Haljas Houses Is Now a Three-Time Red Dot Winner

Haljas Houses, a four-year-old Estonian sauna manufacturer based in Tartu, has won its third Red Dot Design Award. The company’s Hele Nano personal sauna and Tarantula firewood carrier both received 2025 Red Dot recognition, adding to a 2022 win for the original Hele Glass. For a company with roughly five employees, three Red Dots in four years is an uncommon pace.

The Hele Nano is now available through American retailers, and it arrives with a distinction few prebuilt saunas share: it ships fully assembled, and it is the one Haljas sauna without lifting mounts on the roof: at 1,146 pounds, Haljas says, it can be lifted from beneath with a forklift or hoisted with straps.

Two wins in one year

The Red Dot Design Award, administered from Essen, Germany, evaluates thousands of product submissions annually on criteria including innovation, functionality, durability, and aesthetic quality.

The 2022 win went to the Hele Glass (also marketed as the Hele Single), an octagonal mirror-glass sauna that seats up to seven around a central heater. The 2025 wins recognized two very different products: the Hele Nano, a two-person personal sauna built for portability, and the Tarantula, a sculptural firewood carrier. Both 2025 entries were designed by Andre Maisväli.

The Hele Nano up close

On paper, the Hele Nano reads like a conventional small sauna: thermo-aspen interior, CLT (cross-laminated timber) structural panels, glulam posts, double-glazed mirror glass on the exterior. It seats two. It accepts a 3 to 6 kW electric heater. In the US, retailers pair it with a HUUM heater.

At 1,146 pounds and roughly 5 feet 3 inches long by 3 feet 9 inches wide, the Hele Nano arrives fully assembled. Haljas trucks it to the address; unloading and moving it into place is the buyer’s job, with whatever equipment the site needs, and Haljas lists only leveling and minor finishing work before the electrical hookup.

The SaunaNews team has used the Hele Nano firsthand. The build quality is high, the mirror glass exterior makes it look larger than its footprint, and the thermo-aspen interior produces a clean, even heat profile. It works indoors or outdoors, and because it ships in one piece, it can move again later, which suits renters, renovators, or anyone who does not want a sauna permanently fixed to a foundation. An electrician is still required for the 240V connection, but that is the only professional trade involved in setup.

The Tarantula firewood carrier

Most wood carriers are a canvas bag or a metal rack from the hardware store. The Tarantula is designed to sit beside a wood-burning sauna stove without clashing with the room it serves.

It reflects the same design-first philosophy that increasingly separates European sauna manufacturers from their competitors.

Part of Estonia’s sauna manufacturing base

Haljas is part of a broader pattern in Estonian manufacturing. The country, with a population smaller than Philadelphia’s, has produced an outsized share of the world’s sauna hardware over the past decade. Companies like Thermory, HUUM, Saunum, and Auroom, with its indoor and outdoor saunas, have built global distribution from Estonian production facilities. Haljas, founded in 2021 by CEO Otto Täht alongside CPO Karl Joonas and COO Rauno Palmi, is the newest entrant in that lineage.

The prebuilt and modular sauna segment is growing fast in the US, driven by buyers who want sauna access without the cost and timeline of custom construction. The Hele Nano is not the cheapest prebuilt option on the market.