Forest Residence (SPA House)

A private spa complex on its own grounds, built as two buildings rather than one room with a sauna in it.

The spa house holds the heat: sauna, steam, two showers, a powder room, and a sitting room with a small kitchen to come back to. The lounge house across the courtyard holds everything that happens after, a great room under a two-story ceiling, a wet bar, a billiard table, and a bedroom on the mezzanine.

Between them sits a gazebo with an open fireplace. The point of the plan is that nothing ends when you leave the sauna.

The whole complex is built on one contrast: dark and warm, held in every room.

Cathedral ceilings are lined in dark wood that continues the facade, so the outside finish comes indoors and the rooms read as one building rather than a set of interiors. Against that: black stone at the fireplaces, dark floor tile, black marble on the counters, and then leather, brass and firelight to keep it from going cold.

The hunting references are deliberate and kept few. A mount over the chimney, a bird in a cage by the billiard table, feathers framed above the bar. Enough to give the place a character, not enough to make it a theme.

The lounge house is the social half. A great room under a two-story ceiling with exposed beams, a fireplace clad in black stone, and enough glass on both levels that the room stays bright without a downlight doing the work.

The bar is small and completely equipped: refrigerator, microwave, coffee maker, a compact sink. Dark wood panelling, a Kenya Black marble top, three stools, and nothing that pretends to be a kitchen. Behind it the billiard table sits in its own corner under the stair, with armchairs and a standing lamp, which is the part of the house people stay in longest.

The spa house has its own sitting room, and it is the room that makes this a complex rather than a sauna. A rust leather sofa, two leather armchairs with a shape you notice, a long table with leather chairs, and a buffet for glasses. The fireplace is dark facade stone and metal, so the material that clads the building outside is what you sit in front of.

Its kitchen is a single run along one wall: dark oak fronts, a stone counter, an apron sink under the window, and glazed dark tile to the ceiling. Brass handles and brass sconces are the only bright thing in the room, and they are enough.

A wooden stair leads up from the great room to a bedroom on the mezzanine. It sits under the same dark ceiling, with a light cove running the length of the wall behind the bed and shelving built into it, so the room is lit without a fixture in sight. A door opens onto the terrace, which is the quietest place on the property.

The heat rooms sit directly behind the sitting room, so the walk is short: out of the lounge, into the sauna, and back again in a robe.

The sauna is the one light room in the complex. Benches and lining in pale wood, a wall of dark Carbon Slate behind the stove, and the stove itself clad in Iceberg marble. The heat is electric, so nothing has to be fed or cleaned out, and the light runs in coves at the ceiling and under the benches. There is no fixture in the room at all.

The steam room goes the other way. Walls, vault and benches are glossy black Trivium mosaic, so the surface is never flat black; it picks up whatever light reaches it and changes through the day. The floor and the freestanding basin are pale Iceberg marble, and a lit niche in the end wall is the only light source in the room.

Both showers use the same pair, black mosaic against Iceberg marble, with vertical niches lit from inside so the shelf you actually need is also what lights the wall. In the powder room the contrast turns warmer: oak panels, a black basin, and a suspended vanity in Kenya Black marble with LED strips set behind it.