Outdoor Saunas
Garden cabins and barrels, built to stand outside through a British winter. Where it stands usually decides more than which model you choose, so the footprint, the ridge height and the base each one needs come first.
Harvia Kuusi 180 Panorama: 4 Person Barrel Sauna
From £6,660.00- Up to 4 people, Ø220 × 180cm
- 40mm spruce barrel
- 8kW heater included
AIRA Outdoor Sauna: 4 to 6 Person Garden Sauna
From £23,860.50- 4 to 6 people, 201 × 274cm
- 55mm CLT walls
- 9kW heater included
EDEN Outdoor Sauna: 5 to 6 Person with Terrace
From £23,980.00- 5 to 6 people, 220 × 220cm plus terrace
- 55mm CLT walls
- Electric or wood fired
EMBA Outdoor Sauna: 2 Person Garden Sauna
From £14,758.00- 2 people, 151 × 143cm
- 55mm CLT walls
- 6kW heater included
URSA Outdoor Sauna: 3 to 4 Person Garden Sauna
From £21,572.00- 3 to 4 people, 270 × 201cm
- 55mm CLT walls
- Electric or wood fired
Barrel Sauna 250: 4 Person Outdoor Sauna with Balcony
From £6,944.00- 4 people, 205 × 250cm
- Thermo treated spruce
- Built on site in a day or two
Almost Heaven Princeton: 6 Person Barrel Sauna
£7,440.00- Four to six people
- 8kW
- 2.21m of room
Almost Heaven Pinnacle: 4 Person Barrel Sauna
£6,240.00- Two to four people
- 6kW
- western red cedar
Introduced gradually. A cabin appears here once we can tell you what it draws, how long it holds temperature with the door being opened, and who supplies a replacement element in year six.
How a sauna earns its placeThe window is the reason the heater is too small.
Saunas are sold on two numbers: how many people fit, and how many kilowatts the heater is rated at. Both are printed on every listing, and together they leave out the thing that decides whether the cabin gets hot.
The sizing rule itself is not secret. Harvia, who have been making heaters since 1950, publish it plainly: roughly one kilowatt of heater for every cubic metre of cabin. The part that gets left off is the correction that follows it. One square metre of glass, stone or any other uninsulated surface raises the requirement as much as adding 1.2 cubic metres of room. Uninsulated log walls carry a factor of 1.5.
So the panoramic window, which is the feature that sells a garden sauna and the reason anybody wants one at the bottom of the garden, is also the feature that quietly makes the specified heater undersized. Two square metres of glass on a nine cubic metre cabin is not a nine kilowatt requirement. It is closer to eleven. Cabins are routinely sold with the smaller number.
None of this is specialist knowledge. It is arithmetic anybody can do once somebody hands them the rule. We did not make these and we do not own a factory, which is what makes handing it over straightforward. Every sauna goes through the same three gates.
Three gates. All three, or it is not here.
The same three, in the same order. Most things stop at the second.
What the cabin is built from, how the heat is made, what it draws, and which component gives out first. If we cannot work out the heater requirement for your room from the dimensions and the glazing, we do not understand the product well enough to sell it.
Against a British garden in February rather than a heated indoor showroom. A heat-up time is a measurement taken somewhere, under conditions nobody states. Most products stop here, and usually not because they are bad. It is because the figure was never taken in the conditions you will use it in.
Warranty terms in writing, elements and controllers held in this country, and clarity about who commissions the electrical supply. The room containing a sauna heater is a special location under the Building Regulations, which changes who is allowed to do the work. Nothing reaches this page until somebody is on the hook for year six.
Five things that decide whether a sauna is worth owning.
None of them is how many people it seats.
- Whether the heater matches the room it is actually in. One kilowatt per cubic metre, then add 1.2 cubic metres for every square metre of glass or stone. We publish the corrected figure for the cabin as configured, not the rating on the box.
- Whether it holds the heat or only reaches it. Reaching temperature is a function of the heater. Staying there while a door opens on a wet evening is a function of the insulation, and it is the difference between a session and a wait. A six kilowatt cabin uses about four to five units getting hot and three to four holding it, so the second hour tells you more than the first.
- Which kind of heat you are buying. A traditional sauna runs at 80 to 100 degrees in dry air. An infrared cabin runs at 45 to 60. They share a safety standard and almost nothing else, and the long-running research sits on the hot one. We say which is which rather than letting the word cover both.
- What it asks of the house. A six kilowatt heater draws around 26 amps at 230 volts, which is well past a 13 amp plug, so it is a dedicated circuit and a certificate. A wood-fired stove asks for different things: a carbon monoxide alarm, a flue swept twice a year, and fuel that carries the Ready to Burn mark.
- Whether it is allowed where you want to put it. Within two metres of a boundary an outbuilding is capped at 2.5 metres tall, and a barrel or apex roof clears that easily. Wood-fired adds a second question, because a chimney on a garden building falls inside smoke control rules where they apply.
What to read before you shortlist anything.
The running cost gap, the smoke control rules, and the forty minutes before you get in. Written so you can rule one out.
02 Whether your space worksSeven questions on access, ground and height. It will tell you plainly when a garden sauna is the wrong answer.
03 The Tarnfell PrinciplesFive commitments governing what we list, what we write and who we work with. Public, so you can hold us to them.
04 Delivery, warranty and returnsWhat happens after the money changes hands, written down before it does.
We write this down as we go.
The buying guides as they are written, the comparisons once there is something to compare, and the reasoning whenever a sauna passes the gates or fails them. Occasional, and worth the room in an inbox.