Estonia’s Kurro Builds a ‘Living Room’ Sauna So Parents Can Watch the Kids Swim
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The new nature spa hotel on Lake Peipus furnished its family sauna with armchairs and a glass wall onto the children’s pools. It’s included in every overnight stay.
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Kurro Nature Spa keeps two of its sauna areas for guests 16 and older. Its Living Room sauna goes the other way. The new hotel on the north shore of Lake Peipus in eastern Estonia furnished it with wooden armchairs and gave it a glass wall onto Flow, the pool area where children swim, so parents can take the heat without losing sight of their kids.
“We believe there is beauty in simplicity, and that people often feel most comfortable in familiar surroundings,” Kurro marketing specialist Carol Sanderkoff told SaunaNews by email. “For many of us, home is that place, and the living room is where family members come together. This was the inspiration behind the Living Room sauna.”
Kurro at a glance
- Where Uusküla village, Alutaguse parish, on the north shore of Lake Peipus, Estonia
- Getting there about two hours by car from Tallinn Airport
- Opened August 2026
- Living Room sauna included in every overnight stay, at no extra charge
- Spa about 16,000 square feet, with seven saunas, an 82-foot pool and 12 treatment rooms
- Adults-only saunas Glow and Ash, ages 16 and up, €45 per guest for the whole stay
- Day visitors €35 for Flow, €75 with Glow and Ash; call reception first
Parents get the heat while the kids stay in sight
The sauna is light-filled and spacious by design, and the layout has a practical job. “From the sauna, guests can look out over our Flow area, where children enjoy the pools,” Sanderkoff said. “This means parents can relax in the warmth of the sauna while keeping an eye on their little ones. They can enjoy a moment of calm while feeling reassured that their children are nearby.”
Flow is open to all ages from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. and comes with every room. It has a swimming pool at 82°F, a relaxation pool at 90°F, a children’s pool about a foot deep at 93°F, a baby jacuzzi and a warm room. The quieter sauna zones are the 16-and-up exception: Glow pairs a steam sauna and a wood sauna with a jacuzzi, and Ash adds a hot sauna, a salt sauna, an onion sauna, an ice bath and an outdoor pool.
“We haven’t abandoned families,” sales and marketing head Kulla Kroon told Scan Magazine in a profile of the hotel, adding that “the idea is to bring children back into nature as well.” The hotel’s family rooms have bunk beds, and it runs separate playrooms for different ages.
Auroom worked with Kurro on the sauna
Kurro worked with Estonian sauna maker Auroom on the Living Room sauna. Jako Kapp, one of Kurro’s owners, wrote the hotel’s overall concept, and the sauna opened with the hotel. Auroom builds indoor and outdoor saunas in Estonia and debuted an outdoor spa at Interbad in Germany this month.
The top-floor suite has a sauna of its own
The Kurro Suite takes up the hotel’s entire top floor, about 2,150 square feet with two bedrooms and a balcony facing the lake. Its private spa area has a Finnish sauna set at 194°F, a steam and foam sauna and a relaxation bath. The suite is booked by contacting the hotel.
SaunaShare’s Kurro Nature Spa listing has photos of every sauna in the hotel.
A slow-travel hotel at the edge of the Alutaguse forest
Kurro sits between the Alutaguse forest and the lake, with 96 rooms and nearly two miles of forest trails. Builders Nordecon and Embach Ehitus put up the roughly €36 million project, which had EU support. Before construction, the team gathered the site’s moss so it could be put back afterward. About 70 percent of the staff were hired locally, Scan Magazine reported, and Kurro asks for a two-night minimum on weekends so guests don’t rush from one sauna to the next.
Estonia makes many of the saunas sold around the world. Here’s how the country became a sauna manufacturing center.
Disclosure: SaunaNews is owned by SaunaShare, Inc., which also operates SaunaMarketplace.com. Sauna Marketplace sells Auroom saunas in the US.
