The perfect sauna layout doesn’t exist.
This one comes close.

One sauna is wood-fired and sits down by the water. The other is inside the house, next to the shower room, and it’s the one we keep coming back to.

The indoor sauna is 9 feet 10 inches wide and 5 feet 11 inches deep, with a 7 foot 10 inch ceiling and a full glass front. Two upper benches face each other along the side walls. A lower platform runs across the back and joins them, and the heater stands on the floor and rises up through it. A two-step stool sits between the benches, so you step up from the tile onto the platform and sit on either side. From the top bench you look out two windows into the pines.

When we filmed there, Ben Frizzell called it an H layout: two benches facing each other, joined by the platform the heater comes up through.

1. The platform is the floor

You step up once, at the door, and you’re at bench level everywhere. Nobody stands on a low floor in the middle of the room, where the air is coolest. Ben Frizzell made the point on camera: an H layout wastes no space. The platform is where you move around, and the benches come off of it.

2. Your feet sit up in the heat

Because the heater rises through a raised platform, you can sit high without stacking a tall ladder of benches. In our model of the room, your feet rest on the platform just under 28 inches off the floor, and you sit 45 3/8 inches up. The heater’s stones top out at 36 inches. Most of you is above the stones, and your feet are about 8 inches below them.

That’s the balance we look for. As Ben Frizzell put it, ideally your whole body sits above the rocks, but a room tall enough to put your feet up there would need a ceiling so high the sauna stops being practical to sit in.

3. Everyone faces each other

Two benches face to face, so conversation goes across the room instead of down a row. The heater sits at the back between them, the same distance from both benches.

4. The stool comes out

The two steps are one piece. Lift it out through the door, and the tile underneath is open for cleaning. That sounds small until you own a sauna.

5. It’s next to the shower

The sauna is part of the bathroom, behind a glass wall. Ben Frizzell told the camera that’s what most people in North America want, too. Put the sauna where you already bathe, and it’s easy to step out, rinse off and use it regularly.

Ben Burger made the same case from the bench.

More videos are on the way. We filmed a lot more in this sauna than fits in one post. Those videos are coming to our YouTube channel, so subscribe there to catch them.

Converted to inches, the notes say: a room 118 inches wide, 71 1/4 deep and 94 1/2 high. Upper benches 26 3/4 inches deep, with a 14 1/2 inch strip in front of them for your feet. From the ceiling down: 49 1/4 inches to the top bench, 17 3/4 inches to the platform, then two 9 1/2 inch steps and a last 9 inches to the tile.

That leaves a little more headroom over the top bench than the 44 to 47 inches the Sauna Marketplace bench guide starts with, and it’s inside the 44 to 51 inches HUUM’s manuals allow.

Underneath, it’s simple carpentry. Light softwood frames stand on black adjustable feet. Rails are screwed to the posts, and the bench tops sit on the frames in removable sections. The heater stands on the tile with its cable running to a connection on the wall, and the platform is framed around it.

We also pushed a 360 camera under the platform and the side benches. Drag the tour below to look around, or open the tour full screen.

Every board is drawn and counted. The bench tops are removable slatted sections that sit right on their frames. At the corners, the boards wrap over the edge on paired 45 degree cuts, so there’s no end grain showing. The stool is one connected piece that pulls out through the door, like the real one.

Why a Homecraft Apex

The real room has a Harvia Cilindro, a round tower of stones. We drew ours with a Homecraft Apex 15 kW, also a round stone tower, 18 inches across and 36 inches tall, built in British Columbia. It stands on the floor in a square opening framed into the platform, with the 5 1/2 inches the Apex manual asks for to anything that burns, and more than the 48 inches it asks for between its top and the ceiling.

Sizing is where the glass shows up. The room holds about 460 cubic feet of air. Homecraft’s sizing guide adds up to 2 cubic feet for every square foot of glass. Counted that way, this room comes to about 672 cubic feet, inside the 600 to 950 cubic feet the Apex manual gives for the 15 kW.

Plan for service. This H Platform arrangement is confirmed for element replacement from above. With the connected stool removed, the electrician reaches the electrical connections and lower-front reset through the open under-bench space. The structural frame stays fixed. A real build also needs the heater guard and the towel guard the Apex manual requires; both are omitted from this model so you can see the opening. SaunaDesignPro marks this benchmark approved and continues checking clearances and capacity.

The planner places the vents, too: fresh air comes in low on the back wall, to the right of the heater, and leaves low on the left wall through a duct that exits near the ceiling.