The Secrets of Finnish Sauna Design

A Handbook for Experience-Driven Sauna DesignFor Builders of Rustic Sauna Cabins and Designers of Contemporary Apartment Saunas

Are you planning a new sauna, renovating an old one, or just dreaming? Do yourself a favor. Save your sauna project and read this wonderfully illustrated book about the design of authentic Finnish saunas!New research has identified Finnish sauna bathing as a source of numerous health benefits. To enjoy these effects, one needs a proper Finnish sauna. This book presents the collective wisdom accumulated by Finnish sauna builders, designers, and researchers across centuries, enabling anyone, anywhere, to design a pleasant bath house for family and friend to enjoy. This book provides answers to three major questions:

What is a Finnish sauna?What you should require from its design?How to design a Finnish sauna in detail?

The book covers all aspects needed to design a functional, healthy, and delightful sauna, from heating and air quality to interior design. It instructs the reader how to master both tangible and intangible, visible and invisible elements of a sauna. The book puts a special emphasis on the sauna experience, living up to the belief that short-term satisfaction is the first step towards long-term health benefits. It features examples of contemporary Finnish sauna design and outlines why a true sauna experience is so much more than merely ‘a hot room’.

Author Dr. Lassi A Liikkanen (Aalto University) is a designer and scholar. The book is based on five years of intensive research and interviews of key Finnish sauna experts. For his sauna-focused website at Saunologia.fi, he has authored over two hundred articles. His academic accomplishments include nearly one hundred peer-reviewed papers, the latest of those around sauna bathing!

Lassi Liikkanen knows good sauna design. He also knows how critical good design is to enjoying the authentic Finnish bathing experience. I enthusiastically support this effort to share his special knowledge and sauna wisdom with the world.
Mikkel Aaland, author of Sweat, and host of the documentary series, Perfect Sweat.

There is a sauna boom in North America. More and more people are finding the rejuvenating qualities of sauna bathing. For those, who want to learn more of a fulfilling sauna design and the pieces that it consists of, Lassi’s book is a great information source. Reading this book will help you take the sauna to the next, authentic, level.
Eero Kilpi, Ph.D., President, The North American Sauna Society