Hinoki cypress is the timber we recommend for the inside of a sauna. It’s durable enough to need no treatment at all, and its scent is calming. Sugi, Japanese cedar, comes second. Both come from plantation forests in Japan, where no old-growth trees are harvested, and the timber is GOHO certified, meaning it’s legally harvested and tracked through the supply chain.
Hinoki cypress has lined Japanese bathhouses and shrines for more than a thousand years. When it warms, hinoki gives off a light, lemony scent. Every Heritage interior is left uncoated, with no products of any kind, natural or otherwise, so volatile organic compounds stay extremely low. New Zealand-grown redwood is an alternative, though it needs treating when it’s milled into panels.
In a 2018 study in the Journal of Wood Science, people who rested a palm on uncoated hinoki showed calmer prefrontal brain activity than when they touched marble.
Request hinoki and sugi samples →The exterior is clad to sit with the house it belongs to, and we can match any home’s cladding. At Taumata Road that meant board and batten, matching the existing home detail for detail.
As the official New Zealand distributor of HUUM, we specify HUUM heaters as standard. HUUM builds its heaters by hand in Tartu, Estonia, and their large stone capacity gives a soft, even löyly when water hits the stones.
We’ll fit another brand if you’d prefer one. Electric or wood-fired is your choice: at a main home, people often choose electric, started from an app on their phone. At a holiday home, many prefer a wood-burning heater for the soft light of the flame and the sound of the wood.