In a hotel spa, the air sits steadily between 65 and 75% relative humidity and carries chlorine. A cabinet built from materials that work perfectly well in a guest room swells at the edges within the first season, and its hardware starts pitting with rust after eight months. We build furniture for wet areas using water-resistant V313 panels edged in 2 mm ABS on all four sides and AISI 316 stainless steel hardware, the only grade that stands up to chlorine. Design, manufacture and installation, with a single point of contact.
What really destroys spa furniture
It isn’t the splashing water, it’s the vapour that gets in through the edges. A melamine-faced panel has waterproof surfaces on top and underneath, but the cut edge is bare chipboard: it absorbs moisture from the air, expands and lifts. The spot where this happens first is always the bottom corner of the side panels at floor level, because that’s where water pools after the floor is washed.
The second enemy is combined chlorine, chloramines, which in a pool hall’s air are far more aggressive than the chlorine in the water. They attack AISI 304 steel through pitting corrosion, the brown speckling you see on hinges and handles. The countermeasure is grade 316, which contains molybdenum, or hardware in anodised aluminium and technopolymer.
The third is the thermal cycle. Near a sauna or steam room, a cabinet swings from 25 to 45 degrees several times a day, and joints glued with vinyl adhesives give way. In those areas we use polyurethane adhesives and knock-down structures with mechanical joints.
Anyone who designs a spa starting from the look gets the order of things wrong. You decide the material first, and then find a finish that resembles it. The overall choices, from guest flow to materials, follow the same logic that shapes how a hotel’s wellness area is organised from the layout stage.
What we make
Changing-room lockers
The most heavily used piece in the whole spa. We build these in 10 or 13 mm compact phenolic laminate, a solid material made of resin and cellulose: it has no edges to protect because it’s solid through, it doesn’t swell and it can be cleaned with chlorinated detergents. Typical width is 30 or 40 cm, depth 50 cm, height 180 cm, on stainless steel feet that keep the base 12 cm off the floor. Coin, key or RFID locks depending on how the spa is managed, with ventilation slots top and bottom, because a closed locker with a wet swimsuit inside turns into a greenhouse.
Loungers and seating
Frames in powder-coated aluminium or treated laminated timber, upholstered in marine-grade faux leather with anti-mould treatment and resistance to massage oils, which are the real cause of permanent staining. Seams are high-frequency welded rather than stitched: thread is exactly where water gets into the padding and mould starts. Padding is open-cell polyurethane at 35 kg/m³ density with drainage at the base.
Spa reception desk and product display
Fronts in solid surface or compact phenolic, with the worktop at 110 cm on the guest side and 90 cm on the staff side. We always include an enclosed compartment for towels and slippers and a lit display case for retail products, which generates a meaningful share of revenue in a hotel spa and simply doesn’t work without a dedicated unit.
Furniture for showers, washrooms and transit areas
Benches, towel racks, coat stands and dirty linen bins, all raised on feet and with slatted or perforated bases for drainage. The finishes follow the same logic as our hotel bathroom furniture, with a higher level of protection because here humidity isn’t a twenty-minute spike but a permanent condition.
Furniture for the relaxation area
Chaise longues, low tables, containers for herbal tea and water. Here you can go lighter on materials, since the environment is dry and heated, but the fabrics need care, as they have to withstand contact with damp skin and bathrobes. Washable technical fabrics rated above 50,000 Martindale cycles, with removable covers wherever possible.
The costliest mistake: a noisy relaxation area
A spa sells itself on silence, and almost no hotel spa is actually silent. The reason is that hard surfaces, low ceilings and technical plant produce very long reverberation, in which a hushed conversation five metres away comes through perfectly clearly and the hum of the heat pump becomes the background of the whole experience.
Reverberation time in a relaxation area should stay under 0.8 seconds. You get there with washable sound-absorbing ceiling panels, heavy curtains at the windows and upholstered furniture: in a 40 m² room, 12 m² of well-distributed absorbent surface is enough to halve the reverberation.
The other half of the job is mechanical, and it’s a question for whoever designs the building services: ducts sized for air velocity under 3 m/s at the outlets, silencers on the supply lines, plant kept outside the relaxation area’s volume. If the plant room shares a wall with the relaxation area, no acoustic panel will fix that.
Humidity, ventilation and what to ask your designer
Furniture lasts if the air is controlled. An indoor pool hall needs air at 30 degrees with relative humidity between 60 and 65%, that is two degrees above the water temperature to limit evaporation, and an air change rate of 4 to 8 volumes per hour. If the dehumidifier is undersized, or if someone switches it off overnight to save money, every piece of furniture ages at double the speed.
Before we quote, we check two things: where the supply air outlets are, because a cabinet hit by a jet of humid air at close range is doomed, and whether there’s a floor drain beneath the line of lockers.
For visible finishes, in a space where everyone walks barefoot and drags bags around, the criterion is repairability more than initial hardness: scratch-resistant surfaces that repair well allow a local touch-up instead of replacing the whole door.
Pool and gym: the same rules, different stresses
In an outdoor pool area, the problem shifts to UV exposure and thermal swings. Loungers and seating need aluminium frames, polypropylene or solution-dyed polyester fabrics with a lightfastness of at least 7 on the blue scale, and stainless steel fixings. How many seats you need and how you lay them out around the pool depends heavily on how the pool area is furnished in relation to the wet walkways.
In the gym, the variable is sweat, which is saline and corrodes more than people expect, alongside vibration from the equipment. Lockers, benches and towel units follow the same materials as the spa, while flooring and mirrors have their own rules that come under how a hotel gym is fitted out.
On timings: two weeks pass between the site survey and the executive drawings, manufacturing takes between 7 and 9 weeks, and installing a complete spa with changing rooms, reception desk and relaxation area is finished in four or five days. For a quote we need a dimensioned floor plan, the location of plant rooms and the number of lockers required: you can request one here.
Frequently asked questions
Can you use standard furniture in a spa if the ventilation is good?
No, and good ventilation is the first thing to go when a hotel cuts running costs in the low season. A non-water-resistant panel swells irreversibly within the first week the dehumidifier is off, and the damage can’t be repaired. The premium for the right materials runs at around 15%.
How long does a compact phenolic changing-room locker last?
Over fifteen years with routine maintenance alone, because the material is solid through and has no layers to delaminate. The part that fails first is the lock, especially coin locks, which need replacing after a few thousand cycles. We always specify standard locks that can be sourced individually.
What’s the difference between AISI 304 and 316 steel?
Grade 316 contains molybdenum, which makes it resistant to chloride corrosion. In pool halls and steam rooms, 304 develops brown speckling within a year, while 316 stays clean. The cost of 316 hardware adds only a few hundred euros to a spa project, so there’s no sense cutting corners there.
Can you work in a spa that stays open?
Yes, we generally work zone by zone, closing the changing rooms first and then the relaxation area, concentrating work during the quieter hours. Wet areas do need to be emptied and dried during installation, though, so the pool stays accessible but the ancillary facilities close in rotation for two or three days.