Ireland's first floating sauna opens in Dún Laoghaire Harbour

Dún Laoghaire Harbour now has Ireland’s first floating sauna, a timber-clad, wood-fired room on a pontoon that ends in a cold-water plunge pool looking straight out over Dublin Bay. The setup began welcoming customers on May 30 and was officially launched on June 1, giving the waterfront a new heat-to-cold ritual at the start of the summer swim season.

The sauna sits in the Old Quay area, sheltered by the West Pier, and the harbor setting is part of the appeal. Rather than treating the plunge as a separate add-on, Helios Sauna has built the water into the experience, with the deck and seawater access making the transition from heat to cold immediate. The unit seats about 12 people, which keeps the atmosphere intimate and gives it a scale that works for sea swimmers, visitors and first-timers looking for an easy entry point into cold-exposure routines.

Leas-Cathaoirleach Pierce Dargan marked the opening, underlining how quickly the project moved from idea to operating attraction. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council first advertised the opportunity to run a floating sauna on January 13, 2025, with a pontoon capped at 8m by 5m, or 40 square metres, and sustainability, self-sufficiency and eco-friendly practices set as core priorities. RTÉ reported strong interest in the proposal at the time, reflecting the appetite for waterfront amenities that do more than sit on the map.

The harbor sauna also fits a broader coastal pattern already familiar around Dublin Bay, where sea swimming, rowing, paddle sports and walking routes have long shaped how people use the shoreline. Helios Sauna’s model borrows from floating sauna facilities in Oslo, but the Dún Laoghaire version has its own local character because the harbor itself becomes part of the session. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council’s draft harbour masterplan, reported in June 2025, went even further, imagining floating pontoons, a pool and sauna, an events centre, housing and a spa hotel over the next two decades.

For now, the draw is immediate and easy to understand: step off the quay, warm up in the wood-fired sauna, then drop into the seawater with Dublin Bay spread out in front of you. In Dún Laoghaire, the harbor is no longer just the backdrop to the cold plunge, it is the point of it.