The best outdoor saunas with a shower

The Cove is the only sauna we found on sale in the UK with a shower built onto the cabin. It's a covered outdoor cold shower on the side of a 45mm thermowood sauna, under the same black aluminium roof, and Polar makes it with the shower on the left or the right, so you can turn it away from the house or the neighbours.

The sauna room is 200 × 196 × 218.5cm inside, 8.5m³, with alder benches for 4 to 8 people. It's £17,995.95 with a 9kW Harvia Cilindro or £18,995.95 with a 13kW Cozy wood-burning stove, and it's in stock on a 1 to 2 week delivery. Polar's fitters quote £1,500 to £2,000 to build it.

Polar's listing doesn't say how the shower connects, so ask before ordering whether it takes a hose feed or needs a plumbed supply, and plan where it drains. Add a 50A supply for the 9kW heater and a level base 3.2m wide that carries 1,500kg in total.

The Nora is a garden building first: a 70mm Nordic spruce log cabin 7.58m by 3.3m with a 9m² garden room, a shower room, a 1.9m by 1.9m sauna and a 3m by 3m veranda under the roof. If you want to shower properly, sit down afterwards and use the space for something else on other days, this is the layout.

The kit is £13,700, and a Tylo Sense Sport 6 heater with stones adds £1,360, so £15,060 before the roof. Roof covering is an option too, from £990 for bitumen shingles, and Summerhouse24's fitting service is £2,470. The kit doesn't list any shower fittings, so the shower, the water feed and the drain are yours to plan and plumb.

At 2.7m tall it's over the 2.5m limit for buildings within 2m of a boundary, and permitted development doesn't cover verandas, so talk to your council before you order. Delivery is quoted at 3 to 5 weeks and the cabin carries a 5-year guarantee.

Palmako's Sanna L is a three-room log sauna: a steam room seating three on two levels of aspen bench, a 1.9m² room beside it that Palmako says can be a changing area or fitted with a shower, and a 5.4m² lounge at the front for cooling off between rounds. The walls are 44mm Nordic spruce logs, with an insulated ceiling.

£8,250 buys the kit with free delivery to mainland UK, including the doors, the window, floorboards and foundation joists. The heater and the roof covering aren't included, and nothing for the shower is either, so the shower room is a space you fit out yourself.

It's 2.61m tall with a pent roof, so it needs to stand more than 2m from a boundary to stay within permitted development, and it takes a plot 5m by 3.4m. Palmako backs it with a 5-year guarantee.

Finnmark's Medium Barrel with Changing Room splits a 2.25m-diameter thermo-spruce barrel into two: a 5.5m³ sauna room with two 1.635m benches for four, and a changing room at the front with its own benches and a storage box. There's no shower, but you undress and cool down out of the weather, which is half of what a shower room gives you.

It's £9,724.99 in black with a HUUM Drop 9kW heater and Wi-Fi controller, £9,904.99 with a Kuru 14 wood stove kit, or £8,266.99 with no heater. Delivery to mainland UK is free by Moffett forklift, and the kit is a self-build in a wooden crate.

Finnmark points out that the door has no lock by design and can blow open in strong wind, so it suggests weighting it with garden furniture in a gale. The timber carries a 2-year warranty.

Layzee's Hobbit is a rounded thermowood sauna with a front room, bench and table ahead of the sauna room, and Layzee says the front room takes as many people as the sauna does. The Medium is 4.05m long, 2.4m deep and 2.3m tall, seats 4 to 6, and has 42mm walls.

It's £8,150 with a 6.8kW Harvia Cilindro, £8,350 with a Harvia M3 wood stove, and £8,395 or £8,950 with a terrace, with delivery included to most of the UK. There's no shower. Layzee sells a separate spruce shower cubicle with a 4kW water heater for £2,750, which brings the pair to £10,900 before plumbing.

Layzee describes the build as fairly technical and offers fitting at extra cost. At 2.3m tall it stays under the 2.5m boundary height.