About Baltic Spa

Baltic Spa is the UK’s field guide to Nordic and Baltic sauna ritual. We write for people heating their first barrel sauna in a London back garden, anyone weighing up an infrared cabin for the spare room, and bathers looking for a good public session and a cold plunge worth the walk.

We are independent. No manufacturer, retailer or spa chain owns us or sets our agenda. We test the stoves, translate the traditions, and take the cold plunge ourselves, then write down what we found.

How we research

We work from primary sources and direct experience. For buying guides, that means running heaters, measuring heat-up time, and sizing rooms against the manufacturer’s own kW ratings rather than the marketing copy. For reviews, it means visiting the sauna, paying our way, and noting löyly quality, temperature, bench layout and the state of the changing rooms on the day.

Where standards apply, we cite them: BS EN 60335 for sauna heater safety, Part P of the Building Regulations for the electrical work, and the guidance UK sauna and ice-bath suppliers publish themselves. Cultural detail, like the Finnish smoke sauna or contrast bathing, comes from named published sources, not hearsay. Figures are dated so you can see how current they are.

We do not invent named experts or hand out fake credentials. The work is produced by the Baltic Spa editorial team. When we describe testing a stove or sitting through a session, we mean exactly that.

Editorial standards

We aim to be accurate and specific. We prefer a measured number to an adjective, and we will tell you when a product does not suit a particular space rather than recommend everything. If we get something wrong, we correct it and say so on the page. Spotted an error or a venue that has changed? Tell us and we will check it.

Some outbound links may be affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if you buy through them. This never changes what we recommend or how we rank anything. We would write the same guide with the links stripped out.