Indoor Electric or Wood-Fired Sauna for a Vacation Rental?

Villa Panorama Saimaa in Finland has an indoor electric sauna and a wood-fired one on the lake. What each one gives guests, what each asks of hosts, and which to add.

Short answer: An indoor electric sauna is the one guests will use every day. A wood-fired sauna on the water is the one they’ll talk about after they leave. If you can, do both. Villa Panorama Saimaa in Finland does, and we spent four nights finding out how each one works for guests.

The stay

Villa Panorama Saimaa is a whole-house rental in Taipalsaari, on Lake Saimaa in eastern Finland. It sleeps eight, with five bedrooms, a terrace over 2,000 square feet, a sandy beach, two kayaks and two paddle boards. Ben Burger and Ben Frizzell booked it on Airbnb for four nights in late August 2026, the first stop on our Finland and Estonia trip. Check-in is self-serve with a lockbox, and the last stretch of the drive crosses a free cable ferry that runs around the clock with a few short breaks.

The house has two saunas: an electric one inside, next to the shower, and a wood-fired one in a glass-walled building down by the lake. Our full listing for Villa Panorama Saimaa covers the house, and you can book it on Airbnb .

The indoor electric sauna

The indoor sauna sits in the bathroom behind a glass wall, a few steps from the rain shower. Two upper benches face each other, a raised platform joins them across the back, and a Harvia heater stands on the floor and rises up through the platform inside a wooden guard. Two windows look out into the pines. Ben Frizzell calls it an H layout, and it’s our favorite sauna layout anywhere.

What guests get: a sauna that’s ready whenever they are. You walk past it on the way to the shower, switch it on, and it’s hot while you’re making coffee. Ben Burger’s case on camera was simple: put the sauna somewhere you already pass every day, and it becomes part of your routine. On a vacation, that means guests use it morning and night, not once.

What hosts should know: an electric heater is the easy one to run. There’s no fire to teach and nothing to restock. The trade is power: this house asks guests not to charge an electric car while the sauna is on, so plan the electrical service before you plan the benches.

The wood-fired lakeside sauna

Down the hill, the lakeside sauna is a small building of whitewashed timber with two tiers of benches and a full glass wall facing the water. It seats six to eight around a big IKI wood stove packed with stones. We split kindling on its terrace, lit the fire in the late afternoon and waited.

It took about three hours to get properly hot. That’s the nature of a big wood stove with a lot of stone: for the first hour the fire is heating rocks, not the room. Split wood shortens it. Once it’s there, the heat is deep and even, because all that stone is giving it back. Then you walk out the door and into the lake, and come straight back in.

What guests get: the evening they’ll remember. The glow of the fire, the lake, everyone on the benches together. Both Bens said the same thing on camera: it’s the best sauna experience there is, as long as you commit the time to it.

What hosts should know: a wood-fired sauna needs firewood on hand, clear lighting instructions, ash cleared out after use and a chimney swept at least once a year. Plan for a guest who has never lit a stove, and decide what they’re allowed to do alone.

Which one should you add?

One sauna, most guests: go electric and put it near the bathroom. It gets used the most, it’s the simplest to manage between stays, and an app or timer can have it hot when guests want it.

A lake, a view and room for a building: a wood-fired sauna is the feature people book for. Budget for the wood, the cleaning and the instructions.

Both, if you can. This house shows why: the electric sauna covers every day, and the wood-fired one makes the trip.

For the money side, read our guide to adding a sauna to your vacation rental .

Build the indoor one yourself

We liked the indoor sauna enough to measure it, crawl under its benches with a 360 camera and rebuild it in SaunaDesignPro, our free 3D sauna planner. The whole story is on the SaunaDesignPro journal: The perfect sauna layout doesn’t exist. This one comes close. You can open the model, called the H Platform , and change the room, the wood and the heater for your own property.

More videos from this trip are coming to the Sauna Marketplace YouTube channel .

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