This page used to be a list of reasons to choose us. That is not what someone comparing manufacturers needs, so we have rewritten it as the checklist we would want a client to run us through. It applies to any supplier, including this one.

For the record on which side of the table this is written from: Sauna Dekor manufactures saunas, steam rooms and hammams in Istanbul and installs them turnkey, since 1987 and in more than 35 countries, with the bulk of the work in the Gulf. Every question below applies to us as much as to whoever else you are comparing.

If you are trying to decide between named brands rather than evaluate a supplier, start with our honest comparison of the major sauna brands — who owns whom, and what each is actually good at.

First, decide which of three things you are buying

Most bad sauna procurement starts here, because the three are priced and warranted completely differently.

1. A prefabricated cabin. A boxed product in a standard size, factory-assembled, one warranty covering the whole thing. Fastest, lowest execution risk, no flexibility on dimensions.
2. A custom-built room. Made to the space, matched to the surrounding architecture, any geometry. Quality depends entirely on who builds it, because there is no factory QC behind it.
3. A heater and controls only. You or your contractor build the room; the manufacturer supplies the appliance. Common on projects where a joinery package already exists.

A supplier who does not ask which of these you want within the first two questions is selling, not specifying.

The twelve questions

1. Is the heater sized against the real room, or the catalogue?

Roughly 1 kW per cubic metre for a well-insulated cabin, then add substantially for exposed glass, stone walls and uninsulated surfaces. Catalogue maximums assume a fully insulated timber box. An undersized heater running permanently at full output is the single most common failure we are called in to fix.

2. Is it rated for continuous duty?

A hotel sauna runs twelve to sixteen hours a day. Domestic-rated heaters and contactors do not survive that regardless of brand. Ask for the duty rating in writing, not the marketing category.

3. Where is the nearest stocked spare part?

Elements, contactors, sensors and door hinges are consumables on a commercial sauna. In the Gulf and Africa this question eliminates several otherwise-excellent European brands, because a four-week wait for an element means a room out of service for a month.

4. What timber, and how is it graded?

Ask for the species and the grade, not just “Nordic spruce”. Knot-free clear grades cost more and behave better; the visual difference at handover is obvious and the movement over five years is not. Thermally modified timber and abachi/ayous behave differently again — each has a place, and a supplier should be able to say why they proposed one.

5. What is the ventilation design?

Not a product question, and it determines whether the room is pleasant more than the heater does. There should be a supply low near the heater and an extract diagonally opposite, with a stated air-change rate. If the answer is a shrug or “we leave a gap under the door”, keep looking.

6. Who is responsible for the interfaces?

Waterproofing, floor falls, drainage, the electrical supply, the door threshold and the junction with adjoining finishes. On most disputed sauna projects the cabin is fine and one of these interfaces is not. Get the scope split written down before contract.

7. What certification comes with it?

CE marking on the heater and controls as a minimum, plus a declaration of conformity you can hand to a consultant. For hotel work in the Gulf you will also be asked for material approvals, fire performance data for the linings, and often an authority submittal package. Ask whether the supplier has produced one before.

8. What is the warranty, and on what exactly?

Separate the heater warranty (usually the appliance manufacturer’s) from the cabin warranty (the builder’s) from the labour. A “two-year warranty” that covers only the heater on a custom room leaves the expensive part uncovered.

9. What are the real lead times, split by stage?

Design and approvals, manufacturing, shipping, site installation, commissioning. A single headline number hides where the risk is. Shipping to the Middle East and Africa is where most programmes slip.

10. Who installs it, and who pays for their travel?

Factory installation crews, local subcontractors and “supply only” are three different prices. On international projects, flights, visas and accommodation for the installation team are a real line item and are frequently left ambiguous.

11. Can they show a comparable completed project?

Not a rendering — a photograph of a handed-over room of similar size, use and climate, ideally with a reference you can call. A supplier with fifty domestic cabins behind them is not evidence for a 400 m² hotel spa.

