosophy the studio is built around.
Service Evolution
From One Spray Tan Machine to a 
Mobile Spray Tanning
A single spray tan machine loaded into her car. Larae went mobile after leaving the tanning salon as a college freshman to start her own business. The service that started everything.
Shared Salon Suite
Mobile became permanent. Larae moved into a shared salon suite — her first dedicated space for clients to come to her.
Lash Extensions + Clinical Facials
Lash extensions added early in the year — beauty that frames the face. Clinical facials followed at the end of the same year — skincare done as living-ecosystem care.
Spray Tan Training Academy
Launched at the end of 2019. The first cert Larae built — advanced airbrush, 1-on-1, taught personally.
Current Building — Historic Kenwood & Grand Central
After running The Carriage House as a private Old Northeast rental through Covid, Larae moved the studio into its current home — a six-suite sanctuary in Historic Kenwood and Grand Central, St. Petersburg.
Lash Training Academy + Permanent Jewelry
The Lash Training Academy launched — the second cert Larae built. Permanent jewelry added to the menu the same year — welded sterling and 14k gold-filled bracelets, anklets, and chains.
Japanese Head Spa
First true Japanese head spa in St. Petersburg. Built from scratch on the Tricho-Analyzer.
Head Spa Training Academy
The third cert Larae built — Japanese head spa fundamentals, machine work, product layering, and protocol design, taught 1-on-1.
The Root Room
A herbal tea pairing and foot soak ritual unique to the studio — PODOPHARM foot treatment, red light, and a curated tea menu. Designed in collaboration with herbalist Michael Fliight.
Inclusivity
Beauty Is For 
At The Bronze Lily, beauty and healing are the same thing. This is a space for every body. Every condition. Every story. We don't have restrictions. We have accommodations.
- Vitiligo. Our spray tanning services can help create visual uniformity and boost confidence in skin that society taught you to feel small in.
- Scars. Whether from surgery, injury, or time, we treat your skin with the respect and care it deserves.
- Scalp conditions. The Japanese head spa and our skincare treatments address conditions others overlook.
- Acne-prone skin. Our facials are customized to your skin's actual needs, not a one-size-fits-all menu.
- Larger bodies. Every treatment space accommodates you. No judgment. No discomfort. Just care.
- Mobility considerations. We make adjustments so you can access the same care, the same respect, the same transformation.
Five non-negotiables
What We 
- Beauty is nervous-system work. Every service is built to calm something, not just fix something.
- Craft is the deliverable. Anyone can stick a lash on. Not everyone can do it so the client's lashes still look beautiful six weeks later.
- Inclusivity means the work is customized. Skin tones, scalp conditions, sensitivities, pregnancies — customized, not default.
- Clean ingredients are the baseline. Biodynamic Oway, ONmacabim, JuliArt, Arete, Intelligent Nutrients, Simply Organic Beauty, our proprietary spray tan, ceremonial botanicals.
- The space matters. The rooms are designed the way the services are designed: one thing done well at a time.
Client Stories
Trusted by 
Four verified Google review excerpts. The full body of 306 reviews lives at our Google profile →
I loved the confidence my spray tan gave me on vacation! The fade has been even and I don’t look splotchy — a huge plus.
Pure relaxation from start to finish — the scalp massage alone was heavenly. We walked out feeling refreshed, stress-free, and spoiled in the best way.
The tan was natural and didn’t rub off on my dress, and my pre-wedding facial made a huge improvement on my skin. It really made me confident for my wedding day.
I’m new to the area and was fortunate to stumble upon The Bronze Lily. The ambience is amazing — it gets you feeling glamorous immediately. The services are always perfect, and I always leave feeling beautiful.
Plan your visit
Come 
The studio is in Historic Kenwood and Grand Central — a short ride from the Gulf beaches, downtown St. Pete hotels, and the St. Pete Pier. First-time visitors usually start with a head spa, a spray tan, or our 90-minute Relax & Detox combo. Whatever you book, you'll leave better than you arrived.
Open 7 days a week, 7 AM to 11 PM, by appointment.
Text or call (727) 218-7045 for same-day and last-minute requests.
Common Questions · St. Petersburg, FL
Frequently 
Who founded The Bronze Lily?
Larae Leeson. She opened the studio in 2012 — mobile, with a single spray tan machine loaded into her car after leaving a tanning salon as a college freshman. Fourteen years later, The Bronze Lily is a six-suite beauty and healing sanctuary in a restored 1920s home, plus a training academy and the Root Room botanical sanctuary.
Is Larae a licensed professional?
Yes. Larae is a Licensed Florida Facial Specialist with 14+ years of hands-on industry experience across spray tanning, Japanese head spa, lash extensions, and beauty business development.
Where is The Bronze Lily located?
2851 1st Avenue N, St. Petersburg, FL 33713 — in the Historic Kenwood and Grand Central neighborhood, in a restored 1920s home.
What makes the Root Room different from a spa?
The Root Room is a herbal tea pairing and foot soak ritual — not a traditional spa. It features the PODOPHARM foot treatment, red light, herbal foot soaks, and a curated ceremonial tea menu paired by herbalist Michael Fliight. The pairing is unique to The Bronze Lily.
Does The Bronze Lily train other beauty professionals?
Yes. The Bronze Lily Training Academy offers three 1-on-1 certifications: Advanced Airbrush Tanning, Japanese Head Spa, and Lash Extensions. Larae teaches every student personally.
What's the philosophy behind the cancellation policy?
Our artists make it our career to service you, it is not our hobby. Twenty-four hours' notice is required. Cancellations under 24 hours are 50% of service cost. No-shows, 15+ minutes late, or cancellations under 4 hours are 100%. Phone or text (727) 218-7045 are the only valid cancellation channels.
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Meet the team behind the work · Step into the Root Room · Plan your visit to St. Pete.