SAUNACRAFT
The art of the sauna — design, heat, and the culture of steam bathing.
From sizing a heater and planning bench space to ordering cladding, understanding löyly, timing a session, and weighing the build cost, SaunaCraft pairs free hands-on planning calculators with practical guides and a richly illustrated museum of the world’s steam-bathing traditions. Design it well, build it once.
Sauna Design & Build Calculators
Free tools for planning a home sauna — heater size calculator, bench-space planner, cladding board-feet calculator, löyly steam calculator, session timer, and build cost & ROI calculator.
Sauna Heater Size Calculator
Turn your room's length, width, and height into a recommended heater output in kilowatts, with allowances added for glass walls and glass doors.
Sauna Bench-Space Planner
Work out the linear bench length you need from your bather count, seated or lounging style, and whether you're building one tier or two.
Cladding Board-Feet Calculator
Get the wall and ceiling surface area, minus the door, plus a waste allowance, converted into board feet of interior paneling to order.
Löyly Water-to-Steam Calculator
See how many ladles of water convert to steam on the hot rocks, and what share of your room's air volume that steam represents.
Sauna Session Timer
Set your rounds and heat/cool-down minutes to build a full session schedule, then run a live countdown through each phase.
Sauna Build Cost & ROI Calculator
Weigh your build cost and running electricity against what you'd pay for spa visits instead, to see the payback period and 5-year net.
Sauna & Steam-Bathing Culture Museum
Wander an immersive museum of the world’s steam-bathing traditions — the Finnish sauna and the long history behind it, the Turkish hammam and its marble hararet, the Russian banya and its birch venik, and the Korean jjimjilbang and its kiln-fired rooms, each in its own gallery, so you can get to know the stories behind every tradition: how they took shape, what makes each one distinct, and how the ritual of heat and steam took root across so many cultures.
Tour the museum →From the Journal
Fresh guides on sauna design, materials, and the löyly ritual, home build economics, and the traditions behind the world’s steam-bathing cultures.
Choosing the Right Heater Size for Your Home Sauna
An undersized heater never quite gets the room hot; an oversized one runs rough and wastes power. Here's how sauna heater sizing charts actually work, and what glass walls and doors do to the math.
How Many Bathers? Planning Bench Space in a Home Sauna
A room that looks spacious empty can feel cramped with four people seated shoulder to shoulder. Here's how much bench length a bather actually needs, seated or lounging, and how a two-tier layout changes the math.
Cedar, Aspen, or Thermally Modified Wood: Choosing Sauna Cladding
Sauna interiors get hot, humid, and occasionally splashed with water — not every wood handles that well. A practical comparison of the three most common cladding choices, and how to estimate how much you'll need.
What Is Löyly? The Ritual of Steam in Finnish Sauna Culture
Löyly is more than just steam — it's a word Finns use for the entire feel of the heat in a sauna, and throwing it is a small, deliberate ritual with its own tools and etiquette. Here's what the word really means.
The Traditional Sauna Session: Rounds, Heat, and Cold Plunge
A sauna session isn't usually one long sit — it's built in rounds, alternating real heat with a real cool-down. Here's how the traditional round structure works, and why the contrast is the point.
Is a Home Sauna Worth It? Weighing the Build Cost Against Spa Visits
A home sauna can cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars for a pre-fab kit to well over fifteen thousand for a full custom build. Here's how to think through whether it actually pencils out against what you're spending now.
Keep Learning
Plain-language explainers on how sauna heat and löyly work, the materials and design choices behind a good build, and the customs and etiquette of steam-bathing cultures around the world — everything you need to dig deeper before you build or visit.
Visit the Learn hub →