12. What does the payment schedule say about their confidence?

A schedule weighted heavily to the front loads all the risk onto you. Our own standard is 20% on order, 20% on drawing approval, 55% before dispatch and 5% after commissioning — the last tranche exists precisely so there is money on the table when the snag list is written. Any structure with a meaningful retention after commissioning is a reasonable one.

Red flags

• A quotation with no kW rating, no timber species and no scope split.
• Heater sizing that matches the catalogue maximum rather than the room volume.
• No answer on ventilation.
• A price that is a single lump with no breakdown between cabin, heater, controls, glass and installation.
• Photographs that are all renders.
• Willingness to skip drawing approval to save two weeks. Those two weeks are where errors get caught.

Residential and commercial are two different procurements

The twelve questions apply to both, but they weigh differently. A residential cabin is
bought once and used by a handful of people; the decisions that matter are footprint, bench
ergonomics for the actual household, door sealing and quiet operation. A commercial cabin is
an operating asset: it runs twelve to sixteen hours a day, its benches are sat on by thousands
of people a year, and downtime costs revenue. That changes the specification — reinforced
bench structures, anti-warp profiles, continuous-duty heaters sized for peak hours rather than
average, zonal control so one room can be taken out of service without closing the floor, and
service access that does not require dismantling the room.

Programme — where the weeks actually go

Ask any supplier to split the programme by stage rather than quote a single headline number.
A realistic split looks like this, and it makes clear that the long poles are approvals and
shipping, not carpentry.

• Brief and feasibility, 1–2 weeks. Site survey, heat load, ventilation strategy, constraints.
• Design and engineering, 2–6 weeks. Drawings, selections, MEP coordination, procurement plan, approvals where the authority requires them.
• Manufacture and site preparation, 2–8 weeks. Off-site millwork in parallel with electrical rough-in and ventilation routing.
• Shipping. The stage most often left out of the headline figure, and the one that slips most on Middle East and Africa projects.
• Installation and commissioning, 1–3 weeks. Build-out, controls programming, testing, training.

If the schedule is genuinely tight, ask about modular or pre-assembled construction: it moves
work off site rather than removing it, which compresses site time without compressing quality.

Commissioning — what a handover should actually contain

The gap between a room that works and a room that was merely finished is commissioning, and
it is the first thing dropped when a programme is late. A handover should include, in writing:

• A heat-up test from cold, with the time recorded
• Temperature uniformity checked at bench level and at ceiling level, not at one sensor
• Verification of the air-change rate against the design figure
• Humidity behaviour under load for combi and bio cabins
• Control calibration, interlock and over-temperature cut-off testing, door sensor check
• As-built drawings, O&M manual, declaration of conformity, warranty documents and the spare-parts list
• Operator training and a written cleaning and maintenance protocol

A supplier who cannot describe their commissioning procedure before contract will not perform
one after it.

Operations after handover

Lifetime cost sits here, not in the purchase. A workable cadence for a commercial cabin:

• Daily. Visual check, wipe-down, aroma line purge where one is fitted.
• Weekly. Bench cleaning to protocol, floor and drainage inspection, lighting channel dusting.
• Quarterly. Heater and element inspection, sensor calibration, door seal review, stone check and replacement.
• Annually. Insulation and vapour barrier audit, ventilation flow measurement, control firmware review.

Ask, before contract, who performs each of these and what it costs. A maintenance schedule
priced after handover is priced without competition.

Where we fit, honestly

We have manufactured saunas, steam rooms and hammams since 1987, mostly for hotels, spas and developers across the Gulf, Africa and Europe. We are a custom manufacturer, and we use Harvia and EOS heaters inside the rooms we build — so the appliance you get is the same appliance those brands sell.

That means for a single standard-size domestic sauna, a good prefabricated cabin will beat us on value and we will say so. Where the checklist above starts favouring us is on rooms that cannot be bought off a shelf: non-standard geometry, custom cabins, multi-unit hospitality, and projects where the sauna has to be coordinated with MEP, waterproofing and a main contractor’s programme.

Run the twelve questions past us. If the answers do not stack up against another supplier’s, use the other supplier.

