Glass saunas for rooms that deserve a view, from one seat to twelve

A glass sauna is a piece of architecture before it is a piece of equipment. The glass keeps a 4 m² cabin from reading as a box in a 12 m² room, shows guests that the heat is under control, and lets the lit cedar do the work of a lamp. The price of that honesty is heat: glass loses it faster than insulated timber, and in the Gulf the room around the cabin is usually air-conditioned. Both facts shape how we build.

One wall or two

• One glass wall with the door. The cleanest choice for a wall recess, a plant-room corridor or a gym: the glass faces the room, the other three sides are insulated timber. Cheaper, and easier to keep private.
• Two glass walls at a corner. Our signature: the cabin sits in a room corner or on a terrace and shows two faces. It needs a bigger heater (about 12 kW for four seats instead of 8) and a good view of what it faces, so we ask what is outside the glass before we draw it.
• A glass door only. An economy variant for tight spaces. It is not our preference and we say so in the layout.

Sizes, heaters and ranges

Heaters follow a plain rule: about 1 kW for every cubic metre of cabin, then a step up for glass, tall ceilings and tiled or stone walls that are not insulated. The heater in each row is for a cabin with one glass wall; a second glass wall steps it up, to about 12 kW for four seats and 16 kW for six. From 8 kW up the supply is three-phase. Heater loads are electrical loads: a 15 kW heater on a 400 V three-phase supply draws about 22 A per phase, which your MEP consultant needs before the electrical room is sized.

What glass does to the heat balance

Single toughened glass passes roughly ten times as much heat per square metre as an insulated timber wall. As an order of magnitude, a 2.0 × 2.2 m glass front with 90 °C inside and 24 °C outside leaks about 1.7 kW continuously (a textbook U-value near 5.8 W/m²K × 4.4 m² × 66 K), before the benches are counted. That is why a glass cabin gets a larger heater than a closed one, why the glass is kept to the faces that earn it, and why the plant for the room's air-conditioning has to know the cabin exists. Glass-front saunas in desert heat works the sums for sunlit terraces.

Timber, benches, and the small things

Cabins are clad in red cedar or thermo-aspen, with benches in the same species at two levels. Benches and backrests in the same species come as standard; warm LED bench and cove lighting, an aroma kit with bucket, ladle and thermometer, and a pergola outside are listed extras. The layout also fixes the ventilation: a low air inlet and a high outlet, so the cabin breathes without drawing from the room's cooled air faster than it can be replaced.

Rooms and decks where the glass goes

Villas and compounds (villas and compounds), hotel spas, club recovery rooms and residential towers all get the same cabin, drawn to their room. For a home project start at home suites; for a hotel, club or clinic start at business. In Riyadh the briefs we expect are villa wellness rooms, rooftop terraces and tower amenity floors (see Riyadh).