Crafted with leading outdoor-sauna engineering and finished in your choice of refined tones, the Mira fuses considered wellness function with architectural form. Whether you are designing a minimalist spa space or a showstopping garden feature, these new colours offer a bold, beautiful way to personalise your sauna.

The six new Mira colourways

• Spruce Green: a rich, natural tone inspired by forest landscapes; perfect for tranquil retreats.
• Pure White: clean and contemporary; the essence of timeless simplicity.
• Anthracite Grey: deep and dramatic; adds strength and sophistication to any setting.
• Mid Grey: a warm, versatile neutral that pairs effortlessly with natural materials.
• Natural White: soft, subtle and serene; designed for calm modern spaces.
• Country Red: a fresh take on heritage tones, blending classic character with modern charm.

Why Mira is more than a sauna

Mira is a statement piece built in Estonia and engineered to withstand the elements. Every unit combines high-performance craftsmanship with considered wellness features, from underfloor heating and soft-glow LED lighting to premium sauna stoves, each designed for comfort, efficiency and elegance.

As we spend more time at home, creating meaningful spaces has never mattered more. Mira is designed to feel like an architectural extension of your home rather than a bolt-on box, sitting seamlessly within the garden and harmonising with its surroundings.

Every Mira sauna is fully customisable to suit your lifestyle and aesthetic: choose your size, internal bench layout, glass tint and lighting scheme, plus optional features like Wi-Fi control, Bluetooth speakers and integrated door locks. With high-performance insulation, each Mira is built to perform beautifully through a UK winter.

Mira isn’t just a sauna. It’s an architectural feature. A garden retreat. A space that’s entirely yours.
Ember & Ice Wellness

Tailored wellness, delivered

Each Mira sauna is made to order and fully customisable, from internal layout and finishes to your chosen colourway, so your garden retreat is designed entirely around you.

Discover the full Mira Collection and bring your wellness space to life, in colour. Explore the Mira range or book a design consultation with the Ember and Ice team.

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What we mean by a “premium insulated sauna”

Typically, a premium indoor sauna includes:

• A fully insulated cabin, not single-layer panels
• High-quality, thermally treated timbers such as Thermo Aspen, Thermo Alder or Thermo Spruce
• Proper vapour barriers and construction that protects your home from moisture
• Precision-engineered wall and ceiling thickness for efficient heating
• Professional-grade heaters, usually from trusted European brands
• Thoughtful interior design: ergonomic benches, backrests and lighting
• Modular construction, built in a factory then assembled on site for accuracy and longevity

In simple terms, you are paying for a system designed as a long-term wellness asset, not a short-term purchase.

You are not buying a box of wood and a heater. You are buying a long-term wellness asset.
Ember & Ice Wellness

Energy efficiency and running costs

This is one of the biggest differences between an insulated sauna and a cheaper alternative. A fully insulated cabin holds heat more effectively, which means:

• Faster heat-up times
• Less power wasted reaching and maintaining temperature
• More stable, consistent heat during your session

Over the lifetime of the sauna, this can meaningfully reduce running costs, especially if you use it regularly. A thin-walled sauna might look attractive up front, but it usually takes longer to heat, leaks heat through the walls and ceiling, and needs more energy to hold temperature. If you plan to use your sauna several times a week, that efficiency becomes a real financial benefit, not just a technical feature.

Comfort, performance and experience

You are investing in an experience as much as a product. A premium insulated sauna gives you:

• More even heat distribution, with fewer hot and cold spots
• Better control over humidity and temperature, whether you prefer gentle heat or intense löyly
• Comfortable bench heights and layouts that let you lie down, stretch out and relax properly
• Quieter operation and a more immersive, calm atmosphere

Because the cabin is better insulated and engineered, the heat feels smoother and more stable, which means deeper relaxation, more effective sweating and a more authentic Nordic-style session. For many people, this is the difference between having a sauna and truly falling in love with the ritual.

