Sauna, Hammam and Steam Room Build Notes by Sauna Dekor

Private villa sauna with a pitched ceiling, Istanbul — the full set of photographs from this room . Almost everyone specifying a residential sauna starts at the wrong end. Brand first, then cabin size, then timber species, and heat type last — by which point the decision has already been made for them by whatever the shortlist happened to sell, or by an electrical design that was frozen two months earlier. The decisions have a correct order, and it is roughly the reverse of how the market presents them. What follows is that order, written by the people who get called back when it was ignored. Some disclosure before the advice, because it is relevant. Sauna Dekor Spa Solutions manufactures saunas — we run our own joinery workshop in Istanbul, we have done since 1987, and this is our fortieth year. We are also the contractor that installs them, in villas, branded residences and hotel projects across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Türkiye, and in more than 35 countries in total. So w...

Snow rooms and salt rooms are the two rooms in a hotel spa most likely to be bought from the wrong kind of company. Both look, in a moodboard, like finishes. Neither one is. A snow room is a refrigeration plant wrapped in a cold-store envelope. A salt room is a hygroscopic, mildly corrosive material assembly with its own air handling. When they are procured as decoration, they fail as engineering — and they fail slowly, eighteen months after handover, which is exactly when nobody wants to open a wall. This article is about how the two rooms are actually built and how to tell, in a tender interview, whether the company in front of you manufactures them or resells them. It makes no claims about health effects of any kind. Everything below is construction, plant and interface. Why these two rooms get specified badly In most hotel spa packages the wet rooms carry a real specification. The sauna has a heater kW figure, a bench layout and a ventilation rate. The steam room has a ge...

Short answer: an experience shower is a ceiling-recessed plumbing and control assembly, not a fitting you hang on a wall. A single hotel-grade station needs a 150 mm ceiling recess, a flat wall behind it for the side jets, at least 25 L/min at 3 bar dynamic pressure, its own floor drain and a thermostatic valve, plus a control unit of roughly 525 × 500 × 150 mm somewhere dry. On a North American hotel spa we priced this year, the available ceiling void was 150 mm — exactly the recess depth, before any pipework. That is the clash that decides the job. Experience showers — adventure showers, sensation showers, whichever term the consultant used — are the cheapest room in a thermal suite and the one most likely to arrive on site unbuildable. They are drawn as a symbol on the reflected ceiling plan. They are procured as a fitting. They are, in fact, a ceiling assembly with a services zone above it and a drainage strategy below it. Sauna Dekor has manufactured and installed spa wet ar...