Sauna, Hammam and Steam Room Build Notes by Sauna Dekor

Short answer: A hammam is lined in stone that stays wet and warm for hours a day, so the choice is made on four numbers: water absorption (ASTM C503 allows up to 0.20 % for marble, ASTM C615 up to 0.40 % for granite), slip resistance on the floor (a pendulum value of 36 or more), resistance to the acid in descalers, and weight, about 81 kg/m² for a 30 mm marble floor. Different surfaces in the same hammam get different answers. Updated: 30 September 2026 AI-generated illustration (Nano Banana 2), not a photograph of a built project. This note goes surface by surface through a hotel or villa hammam: the walls, the floor, the benches, the heated central platform (göbek taşı), the basins (kurna) and the lit feature panels. For each one it gives the property that decides the stone and the figure behind it. The room it describes runs its air at 40–50 °C, the range we publish for a Turkish hammam. The heated marble platform is a separate surface with its own figure: we design its t...

Short answer: a sauna room is sized from its benches, not from the floor area left over in the plan. Allow 600 mm of bench per person, keep the upper bench 1,100 to 1,200 mm below the ceiling, and hold the ceiling between 2,100 and 2,300 mm. The room volume those numbers produce is what the heater is chosen for. Updated: 29 September 2026. This note works through a sauna room for a villa or a hotel spa in the Gulf, in the order the drawing is made. Every figure is either read from a manufacturer's own document, Harvia's installation manual and bench guide and Thermory's sauna design guide, or worked out on the page. Which type of sauna to build is a separate question, covered in our guide to sauna room types ; this one is about size and layout. One long bench, lit from underneath. Its length, not the floor area, is what decides how many people the sauna room seats. How big should a sauna room be? As big as its benches plus the space to reach them. At 600 mm per pe...

Short answer: a sauna glass door is a factory-made kit of 8 mm thermally toughened glass in a timber frame. It opens outward, has no lock, and its pane weighs 23 to 34 kg across the standard sizes. For heater sizing, Harvia adds 1.2 m3 of room volume for every square metre of glass. Updated: 24 September 2026. Every figure below is either read from a manufacturer's own document or worked out on the page. The glass maker we use and quote throughout is Andres Glass Solutions of Tallinn, Estonia. The heater rule comes from Harvia's installation manual, and the glass standard is EN 12150-1. A sauna glass door and glass front change what the door weighs, what the heater has to supply and how the room is cleaned. AI-generated illustration, not a photograph of a built project. What is a sauna glass door actually made of? A clear pane of 8 mm tempered glass, hung on two hinges in a timber frame. On the Andres Light Premium the frame section is 42 × 92 mm finger-jointed timber...

Short answer: a hammam design is a room program before it is a picture. Five rooms in a fixed order, about 8.0 m2 of suite floor per bather, a heated stone roughly 2.41 m across, 900 mm of circulation all the way round it, and a measured temperature step from each room to the next. This note was written in September 2026. Everything below is worked out in that order, and each hammam design figure is either arithmetic set out on the page or a published constant. We give areas in m2, volumes in m3, clear dimensions in mm and temperatures in °C, because those are the four units a hammam plan is actually drawn in. The finishes are the last decision. The room programme behind them is the first. What is a hammam design, room by room? Five rooms in a fixed order: a cool dressing hall, a warm room, a hot room built around the heated stone, one or two private halvet cells, and a resting room. On our own drawings a full suite runs about 120 m2 for 15 bathers, with 6 m2 of plant behind ...