Are you planning a new sauna, renovating an old one, or just dreaming? Do yourself a favor. Save your sauna project and read this wonderfully illustrated book about the design of authentic Finnish saunas!

New research has identified Finnish sauna bathing as a source of numerous health benefits. To enjoy these effects, one needs a proper Finnish sauna.

This book presents the collective wisdom accumulated by Finnish sauna builders, designers, and researchers across centuries, enabling anyone, anywhere, to design a pleasant bath house for family and friend to enjoy.

This book provides answers to three major questions:

What is a Finnish sauna?
What you should require from its design?
How to design a Finnish sauna in detail?

The Secrets of Finnish Sauna Design, Second Edition, covers all aspects needed to design a functional, healthy, and delightful sauna, from heating and air quality to interior design. It instructs the reader how to master both tangible and intangible, visible and invisible elements of a sauna.

The book puts a special emphasis on the sauna experience, living up to the belief that short-term satisfaction is the first step towards long-term health benefits. It features examples of contemporary Finnish sauna design and outlines why a true sauna experience is so much more than merely ‘a hot room’.

Author Dr. Lassi A Liikkanen (Aalto University) is a designer and scholar. The book is based on five years of intensive research and interviews of key Finnish sauna experts. For his sauna-focused website at Saunologia.fi, he has authored over two hundred articles. His academic accomplishments include nearly one hundred peer-reviewed papers, the latest of those around sauna bathing!

What Readers Say

I strongly encourage everyone […] to read Lassi Liikkanen’s Secrets of Finnish Sauna Design – the book that I really wish existed when we built our sauna. If you find any disagreement between what’s here and what Lassi says, then Lassi’s book and website is the safer path. I also highly recommend Lassi as a consultant.

Walker Angell, author of Trumpkin’s Notes on Sauna, localmile.org

For anyone interested in the nitty-gritty of sauna design, or considering building their own, The Secrets of Finnish Sauna Design by Lassi A. Liikkanen is considered the modern bible on the subject.

Rosanna Cooney: Sweat House. The New & The Ancient Irish Sauna Tradition. Irelandia Press, 2025.

This new edition contains several pages of new content, over one hundred minor corrections, and several items of new information, including two completely revised reference tables. The update is especially focused on North American audiences to use more consistently compatible terminology. For instance, it examines the specific changes associated with UL 875-compliant electric sauna heaters.

How Do I Buy the Book?

Use the links below to order The Secrets of Finnish Sauna Design, Second Edition from Amazon worldwide or scroll down to the bottom of the page and order directly from Culicidae Press here in the United States.

Library, Bookstores, and other Institutions

Our books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational or business use by libraries, bookstores, and other institutions. Please use our online order form to purchase books at a 50% discount. All other customers, please use the links below.

Paperback ($43.95)

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Hardcover ($52.95)

United States  |  United Kingdom  |  Germany  |  France  |  Spain  |  Italy  |  Netherlands  |  Poland  |  Sweden

Kindle ($29.95) – Coming Soon…

United States  |  United Kingdom  |  Germany  |  France  |  Spain  |  Italy  |  Netherlands  |  Japan  |  Brazil  |  Canada  |  Mexico  |  Australia  |  India

Apple Books ($29.95) – Coming Soon…

If you are a higher-education student or faculty, please send us a note via the Contact page from your educational email account to get the book at a 10% discount.