8 Luxury Beach Accessories To Up Your Vacation Game

Be honest. How much thought did you put into your last beach towel purchase? We’re willing to bet it was a case of picking the least garish option from a beachfront mini-mart full of souvenir fridge magnets, novelty lighters and bottle openers shaped like penises. It shouldn’t come as much of a shock to discover that there’s a better way of doing things.

Like everything else in your wardrobe, beach accessories deserve a bit of thought. Disposable novelty tat will soon find its way to the back of the cupboard, or, worse, the bin, and over the course of years and decades, the costs start to mount up. Our advice would be to invest in good stuff from the off.

The best luxury beach accessories will remain relevant long after you’ve returned from your trip. They should be understated enough to exist above the ebb and flow of trends, robust enough to withstand many years of use, and beautifully crafted to make you appreciate getting to use them again and again. Here are the items to consider.

Towel

RRL

Just because you can buy an Aston Villa beach towel for €10 and pick up a Magnum and a can of Fanta Limón at the same time doesn’t mean you should. While there’s nothing wrong with the latter two of those purchases, the first deserves deeper consideration.

A cheap towel might look half decent before the first wash, but its poor quality will soon reveal itself. After a few days of sun, sea and sand, you’ll be left with something whose texture is akin to an exterior doormat – not a particularly desirable quality from something designed to rub all over your skin. Spend more for soft, luxurious fabric that will hold its own over time. Check out Tekla Fabrics for some of our favourites.

Tote

Orlebar Brown

Traditionally, totes are some of the least glamorous members of the extended bag family. Inexpensive and simple, they’re only a few steps removed from carrying your belongings around in a plastic carrier bag. That said, you can get some rather special ones. Particularly those of the large beach bag variety.

Think thick fabric, premium details and lots of room for everything you might need on a day at the beach. HAY, Epperson Mountaineering, Drake’s and Orlebar Brown have some excellent options that tick all of those boxes and then some.

Beach Pillow

Hermes

Essential? Not exactly. But if you really want to up your beach game, nothing is going to hit quite like a beach pillow – not least a beach pillow from Loro Piana made from jacquard-woven cotton-denim. Forget scrunching up a T-shirt or fashioning a headrest from wet sand – once you go beach pillow, you won’t go back.

If Loro Piana is outside of your price range, fear not. HAY and Ferm Living both make excellent outdoor cushions that will gladly do the same job as their top-flight Italian counterpart. Or for something more packable, Snow Peak makes some great inflatable options.

Cooler

Yeti

Nothing kills a beach day quite like reaching into your bag for crisp, cold beer only to discover it’s reached the same temperature as the sand beneath your feet. A proper cooler solves that problem, keeping everything chilled for hours on end.

The best ones are built to last, with rugged insulation, sturdy hardware and enough capacity to justify carrying them in the first place. YETI remains the benchmark, with a huge range of boxes and bags in all different sizes and all colours of the rainbow. Not cheap, but worth the investment if beachlife luxury is the end goal.

Blanket

Pendleton

There are days when a towel is all you need, and there are days when you’ll quickly realise you should have brought something bigger. A blanket gives you room to spread out, keeps sand at arm’s length and creates a comfortable base for everything from impromptu picnics to afternoon naps.

Look for tightly woven cotton or lightweight recycled fabrics that shake clean easily and won’t become impossibly heavy after an afternoon by the sea. Pendleton’s iconic woven blankets are hard to beat, and they double up as throws to drape around the house long after the summer has come to an end.

Portable Speaker

Devialet

If you’re going to be ‘that guy’, you better make sure that the Bluetooth speaker is a good one at least. Some well-chosen tunes can really elevate a day by the sea, but that’s only true if the music isn’t croaking out of some 10-quid Temu potato that makes a Nokia 3310 ringtone sound like the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Our pick is Bang & Olufsen’s Beosound range. They look great, sound even better and come in a range of sizes depending on how seriously you take your beach parties. For an even bougier alternative, take a look at Devialet, a French luxury audio brand that makes some of the best (and most expensive) portable speakers around.

Bat & Ball

Frescobol Carioca

There comes a point during every beach day when lying still loses its appeal. That’s when a bat-and-ball set earns its keep.

Forget the lurid plastic versions from the tourist shop. Beautifully made wooden sets from the likes of Frescobol Carioca and Loro Piana elevate a simple game into something approaching a design object. They also happen to be far more satisfying to play with, which is fortunate because once someone suggests a quick rally, you’re unlikely to see much of your sun lounger again.

Parasol

Business & Pleasure Co.

Ironically, shade is often one of the most valuable luxuries on the beach, and the people collecting money for loungers and parasols know that. Solution: bring your own. A good one provides refuge from the midday sun, but also establishes a small patch of territory that you can claim as your own.

The best examples combine generous coverage with understated styling, using timber poles, canvas canopies and classic striped fabrics instead of loud colours and graphics. Business & Pleasure Co. has become something of a benchmark, producing beautifully made umbrellas that wouldn’t look out of place on the Côte d’Azur or the Cornish coast.

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