A private villa infrared sauna cabin at Jumeirah Golf Estates, Dubai
Sauna Dekor is a sauna and spa manufacturer and turnkey contractor, founded in Istanbul in 1987, in our 40th year, with installations in more than 35 countries. This page documents a private villa at Jumeirah Golf Estates, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where we built an infrared sauna cabin. Completed in 2024.
What was built
A compact cabin clad in dark cedar, with an infrared emitter panel set into the corner, a wall emitter facing the bench, cedar benches with a concealed LED line and cove lighting above. A stone-filled electric heater is set into the bench line, so the cabin can also be run as a conventional dry sauna. A bucket and ladle sit on the shelf.
The technical decisions behind it
Emitter class
Infrared cabins are built around one of two emitter families. Long-wave carbon panels present a large, low-intensity radiating surface: gentle, even, low surface temperature, good coverage from a fixed seated position. Quartz emitters are more concentrated and reach working output faster, but they radiate from a small area, so aim and distance matter far more. In a villa-scale cabin, broad panel coverage aimed at the seated position usually gives a better room than a small number of intense sources.
Aim, not wattage
The variable that decides whether an infrared cabin works is where the emitters point. Panels face the seated body from the front and the sides, at a distance set by the bench position, not spread evenly around the walls for symmetry. A panel behind the bather’s back is largely wasted, and a panel placed in the plume above a stone heater will heat-soak whenever the cabin is run in dry-sauna mode.
Why the build-up is low-emission
Infrared sessions run cool and long, which puts a bather in the cabin for an extended period with their face close to the lining. That makes the construction of the cabin itself a design decision: we use kiln-dried, low-resin timber and keep adhesives out of the build-up, fixing boards mechanically and from below rather than gluing panel assemblies together. It is the same reason we do not use glue-heavy panel systems in any of our cabins.
Running as a dual-purpose room
With a stone heater in the bench line, this cabin can be used as a conventional dry sauna as well. The two heat sources are controlled independently and are not intended to run together — in dry-sauna mode the air carries the heat, in infrared mode the emitters do, and mixing them defeats the infrared mode.
Ventilation
Lower air-change demand than a Finnish cabin, because there is no water on stones and no saturated air, but the cabin still gets defined supply and extract and a run-on drying cycle after use. Ventilating an infrared cabin as if it were a Finnish one simply makes it hard to hold temperature.
Dark cladding
Dark cedar is a finish decision, and it is compatible with an infrared cabin because the emitters do not depend on reflected radiation the way a mirror-finish room might. Timber remains low-resin and low-conductivity so bench surfaces stay comfortable in dry-sauna mode.
What the site required
This is a compact cabin in a finished villa, and the constraint was footprint rather than services. Emitter panels need clear aim to the seated position, the stone heater needs its own clearance zone, and the bench has to accommodate both without either becoming unusable. Those three requirements were resolved together at drawing stage. The cabin was then prefabricated and dry-assembled in our Istanbul workshop, checked against the surveyed opening, numbered, dismantled and shipped for on-site assembly.
Related capability
See our sauna page for infrared, hybrid and traditional cabin types, steam room and hammam for the wet-heat rooms, fitness and sport centre for cabins built into a home gym, and Dubai for how we deliver in the UAE.
