Steam Room
Coastal Steam Suite
A salt-air steam suite for an oceanfront residence, framed by horizon-line glazing and finished in seaglass plaster and tumbled limestone.
The brief
A young family on the Atlantic dunes asked for a wellness room that could be enjoyed in bare feet straight from the beach — humid, warm, and undemanding — without ever turning its back on the view. The site is severe: salt spray, sand, low afternoon sun raking across a single south-facing wall.
Our task was to build a steam-tight envelope that would not feel sealed off, to handle thirty-five years of marine corrosion at every fitting, and to choreograph the descent from sand to shower to steam to ocean view in a single uninterrupted gesture.
What we made
- A horizon-line strip of vapor-rated low-iron glazing, framed in marine-grade bronze, that holds the Atlantic at the eye while the room steams.
- Floors and benches in tumbled French limestone, set on a heated slab calibrated to 36 °C.
- Walls in three coats of hand-troweled seaglass-tinted Marmorino, sealed with a beeswax saponification.
- A bespoke linear bronze rain head, fed by a 50-litre rinsing reservoir warmed by the room itself.
- A cedar-lined antechamber for sand rinse, with a teak duckboard floor and an exterior outdoor shower.
