Every garden has its own logic. Its own light, its own boundaries, its own quiet rhythm through the day. Before we design a single panel of a sauna, our first task is understanding the space it will belong to, and the way our client actually intends to use it.

That question, how will you actually use this, sits at the centre of one of the decisions we’re asked about most often: traditional heat, infrared, or both. It’s worth answering properly, because it shapes everything else about the build.

Traditional, infrared, or hybrid: what’s the real difference

A traditional Finnish sauna heats the air around you, using stones and steam (löyly) to create an intense, enveloping heat that peaks quickly and rewards ritual, water on the stones, quiet conversation, the sound of it hissing off hot rock.

An infrared sauna works differently. Rather than heating the air, infrared panels heat the body directly, at a lower ambient temperature, for longer, gentler sessions that many people find easier to use daily and better suited to recovery, sleep, and everyday nervous system regulation.

Increasingly, our clients don’t want to choose between the two. A hybrid sauna gives you both systems in one space: a traditional heater with heater stones for an authentic, high-heat Finnish session, and infrared panels for a lower, deeper session on the days you want something gentler. It’s the most versatile option we build, and it’s exactly what one recent project in Newmarket, near Cambridge, called for.

What can go wrong with a sauna project

Outdoor wellness structures look simple from the outside: timber, glass, a heater. In practice, they demand precision in engineering, thermal performance, electrical specification, and design judgement, delivered by people who’ve done this properly, at scale, for real gardens and real clients.

It’s a gap we see more often than we’d like. Our client in Newmarket came to us partway through what should have been someone else’s project. A previous sauna company had taken the commission, taken the deposit, and simply stopped delivering. No finished structure, no clear plan, and a growing sense that the vision for the space was slipping away.

If you’re evaluating a sauna company yourself, a few questions are worth asking before you commit: Who manufactures the heating system, and is it specified for your actual usage, not just a showroom demo? Is the structure designed around your garden’s exact dimensions and clearances, or is it a standard size you’re expected to make fit? And critically, who is actually accountable for delivery, start to finish?

Designing with Auroom, for this exact space

We started, as we always do, by listening. What had gone wrong. What still mattered to the client about the original vision. What the space itself could actually support, down to the last centimetre of clearance against the boundary fence.

Our client had also done their own homework. Before we sat down together, they had spent time looking closely at previous Ember & Ice installations, alongside work from other sauna companies they’d found researching online, building a clear sense of the details they wanted to carry through into their own build: the low, architectural roofline, the way glazing could open a structure fully to its garden, the layered warmth of ambient lighting after dark. That reference point mattered. It meant our conversation started from a shared visual language rather than a blank page, and it let us focus our attention on refining the details rather than reintroducing the basics.

Working alongside our long-standing sauna partner Auroom, we developed a bespoke hybrid Mira outdoor sauna, engineered specifically for this plot and this client’s expectations of what a home wellness space should feel like.

The result sits low and confident in the garden, clad in brushed, black-painted thermo spruce that reads as architecture rather than outbuilding. Floor-to-ceiling tempered glazing on two sides opens the interior fully to the garden and the tree line beyond, so the experience of the sauna is inseparable from the experience of the place it sits in.

Inside, thermo aspen panelling and benching carry the warmth of Scandinavian craftsmanship, elevated by a lighting scheme that does real work rather than simply decorating the space. Soft LED strip lighting runs beneath the benches and behind the backrests, washing the timber in a warm, low glow that’s independently adjustable via a Quinetic switch, so the mood can shift from bright and functional to dim and contemplative without leaving the bench. Discreet indicator LED strips are built directly into the infrared backrests themselves, giving a quiet visual cue of the heaters at work. Together, it’s lighting designed the way a good hospitality space is lit: layered, warm, and never harsh enough to compete with the red glow of the heaters themselves.

The hybrid system, in practice

The heart of this build is its hybrid heating system: a HUUM Hive Mini 9kW traditional heater, stacked with heater stones for that authentic Finnish löyly, paired with three Duetto infrared heaters set into the backrest and side panelling.

It means the sauna can be used two ways, a traditional, high-heat Finnish session with steam from water on the stones, or a gentler, deeper infrared session for recovery and everyday use. The whole system is controlled through the HUUM UKU WiFi glass panel, allowing the sauna to be heated and ready before anyone has stepped into the garden.

Beyond the heat, the detail continues: integrated Bluetooth audio through concealed under-bench speakers, a traditional pail, ladle, sand timer and thermo-hygrometer, and a three-phase power specification built for genuine, repeated everyday use, not an occasional novelty.

What it means to get it right

This project was never just about building a sauna. It was about restoring a client’s confidence that a company could actually deliver on what was promised, and then going further, giving them a space considerably more refined than the one they had originally been sold.

That’s the standard we hold ourselves to at Ember & Ice Wellness: wellness proven by science, refined by design, and delivered by people who see a project through from the first difficult conversation to the last stone in the heater.

If you’re weighing up traditional, infrared or hybrid for your own space, or a project has stalled and you want it done properly the first time, we’d be glad to talk it through.

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