Build quality, safety and longevity

With a premium sauna you are investing in construction quality, not just aesthetics. This includes:

• Thermally treated timbers that resist warping, cracking and heat damage
• High-grade fixings and joinery that stay stable over years of heating and cooling
• Better moisture management, so steam and humidity stay where they should
• Safer electrical design and CE-compliant components

A lower-cost sauna can look similar on day one, but over time you may notice discolouration and early wear on the wood, doors that no longer align, panels that move or creak, and heat damage where timbers were not suited to repeated high temperatures. A well-built, insulated sauna should feel solid, quiet and secure every time you close the door, and quality that lasts ten to fifteen years or more is a key part of the value.

Design, aesthetics and integration into your home

A premium sauna becomes part of your interior, not an awkward add-on. You typically have choices such as:

• Interior and exterior wood finishes that match your style
• Clear or tinted glass fronts and doors
• Integrated LED mood lighting
• Slimline, built-in heaters that do not dominate the space
• Clean lines and hidden fixings for a refined, minimal look

Whether your sauna sits in a master suite, wellness room, home gym or spa-style bathroom, the way it looks and feels really matters. A beautifully designed sauna elevates the whole space and, in many cases, can add perceived value to your property.

Personalisation and optional features

Premium insulated saunas usually offer upgrades that can change the way you use the space, for example:

• WiFi or smart controls, so you can pre-heat from your phone
• Bluetooth audio for guided breathwork, meditation or music
• Additional lighting packages for a softer, spa-like atmosphere
• Hybrid or infrared panels in certain models, for different heat experiences
• Protective waxing and finishing treatments for high-use, family or commercial settings

These allow you to tailor the sauna to your lifestyle, from a pure, traditional Finnish experience to a multifunctional wellness room for contrast therapy, stretching, breathwork or recovery.

The “why”, beyond the timber and glass

So why spend more on a premium insulated indoor sauna? Because you are not only buying a box of wood and a heater. You are buying:

• A consistent, reliable wellbeing habit you can maintain for years
• A space that encourages you to slow down, unplug and recover
• A setup that is associated with supporting cardiovascular health, stress relief, sleep and muscle recovery when used regularly
• A system engineered to protect your home, manage moisture and perform safely over time

If you are serious about making sauna use part of your weekly routine, quality and comfort directly affect how often you use it. A sauna that feels cramped, heats unevenly or looks out of place is far more likely to become an expensive coat hanger in a spare room.

Overall value to the customer

Across the lifetime of a premium insulated sauna, the value becomes clearer.

• Initial cost versus years of use: spread over ten to fifteen years of regular use, the cost per session is very reasonable, especially compared with spa visits, memberships or hotel wellness stays.
• Lower running costs over time: better insulation and engineering help control energy use, and the more you use it, the more this matters.
• Reduced risk of issues: proper construction and materials lower the risk of moisture problems, early failure or replacement after only a few years.
• Daily access to a private wellness space: a private, always-ready space for recovery and routine, with no travel time, no bookings and no sharing.

Is it worth it for you?

If you want a long-term, reliable and genuinely enjoyable sauna experience, a premium insulated indoor sauna is usually worth the price. For occasional or very light use, a basic model might be enough. But if you care about authentic heat and humidity, energy efficiency, how the sauna looks and feels in your home, and longevity and build quality, then an insulated premium model is the smarter investment.

At Ember and Ice Wellness, our indoor sauna collection is designed around these principles, Nordic quality, insulated modular cabins, high-performance heaters and carefully selected timbers, so your sauna is not just a purchase, but a long-term wellness asset in your home.

Explore the Ember and Ice indoor sauna collection, or speak with our team about designing yours.

Sauna use is intended for general wellbeing. If you have a health condition, speak to a qualified professional before starting.

The post Sauna Buyers Guide: What Do We Mean By A “Premium Insulated Sauna”? appeared first on Ember and Ice.

That model has quietly broken down.

What we used to call wellness has expanded out of the gym, away from the personal trainer, beyond the supplement aisle, and into the home. Not as a workout space, but as something more ambitious: a place engineered for the everyday rhythms of recovery, sleep, focus and long-term wellbeing.

The standard has changed.

How wellness moved from the gym into the architecture of the home, and what that means for the way we live.
Ember & Ice Wellness

From performance to longevity

For most of the last two decades, the conversation around wellness was driven by performance. How hard you trained. How much you lifted. How visible the results. The audience was athletes, gym-goers and the dedicated minority.