Frequently asked questions

How do I compare sauna manufacturer quotes fairly?
Normalise them first: same kW, same timber grade, same glass area, same scope split for installation and interfaces. Most quote differences that look like price differences are scope differences.

What size sauna heater do I need?
About 1 kW per cubic metre of cabin volume, plus an allowance for glass and stone. A 9 kW heater suits a typical 8–9 m³ room. Size against the actual room, never the catalogue maximum.

Is a custom sauna better than a prefabricated one?
Not inherently. Prefabricated is better when the space is standard — lower risk, one warranty. Custom is better when the room is not standard or has to match adjoining architecture.

What certification should a commercial sauna have?
CE marking on the heater and control system with a declaration of conformity, fire performance data for the linings, and — for most Gulf hotel projects — a material approval and authority submittal package.

Which sauna brand should I specify?
Depends on the layer. See our brand comparison: Harvia for serviceability, EOS for commercial duty, Klafs for a signature luxury room, Huum for design, Saunum for air quality.

What should I ask a sauna contractor before signing?

Ask for performance drawings, the ventilation plan with a stated air-change rate, the heater sizing calculation against the real room volume, the commissioning procedure in writing, the warranty split between heater, cabin and labour, and the maintenance schedule with its price. Ask for references from projects older than three years, because durability is what you are actually buying.

How long does a sauna project take from start to finish?

Split it by stage rather than asking for one number: brief and feasibility 1–2 weeks, design and engineering 2–6 weeks, manufacture and site preparation 2–8 weeks, shipping, then installation and commissioning 1–3 weeks. On Gulf and Africa projects the approvals and the shipping are what move, not the carpentry.

What is different about specifying a commercial sauna rather than a domestic one?

A commercial cabin runs twelve to sixteen hours a day and is an operating asset. That means continuous-duty heaters and contactors sized for peak hours, reinforced and anti-warp bench structures, zonal control so one room can be taken out of service without closing the spa floor, service access that does not require dismantling the room, and a stocked spare-parts position in the region. Domestic-rated equipment does not survive commercial duty regardless of brand.

What should a sauna commissioning report contain?

A heat-up test from cold with the time recorded; temperature uniformity measured at bench and ceiling level; the air-change rate verified against the design figure; humidity behaviour under load for combi and bio cabins; control calibration and testing of interlocks, over-temperature cut-offs and door sensors; and the document set — as-builts, O&M manual, declaration of conformity, warranty and spare-parts list — plus operator training.

Question thirteen: which named cabin types come out of their own workshop?

The twelve questions above are about process. This one is about scope, and it is the fastest way to separate a manufacturer from a reseller: ask which named cabin formats they build themselves, and ask for a project reference for each one.

• Finnish sauna — the stone-heater cabin every supplier claims. Ask for the heater sizing calculation, including the glazing correction.
• Bio sauna — combi heater and evaporator. Ask who takes the water, drain and descaling interface, because that is where the scope gap usually opens.
• Infrared sauna — emitter type stated as carbon fibre or full-spectrum quartz, with the circuit specified as a dedicated supply rather than a socket.
• Hybrid sauna — two heat sources, one control strategy. A reseller will offer a cabin with a panel added to it; a manufacturer will show how the room was detailed for the hotter condition. The formats we make are set out on the sauna range page.
• Panoramic glass sauna — ask what the glazed area did to the heater size and to the ventilation layout. If the answer is nothing, the calculation was not done.

Ask the same question of the equipment. A manufacturer names the heater and control families it commissions — EOS and Harvia in continuous-duty ratings for commercial hours — and names lining and bench timber by species and grade instead of calling it quality wood: thermally modified aspen and alder, kiln-dried abachi (ayous), Nordic spruce.

Sauna Dekor builds all five formats under one contract and has done so since 1987, now in its 40th year, with projects in more than 35 countries. Our TS EN ISO 9001:2015 certificate covers the manufacture of sauna and spa products and after-sales service; heater, generator and control certification belongs to the equipment manufacturers, and a supplier who presents an equipment certificate as their own has answered question eleven badly.

Related: the best sauna for home, decision by decision · sauna brands compared.