Published by Koriboshi Sauna
There is a quiet revolution happening inside the wellness world — and it smells like cedar.
Across North America, a new generation of sauna studios is pushing past the fluorescent-lit gym locker room and the hotel spa afterthought. These are places built around ritual, materiality, and community. Places where the architecture is considered, the cold plunge is serious, and the culture around heat feels less like a fitness trend and more like a returning to something ancient.
At Koriboshi, we spend a lot of time thinking about sauna culture — it's the heartbeat behind everything we make. So we've been paying close attention to the spaces shaping the conversation. Below, five studios leading the way.
1. Othership — Toronto & New York City
Locations: Adelaide St W & Yorkville (Toronto) · Flatiron & Brooklyn (New York) Website: othership.us
If one brand has done the most to introduce North American city-dwellers to guided sauna culture, it's Othership. Founded in 2020 by Robbie Bent out of a backyard in Toronto, the concept has scaled without losing the intimacy that made it compelling in the first place.
Othership's signature is the guided session — a led journey through heat, cold, and breathwork designed to move participants through specific emotional and physiological states. The Toronto flagship on Adelaide houses the city's largest performance sauna, built from Western Red Cedar and capable of reaching 85°C, with aromatic snowballs thrown to create bursts of restorative humidity. New York's Flatiron outpost runs the same program just steps from Madison Square Park, with custom four-person ice baths kept between 0–4°C.
What sets Othership apart is its insistence on community. Phones are not the vibe. Conversation is. Alcohol-free social programming — comedy nights, musician sessions, guided emotional-release experiences — fills the calendar. The brand has taken the Finnish idea of the sauna as a social equalizer and given it a 21st-century container. The result is equal parts wellness studio and third space.
Best for: First-timers, guided experiences, urban ritual
2. Fjord — Sausalito, California
Location: 2310 Marinship Way, Sausalito, CA Website: thisisfjord.com
If there is a single sauna in North America that captures the intersection of great architecture, great design, and a genuinely arresting natural setting, it is Fjord.
Built atop a decommissioned wave attenuator barge from the 2013 America's Cup — and designed by architect Nick Polansky using repurposed Corten steel shipping containers and sustainable second-growth California redwood — Fjord floats in Richardson Bay just north of San Francisco. Two Finnish-style saunas, each seating up to six, are maintained at a target 190°F with a traditional stone heater and ladle for löyly. Beyond the picture windows: Angel Island, the Tiburon hills, sailboats drifting past.
Co-founders Alex Yenni and Gabe Turner came out of marketing and technology careers, motivated by what they'd experienced at floating saunas in Copenhagen and Oslo. Their thesis was simple: California's cold, clean bay was a natural cold plunge that nobody was using. Guests drop into the 55°F water directly from the dock. The experience — heat, salt, cold, silence, seagulls — is genuinely unlike anything else on the West Coast.
Fjord books up months in advance. That's a signal worth paying attention to.
Best for: Design enthusiasts, Bay Area visitors, a genuinely wild cold plunge
3. PORTAL° Thermaculture — Denver, Boulder, Minneapolis & Bozeman
Locations: Denver (Federal Blvd) · Boulder · Minneapolis · Bozeman Website: portalthermaculture.com
PORTAL° is what happens when the ethos behind Nordic thermaculture becomes a scalable brand without losing its soul. Co-founded by Will Drescher — who cut his teeth at a DIY setup behind a Minneapolis strip mall, where the sauna was a converted horse trailer and the cold plunge was a Grizzly cooler — PORTAL° has grown into a multi-city operation that somehow still feels like a locals' spot at every outpost.
The concept is clean: electric and wood-fired saunas paired with communal cold plunge pools and genuine social space. The Denver flagship is a signature outdoor club on Federal Blvd with two saunas and three individual cold plunge tubs. Boulder offers a more intimate indoor-outdoor setup with programming from local yoga studios and a rotating vintage shop curated by a longtime bookseller. Minneapolis brings the indoor-outdoor contrast experience to a city that genuinely needs it.
PORTAL° coined the word "thermaculture" to describe what they're building — an ancient practice framed as a form of recreation and community infrastructure, not biohacking or optimization. Sessions run 90 minutes, members cycle three rounds of 15 minutes of heat and 3 minutes of cold. Memberships start at $99/month. The access model is democratic by design.
Best for: Regulars, membership value, the Mountain West sauna community
4. NAOSU Sauna — Denver, Colorado
Location: 3145 Larimer St, Denver, CO (RiNo Art District) Website: naosusauna.com
Denver's RiNo Art District is one of the most design-conscious neighborhoods in the American interior, and NAOSU fits it perfectly. Rooted in Asian wellness traditions and named with a nod to the Japanese concept of healing through restoration, NAOSU is a modern sauna and cold plunge studio that prioritizes atmosphere as much as function.
The centerpiece is a meticulously crafted three-level wooden sauna running at 185°F and above — guests consistently note the spaciousness and the quality of the wood scent. Around it, five cold plunge tubs (three indoor, two outdoor barrel plunges) create a full contrast therapy circuit. Complimentary East Asian teas are part of every session — a quiet, considered touch that reframes the post-sauna wind-down.
Where many studios lean Nordic, NAOSU draws from a broader thermal lineage — Japanese onsen, Korean jjimjilbang, the East Asian bathhouse tradition of communal heat as a site of care and presence. The result is a space with a distinct aesthetic and philosophical identity. Clean, minimal, and warm in exactly the right proportions.
Open daily from 7 AM, closed Tuesdays.
Best for: Design-forward wellness, East Asian sauna culture, post-session tea
5. The Good Sauna — Vancouver, BC
Location: 1216 Franklin St, East Vancouver (at Container Brewing) Website: thegoodsauna.com
The Good Sauna is the most unassuming entry on this list — and one of the most genuinely enjoyable. Set outdoors at East Vancouver's Container Brewing, the setup is refreshingly un-precious: a wood-burning Finnish sauna with original Harvia stoves, a proper ice bath, a communal campfire rest area, and cold beers nearby if you want them.
Sessions run 1 hour 45 minutes in community drop-ins of up to 10, or private groups of up to 12. The formula is the classic Nordic cycle: 5–15 minutes in the sauna, 45 seconds to 2 minutes in the ice bath, rest by the fire, repeat. Simple, honest, effective. The campfire area — canopied for wet Vancouver weather — is genuinely one of the best wind-down spaces in the city.
What The Good Sauna captures is the spirit of the sauna before it became a wellness industry product: a place to be uncomfortable together, to rest together, to be cold together. The proximity to a craft brewery is not incidental. It's a deliberate nod to the pub-as-sauna theory: the best social spaces are the ones with heat, cold, and something to drink after.
Seasonal and event-based programming keeps the calendar fresh.
Best for: Authenticity seekers, Vancouver locals, the full social sauna experience
A Note on What These Spaces Share
Different cities, different aesthetics, different philosophies — but a consistent thread runs through all five: these studios treat the sauna as a place, not just a service. The materials are considered. The social experience is designed. The ritual is respected.
This is what the new wave of North American sauna culture looks like, and we think it's only getting started.
At Koriboshi, we make the sauna hat — the original Finnish accessory designed to protect your head from the heat and extend your time inside. If you're visiting any of the studios above, you'll want one.
Shop the Koriboshi Sauna Hat →
Tags: sauna culture, best saunas North America, sauna wellness, contrast therapy, cold plunge, Nordic wellness, sauna hat, Othership, Fjord sauna, NAOSU sauna, PORTAL thermaculture, The Good Sauna, wellness travel