The conversation today is different. It’s about sleep architecture. Heart rate variability. Cold exposure. Inflammation. Nervous-system regulation. The questions being asked are quieter, more biological and, crucially, more universal, because everyone sleeps, everyone manages stress, and everyone is ageing.

What was once the domain of professional athletes has become the daily concern of architects, founders, parents and designers. The science hasn’t changed. The audience has.

Biohacking moved from the fringe to the mainstream

A few years ago, biohacking was a category for outliers: Silicon Valley engineers tracking macros with spreadsheets, podcasters fasting in red-tinted rooms. It looked, and sounded, fringe.

That label no longer applies. Continuous glucose monitors are sold over the counter. HRV is a feature on a wristwatch. Saunas, cold plunges and red light therapy are part of mainstream wellbeing conversations, not because they’re new, but because the evidence has caught up with the practice.

The mainstreaming of figures like Huberman, Attia and others has accelerated something that was already happening: thoughtful people deciding that understanding and managing their own biology is a reasonable, even necessary, part of modern life.

You no longer need to belong to a private clinic or train at an elite level to take this seriously. You just need to be paying attention.

Recovery is the new performance

The most significant shift inside wellness is also the most quiet. For years, training was the headline and recovery was the afterthought, what you did between sessions, if you remembered.

That has reversed.

Recovery isn’t what supports performance. Recovery is performance.

The current understanding, backed by the research and increasingly by lived experience, is that sleep quality, contrast bathing, sauna use, breathwork and nervous-system regulation aren’t side practices. They’re the practices.

For the home, this changes everything. A wellness space is no longer a treadmill in the spare room. It’s a sauna. A cold plunge. A red light bed. A space designed for parasympathetic regulation rather than sympathetic output. A space for slowing the body down, deliberately, day after day.

The home becomes the wellness space

There’s an architectural shift happening alongside the cultural one.

The wellness room is no longer carved out of leftover floor plan. It’s part of the brief from day one. We’re seeing it in residential design. We’re seeing it in hospitality. We’re seeing it on the drawings of architects who, five years ago, would have placed the sauna at the bottom of the priorities list.

The home gym has been quietly supplemented, sometimes replaced, by the recovery suite. Sauna, plunge, shower, decompression space. Designed not as a vanity addition but as a daily-use environment, integrated into the way the home actually lives.

This is what we mean when we say wellness, designed the way architecture is designed. Proportion, material, atmosphere. A space that integrates with the home rather than imposing on it.

The new standard

The new standard isn’t who has the best gym membership. It isn’t who trains hardest, who hits the most personal records, or who posts the most before-and-afters.

It’s who has built the conditions at home, every day, for long-term, low-key wellbeing.

It’s quieter than the old standard. Slower. Less performative. The metrics live on a watch rather than a leaderboard. The wins compound over years rather than weeks. The work is largely invisible.

But it’s also more honest about what wellness actually is. Not a class. Not a phase. A space. A rhythm. Something built into the architecture of how you live.

The standard has changed, and the home has become the place where the change is most visible.

Ember & Ice Wellness designs and builds architectural recovery spaces, outdoor saunas, indoor saunas, ice baths and red light therapy systems, for homes and hospitality projects across the UK. Speak with the team on 0330 633 0526.

The post The standard has changed appeared first on Ember and Ice.

With extensive experience across the health, fitness and wellness industry, spanning local authorities, national gym groups, boutique studios and luxury residences, Chris brings a deep understanding of how people train, live and recover. As a qualified personal trainer, he recognised early on that recovery is often overlooked. His mission became clear: to help people recover the right way, using evidence-based tools and environments designed for longevity, balance and wellbeing.

Recovery is often the missing piece. Our mission is to help people recover the right way.
Ember & Ice Wellness

Designing for world-class clients

Before founding Ember & Ice Wellness, Chris designed a custom infrared sauna for internationally renowned artist Dua Lipa, merging performance recovery with elegant design. He has also created wellness suites for private members’ clubs and retreats in Ibiza and Somerset, as well as contrast-therapy clubs in Manchester, London and the South Coast. Each project reflects the same values: precision, performance and enduring design.

