Grey marble hammam corner with heated platform, perimeter bench, round basins and recessed strip lighting

[ Project ]

Lagoon Hotel

Turkmenistan

Get a quote for a similar project See All Projects

Sauna Dekor Spa Solutions — designing, manufacturing and installing saunas, steam rooms, hammams and pools since 1987, in our own facility in İkitelli OSB, Istanbul.

Marble hammam and sauna built for a resort hotel spa in Turkmenistan — heated stone detailing, tanking, ventilation and drying-down practice explained.

In brief (November 2026): Sauna Dekor built the Turkish bath (hammam) and sauna for Lagoon Hotel, Turkmenistan.

Sauna
Turkish bath & hammam

[ 2 photos ]

From the project

Pale marble hammam with a rectangular heated navel stone, LED underlighting and a tall carved basin — Hammam

[ The build ]

Overview

Sauna Dekor builds thermal areas end to end — design, manufacture, installation and commissioning under one contract. The company started in 1987, is in its 40th year, manufactures in İkitelli, Istanbul, and has completed projects in 41+ countries.

This page records the hammam and sauna built for the Lagoon Hotel spa in Turkmenistan. The zoneslisted for the project are Turkish bath, hammam and sauna; our photographic record shows a marble hammam alongside a stone-clad sauna and a steam room.

Scope of work

The heart of this spa is a traditional marble hammam — heated navel stone, heated benching and kurna washing points — with a dry sauna next to it and a steam room completing the circuit. The package covered the room build-up and tanking, the marble and mosaic, thecabin, the heating and control equipment, ventilation terminals and commissioning. Read more about the room type on ourwhat is a Turkish bath page.

How a heated marble room actually works

A hammam is not a hot-air room. Air temperature is moderate; the heat is in the stone. The navel stone and the benches carry heating circuits below them and warm the body by conduction over a long session, while humidity is kept high enough that the skin does not dry. This has two design consequences that separate a real hammam from a tiled steam room. First, thermal mass means slow response: the room takes a long soak to reach working surface temperature and should be brought on before the spa opens rather than switched on at the first booking.Second, the heating layout has to suit the slab — circuit spacing and slab thickness are set together, because too shallow a circuit gives hot stripes and too deep a one never reaches temperature.

Ceiling geometry and condensate

The domed or vaulted hammam ceiling is not decoration. In a room held near saturation,condensate forms on the ceiling continuously; a curved soffit lets it run down to the perimeter and into the drainage, while a flat one collects it into drips that fall on the bathers below. Where a full dome is not possible within the available height, a shallow vault or a pitched soffit does the same job. The same principle governs light fittings and any service penetration — anything that projects from the ceiling of a wet room becomes a drippoint unless it is detailed for it.

Tanking, ventilation and materials

Wet rooms are tanked before finishes: bonded membrane over the screed, reinforcing tapeinto corners, movement joints and penetrations, carried up above splash height and dressed into the gullies, with falls formed in the screed. Epoxy grout in the permanently wet rooms.Ventilation follows the room type — the sauna gets supply low at the heater and extract low opposite; the hammam and steam room get continuous extract running past closing so the rooms dry down overnight. Cabin timber is kiln-dried and low in resin. Marble is book-matched forthe faces seen on entering, because in a room this simple the stone is the architecture.Product detail:modern hammam,steam room andsauna.

What we solved on site

The recurring difficulty in resort hammams is drainage geometry versus stone layout. Falls have to run from every washing point and from under the navel stone to the gullies, but the marble wants to be laid in whole, book-matched pieces without awkward cuts. Those two requirements pull against each other, and they cannot both be resolved on site. We set the kurna positions and the gully positions first, worked the falls, and then cut the stone to suit — which is why the slab layout was done in our workshop with the drainage drawing on the bench next to it, rather than in the room with a diamond blade. Ourhotel spa design page explains the wider sequence.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a hammam and a steam room?

A hammam heats the body by conduction from warm marble at a moderate air temperature over a long session. A steam room heats by saturated vapour at a higher air temperature over a short one. They feel completely different and are built completely differently.

Why are hammam ceilings domed?

To manage condensate. A curved soffit lets water that forms on the ceiling run down to the perimeter and into the drainage instead of collecting into drips that fall on the bathers. Where height is tight, a shallow vault does the same job.

How long does a hammam take to warm up?

Longer than people expect, because the heat is stored in the stone rather than in the air. A hammam should be brought on well before the spa opens; it is not a room that responds to being switched on at the first booking.

Do the drainage falls or the marble layout come first?

Drainage. Washing-point and gully positions are fixed first, the falls are worked from them, and only then is the stone cut to suit. Doing it the other way round produces either standing water or a butchered slab layout.

Sauna Dekor’s own certification is TS EN ISO 9001:2015 quality management, covering sauna and spa product manufacturing and after-sales service. The equipment we install carries CE / EN 60335, TÜV, GS, GREENGUARD Gold, FSC and VDI 6022 certification from its own manufacturers — EOS, Sentiotec and Condair among them.