ABOUT SALO SAUNA
Salo Sauna began quietly on Little Finland Road, just south of Parry Sound — surrounded by rock, trees, and the scent of cedar. It wasn’t a factory or showroom, but a small workshop where we built our very first sauna by hand.
Our lumber came from a mill down the road. A local electrician wired our first stove. And the first time we felt that heat rise, we knew we had something real — rooted in tradition, built for modern life.
That first sauna was simple, but it had everything that mattered: good wood, honest construction, and the kind of heat that brings people together.
Family and friends tested and approved the sauna. Steam rose into the cool air. Conversations lingered. From that small beginning, Salo Sauna took shape — an idea rooted in Finland, built in Canada.
Our Founder
Henry Salonen
![Henry Salonen [bkg]2.png](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/4adf90_200b519cca404d41961bc6655e7c75f5~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_311,h_311,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/Henry%20Salonen%20%5Bbkg%5D2.png)
Founder
Salo Sauna was founded by Henry Salonen, a Finnish-Canadian designer whose work has long lived at the intersection of tradition, atmosphere, and buildable detail.
Henry has spent nearly two decades in film and interior
design, creating physical environments where proportion, light,
texture, and material choices all shaped how a space felt.
His background in set design, drafting, fabrication, and interiors taught him to think carefully about every detail: how a room is entered, how it holds warmth, how materials age, and how people move through it.
That same thinking led to Salo Sauna. For Henry, sauna is both inherited tradition and designed experience. It carries the Finnish practice of heat, water, breath, and stillness, while asking for the same discipline required of any well-made space: simplicity, durability, and care.
Our Start
Salo Sauna began not as an idea, but as a feeling—something carried quietly through generations of Finnish sauna tradition and eventually shaped into form by Henry Salonen.
In Henry’s upbringing, sauna was never framed as something special. It was simply there, like weather or seasons—a place you returned to without question. A room of heat and silence where time loosened its grip, and life felt briefly more honest. That rhythm, inherited rather than taught, became the quiet foundation of everything that followed.
His father, Tim, carried a deep, unspoken knowledge of building—an understanding that good things are made slowly, and meant to endure. Years later, when Henry’s brother John came through from British Columbia, the first Salo Sauna took shape on Little Finland Road—built by hand, in between conversations, in the way things are often built when they matter most.
Salo Sauna is now run by Henry at the helm, but it is not separate from where he comes from. It is an extension of it—shaped by family, memory, and the long, steady influence of a culture that understands heat as a form of care.
Henry Salonen with his father, Timo, and his brother, John.
Our Manifesto
We believe a sauna is more than heat.
It is a tradition, a rhythm, and a way of life passed down through generations. In Finland—the country with the highest number of saunas per capita—this ritual has stood the test of time, shaping community, health, and renewal.
At Salo Sauna, we honour that legacy and carry it forward. Salo means “forested wilderness” in Finnish. Our saunas are designed and crafted by a father and his two sons, and our family name, Salonen, literally refers to a person from the wilderness. This connection to land, craft, and lineage is at the heart of everything we do.
We line our walls, benches, and backrests with Canadian Western Red Cedar—not only for its strength and durability, but for its warmth, aroma, and quiet beauty. Cedar transforms a sauna into a sanctuary, a place set apart from the noise of everyday life.
We choose Harvia stoves because they are born of the same soil as the tradition itself—engineered in Finland to create true löyly: the living wave of heat and steam that makes a sauna come alive.
We believe deeply in the physical and mental health benefits of regular sauna use. Scientific research continues to show sauna bathing as one of the most effective forms of passive therapy for heart health, resilience, and longevity.
We are Salo Sauna. We build saunas that endure storms, silence distractions, and carry the wisdom of a culture that has always known this truth:
The sauna is not a luxury. It is a necessity.
