It's a trend the partners at Louis Christian Wayne Robert saw coming.

"We're all in our 40s," said Louis Christian Tedeschi. " All we had to do is look in the mirror."

Tedeschi and partners Wayne Lucarini and Robert Guerriero recently quadrupled the size of their operation at Village Walk shopping center here to 15,000 square feet. Gone are the Renaissance-inspired crystal chandeliers and pulsing music synonymous with the salon. In are the cool, white marble and crisp wood surfaces of a Swiss spa.

"Everything is very clinical, very antiseptic," said Maria Guerriero, salon manager, as well as wife of Robert and sister of Wayne.

Still, sanitary does not mean Spartan. Silver, chenille-covered couches receive visitors to the tranquil meditation center, nurtured not only by New Age music but by lemon- scented water and fresh fruit. Robes are baby-soft terry cloth on the inside and a microfiber reminiscent of suede on the outside.

"I feel like I'm in New York!" trilled longtime patron Barbara Kemenosh of Haddonfield. "This is fabulous!"

A bevy of 100 employees are poised to do the bidding of patrons, including a discreet cleaning staff of six who swoop in to swish toilets after every flush. The restrooms sparkle with Venetian glass mirrors and stainless steel basins. Even the women booking appointments in the bustling call room sit on desk chairs trimmed in opulent bullion fringe.

Observers say it's proof positive age hath its privilege - or at least middle age does.

"The baby boomers are pushing the spa industry," said Eileen Fox, communications director for SpaWish.com, a cyber center for buying spa gift certificates. "They want to look and feel younger – and they have money."

But who has the time to closet oneself away at a fat farm for a week? Thus, the proliferation of day spas, where one can get a mini lift in a matter of hours.

Hannelore Leazy, executive director of the Day Spa Association based in New York City, says the boom began in the 1990s. Although no one is keeping precise count, she projects 30 percent of the 11,000 skin-care centers in America will begin offering spa services within the next decade.

Dr. Thomas Leach, a plastic surgeon, operates symbiotic businesses, the Princeton Center for Plastic Surgery and Spa Therapia. Clients routinely patronize both.

"There are a lot of things our spa can do for our patients after surgery," he said. "For example, deep tissue massage can reduce the pain after liposuction."

In the next few months, Dr. Eric Bernstein, a plastic surgeon from Voorhees, will offer wrinkle reducers at Louis Christian, such as laser treatments and injections of dermalogen, a skin plumper, and botoxin, a poison that temporarily paralyzes the muscles that furrow brows.

Anthony Rossano brought a plastic surgeon on board last year at Bernard's Hair Design & Spa on Springdale Road. He, too, is incorporating a day spa into his operation, renovating a 5,000-square-foot storefront vacated by Blockbuster Video in the Shoppes at Holly Ravine.

"We believe there is a great marriage between beauty and medicine," he said.

Although his staff will still style tresses, Rossano is is dropping any reference to hair in the title. When he opens his sleek new shop on Aug. 1, it will be as Bernard's Salon & Medi-Day Spa.

An admirer of the business model espoused by ultra- convenient Commerce Bank, Rossano recently initiated a seven-day-a-week schedule at Bernard's, with hours until midnight on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. He'll bring that philosophy with him to his new digs, along with a sophisticated decor not unlike a hip restaurant - rich mahogany woods against luminous white walls.

He expects to bolster his current staff of 75 to 125 after the transition and to sell services in packages, such as a massage, pedicure and manicure for $95. Rossano is so confident in his model, he plans to ultimately launch the concept as a nationwide franchise.

Louis Christian is heading toward a seven-day-a-week schedule, as well. It has enough space to pay tribute to its traditional business with 24 cutting stations, 20 color chairs and 12 manicure tables.

And there's plenty of room for the new services Maria Guerriero researched on fact-finding trips to Europe and during two years of weekly meetings with an architect in New York.

"I studied the Lucerne Palace and Spa in Switzerland," she said. "Our spa is much nicer."

Guerriero is still sweating the details, stopping to admire the petals of fresh lilies sharing an Asian-inspired vase with miniature bamboo and ornamental bananas. In the laundry room, where washers imported from Germany spin nonstop, she frets the towels that just arrived from the supplier are the wrong shade of gray.

"They're supposed to be charcoal," she said.

For clients, freedom from work-day worry is part of the spa experience, washed away like a facial mask. Among the amenities at Louis Christian is a Vichy shower, where patrons are scrubbed with exfoliating salts for $60, or packed with moor mud ($85) or wrapped in seaweed ($115). The "soft pack" is a $100 treatment in a heated water bed designed to pamper the skin with vitamins.

Tedeschi acknowledges the transition from a high-energy salon to a bastion of tranquility was jarring for some patrons and staff. But they are adjusting - soothed, he hopes, by the calm surroundings.

"But it's something we we needed to do to grow," he said. "It allows our spa to go to the next level."