A 360-degree approach to modern wellness

Ember & Ice operates as a 360-degree product and wellness consultancy, offering end-to-end design, supply and installation across:

• Luxury indoor and outdoor saunas
• Infrared and hybrid sauna systems
• Red light therapy beds
• Cryotherapy cabins
• Contrast and ice baths
• Hyperbaric oxygen therapy chambers
• EWOT (Exercise With Oxygen Therapy) systems

Each installation is designed to perform in residential, commercial and hospitality settings, combining scientific innovation with architectural precision.

Nordic craftsmanship meets modern innovation

The majority of Ember & Ice products are inspired by Nordic design and craftsmanship, blending natural materials, clean lines and technical excellence. Working closely with select European manufacturing partners, we ensure every project reflects the brand’s commitment to quality, functionality and timeless aesthetics. Through these collaborations, Ember & Ice delivers complete wellness environments that balance design, technology and human performance.

Wellness reimagined for modern living

From private homes and performance spaces to hospitality venues and wellness retreats, Ember & Ice Wellness is redefining what modern wellness looks and feels like. Each environment is built to support both physical recovery and emotional wellbeing, aligning design with science.

Discover Ember & Ice Wellness

Explore the full range of wellness products and design services at emberandice.co.uk. For collaborations, design enquiries or media requests, contact info@emberandice.co.uk or call 0330 633 0526.

The post The Story Behind Ember & Ice Wellness | Nordic-Inspired Wellness Design appeared first on Ember and Ice.

But with the sauna market expanding rapidly, how do you know which option is right for your home, garden or commercial project? The answer starts with understanding the three tiers of the market, and why Auroom’s Nordic saunas, supplied exclusively in the UK by Ember and Ice, set the standard.

Investing more upfront gives you 20+ years of daily sanctuary, rather than the early replacement of cheaper models.
Ember & Ice Wellness

At the entry level, budget saunas prioritise affordability, usually at the expense of quality. They tend to be built from untreated spruce or pine with minimal insulation, so they hold heat poorly and often show wear, warping or mechanical issues within a few years. They can suit a first-time buyer testing the water, but they rarely deliver true thermal benefits or lasting value.

Mid-market saunas are a clear step up, with more stable woods, better insulation and heating, and a more considered finish. For many people they strike a sensible balance between cost and quality, though performance and lifespan still vary a great deal from brand to brand, and plenty fall short under serious daily use.

Luxury saunas are where craftsmanship and performance peak: generational build quality refined by modern technology, thermo-treated timber, fully insulated construction, and a lifespan of twenty years or more when properly cared for. This is the tier where Nordic and Estonian makers like Auroom genuinely stand apart.

We are proud to be the UK partner for Auroom, one of Estonia’s most respected sauna manufacturers, whose range combines Scandinavian tradition with modern design precision. Their thermally modified aspen and alder give each sauna real durability, moisture resistance and a rich, chemical-free finish, while fully insulated, modular construction means quick heat-up times, lower running costs and a stable, comfortable climate. The collection runs from compact models like the Cala Mini to statement pieces such as the Vulcana and Libera, built for homes and commercial spaces alike, and made to last decades rather than years.

As a rough guide to budgeting, entry-level saunas typically run from £2,000 to £6,000, mid-level models from £6,000 to £12,000, and luxury saunas built to Auroom’s Nordic and Estonian standard from around £12,000 up to £25,000 or more, depending on size, features and customisation.

It is worth understanding why that extra investment pays off. A premium sauna earns its cost over time: superior insulation lowers running costs, quality construction means less maintenance and fewer replacements, and the materials age beautifully rather than degrading. What you are really buying is a safe, effective thermal environment and twenty years or more of daily sanctuary, where a cheaper build often brings early replacement and ongoing frustration.

At Ember and Ice, we guide you through every step, from the first design consultation to delivery and installation. As the UK partner for Auroom, we make sure your sauna is not just a wellness tool but a centrepiece for renewal and connection. Crafted for longevity, built for connection.

Discover Ember and Ice × Auroom Sauna →

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