A Well-Specified Spa Sauna in Kent by Timber Rooms
Published: 12 July 2026
Reading Time: 3 minutes 20 seconds
If you are looking for a well-specified garden sauna in the South East, Timber Rooms is a name worth knowing. Over the past few years they have built up one of the stronger sauna portfolios among the companies we cover, from compact standalone pods to saunas built into larger wellness buildings, each one tailored to the client and the space it sits in.
This project shows how far that specialism now reaches. Timber Rooms built this 5m x 5m sauna in Herne Bay, Kent, for the spa area of a David Lloyd club, sized as a commercial room for several members to use at once. The qualities that make their garden saunas worth seeking out are all here, simply at a larger scale and to a commercial standard.
Bespoke Garden Saunas
What sets Timber Rooms apart on saunas is range. Each building is tailored to the brief and the space it sits in, rather than pulled from a fixed catalogue. On the domestic side, we have featured a compact stand-alone garden sauna pod with an outdoor shower and a sauna built into a multi-use pool house alongside a changing room and shower.
This Herne Bay building carries the same thinking into a commercial setting. The brief here is to seat several members at once, sit comfortably within a designed wellness garden, and be delivered alongside the other contractors on the wider spa. The design language stays recognisably theirs: clean lines, warm timber, and detailing that has clearly been thought about.
Two Rooms Under One Roof
The 5m x 5m footprint is split into two. The larger part is the sauna itself, large enough for multiple members to use together rather than the two-to-four-person cabins more common in a garden. The remainder houses the swimming pool plant room, tucking the technical services for the spa's pool neatly into the same envelope.
It is a practical piece of planning. A single building does the job of two, and the plant room stays out of sight without a separate structure eating into the garden.
A Full-Height Glazed Wall Onto the Garden
The elevation facing the wellness garden is taken up by a 4m-wide triple aluminium window: three full-height panes that turn the whole wall to glass. From the benches inside, members look straight out over the planting, and a cold dip pool sits directly outside the door for the traditional hot-then-cold cycle.
Glazing on this scale in a sauna is a deliberate choice. It trades a little of the enclosed, cocooned feeling for a strong connection to the garden, and in a spa setting where the outdoor space has been designed as part of the experience, that is the right call. The frames are anthracite grey aluminium, matching the doors and trims, so the glass reads as a crisp dark line against the timber.
Horizontal Thermo Radiata Pine Cladding
The exterior is finished in Thermo Radiata Pine, run horizontally. It is a thermally modified timber, which stabilises the boards and improves their durability outdoors, and the warm, marbled tone weathers gently over time. The horizontal coursing gives the building a low, grounded look that settles it into the garden and its timber boundary fencing.
A flat roof with an anthracite grey parapet trim keeps the profile contemporary and clean, and the same grey runs through the aluminium entrance door on the side elevation. It is a restrained, well-judged palette: pale timber, dark metal, glass.
A Skylight Down the Centre
Inside is where the detailing earns its keep. A 1.3m x 2.8m skylight runs the length of the ceiling, straight down the centre of the sauna, framed by a timber reveal. It is a lovely touch, and one we have not seen on the other sauna projects we have featured. Where wall glazing gives you the garden, this gives you the sky, and it floods the room with daylight that the timber lining warms as it lands.
Traditional Benching, Contemporary Finish
Everything else is classic sauna, done well. Two tiers of traditional slatted benching wrap around the room in a pale, close-grained timber, with a pair of tall Harvia cylinder heaters set at the centre, their stainless cages packed with heat-retaining stones. A frameless glass door with a timber handle leads back through to a lined lobby and changing area, and the floor is laid in a large-format grey tile that stands up to a wet, high-traffic environment.
The finish is calm and precise throughout, the kind of standard that reads as commercial-grade without feeling clinical. A glass plaque by the door names it the "Sky Gazing Sauna" and sets it to run at 70 to 80°C, combining dry heat with Himalayan salt for members to enjoy.
Learn More
Timber Rooms design and build bespoke garden buildings across Sussex, Surrey, South London, and the wider South East, taking on both domestic garden rooms and larger commercial projects like this one. To discuss your own project or see more of their work, visit timberrooms.co.uk, call 01273 839 491, or email hello@timberrooms.co.uk. We have featured several other Timber Rooms projects on The Guide.
