How to do wellness the alpha way, from £100,000 saunas to luxury ice lounges

It’s sleek and sporty – and, oh go on, sexy – with sensual curves and the calibre of craftsmanship you expect from one of the world’s most desirable car marques. The earliest models will be delivered in early 2025, but if you put your name down to test drive one in the UK later this year, you will find it’s a multi-sensory experience, thanks to premium surround sound and light systems, along with a pleasant heat and smell experience.

This isn’t a car, you see: the S11 is a limited-edition sauna. There will be only 999 in the world, designed by Studio FA Porsche and made by the spa manufacturer Klafs, to make you think of the iconic Porsche 911. ‘Timeless’ is the word Klafs repeatedly uses, and you can have the all-singing and dancing version – a standalone chamber with a metallic grey cladding, glass front and floating, cantilevered benches – for a shade under £100,000, which coincidentally is the entry price for a new Porsche 911.

It’s unlikely to be an either/or situation for buyers, though: this will capture the hearts of wealthy, health-minded men for whom wellness isn’t only about enhancing mind and body, but also involves a big dose of brand-loving, name-dropping and one-upmanship.

‘The Porsche sauna speaks to men, especially those who have a long history with this make and model of sports car,’ comments Gilles Darmon, director of Klafs UK, which has been working with Porsche for several years to design ‘the most harmonious, timeless and comfortable sauna ever’, he says. ‘The idea was to create something that’s similarly iconic and which will blend into your living space without disrupting your design,’ he adds of the S11, which has the ‘precision’ (always a good word to get men interested) of straight lines along with a Japanese washi paper feature behind downward-angled slats, so the light changes as you shift your gaze.

This is just one of the fruits of Klafs’ thinking outside the box when it comes to saunas, designed with scientists and doctors ‘so we have evidence to back up our wellness products’, says Darmon. Other models include the Japandi-style Gesa Sauna, by Paris-based interior designer Gesa Hansen, which marries Danish cosiness with Japanese minimalism in its white benches, black walls and handy Scandi shelves for towels.

There’s also a growing trend for products catering to individuals or couples with divergent thermodynamic tastes, including the Sanarium, which offers both dry heat and steam. Or if you can’t decide between a big bubble bath or a steam room, then have both. The Espuro, priced from £75,000, is a steam room that can also be filled up to a metre’s depth with foamy water. And like all of Klafs’ products, it can also be installed on buyers’ super-yachts, should they miss their foam fix as they while away winters in the Caribbean.

Disparities in wellness tastes among couples are quite common, actually. ‘We once sold a house where the master bathroom was divided in two. The wife’s side boasted an enormous bath and sauna, and the husband’s housed an ice bucket above the shower. They had completely different ideologies on morning routine and temperature,’ recalls Claire Reynolds, managing director at UK Sotheby’s International Realty.

Because as any wellness disciple knows, cold is as pivotal to the experience as heat – hence today’s explosion of celebrities, sports stars and wannabes parading their daily dips into freezing water on Instagram.

Famously fitness-obsessed actor Mark Wahlberg – he of the 2.30am wake-up call to fit in a gruelling day-long exercise routine – uses Renu’s $9,700 Cold Stoic. This side of the chilly pond, Yorkshire company Brass Monkey’s cedar-clad Ice Plunge XL, at £15,750, is designed for the broader-shouldered man (6ft 4in and 16 stone) who wants full submersion. It comes in 700 colour and material combinations; or you can wallow in a converted whisky barrel if you’re really hard, pretty slim and have £6,750 to spare.

Meanwhile Chill Tubs’ cold plunge baths have found a devoted following among rugby players and racing drivers (Esteban Ocon has just installed one at home), and their resolutely masculine black or grey models (£3,500-£6,000) have the added joy of sheer simplicity. ‘There’s no ice required, and I change the water every 10 weeks,’ says Bradley Simmonds, fitness influencer and founder of the Get It Done app, who dips into the tub on his riverfront apartment’s terrace near Chelsea each morning.

Others prefer to chill out in a setting that recalls their beloved ski holidays. The most luxurious of Klafs’ Ice Lounges costs up to £250,000 and comes with backlit ice-effect cladding, a high-definition film of animals in the snow, and a stalagmite ice fountain from which you can break off a spike to cool yourself down.

Wellness – and so-called welltech, relating to all the latest life-enhancing products, services and experiences – is booming in Britain. Our wellness economy is the fifth biggest in the world, worth $158 billion in 2020, according to the Global Wellness Institute, a non-profit educational body. And where wellness once meant women and pampering, it has now become a lifestyle priority for high numbers of men too.

‘I’m very active and I consider myself very plugged into health trends in terms of training, recovery and nutrition,’ comments Tony Adams, a 30-year-old former investment banker turned wellness entrepreneur whose Fittle/Box – a handmade wooden box that stores fitness kit and doubles as a workout bench, costing about £1,000 – counts a Middle Eastern royal and an F1 driver among its first customers. ‘I’ve noticed a big shift in prioritising health among men my age. We’re more interested in a holistic approach to wellness, which is about performance and longevity, rather than the growing gym culture of looking like a bodybuilder. Just look at how many men walking around the City are sporting a Whoop band, Garmin watch or Oura Ring,’ he comments of the latest wearable tech.

High on Adams’s personal wellness wish list is an Eight Sleep Pod Cover with cooling technology. ‘At £2,000, if its claimed 32 per cent increase in deep sleep is even close to being achievable, then it’s a price worth paying,’ he says. He also has his eye on a cryo chamber, which, powered by liquid nitrogen, exposes the body to temperatures as low as -160C and is thought to help muscle recovery and alleviate ailments from arthritis to depression. ‘Cryoniq is big at the moment,’ he adds of the maker of full-body chambers that start at £33,000.

Join the cult Remedy Place in West Hollywood, however, and the access-all-areas $2,000 monthly membership fee gives unlimited ice baths and cryo sessions. It’s there too, in what’s described as ‘the world’s first social wellness club’, that the rich and famous are queuing up to join the ‘six-minute club’. That’s the time you need to spend in one of its rather clinical-looking metal tubs of ice to feel the full benefits.

It’s also in Los Angeles that Ancient Ritual is launching its debut product to get the wellness set all hot under the collar: Arc, ‘the world’s first experiential sauna’, which uses ‘empathy-centred AI’ to create a personalised ‘wellbeing journey’. The discreet, cupboard-like piece of furniture, slim enough to sit in a bedroom, is finished in natural oak or ebony black and costs from about $10,000. Inside, it’s like Narnia – a fully customisable cocoon that uses heat, light, colour and sound to help you breathe, meditate and slow down. Ancient Ritual is throwing in a bit of mystique too in anticipation of releasing its first Arcs later this year: the showroom is in a secret location, visited by invitation only.

Wellness plays a pivotal role now in LA’s large, luxury estates, according to Sam Palmer, a property agent who specialises in high-end, off-market homes. ‘The pandemic has accelerated a shift towards home sanctuaries for self-care first and foremost, before entertainment,’ adds Palmer, who shares a $30 million mansion in Brentwood (LA, not the Essex one) with his wife, the F1 heiress Petra Ecclestone.

The couple have installed a spa, a gym and a 70ft swimming pool with built-in hot and cold plunge pools to facilitate Palmer’s rigorous daily routine, which starts at 5.45am with a gym session followed by a hot steam, then a five-minute plunge in hot water, eight minutes in cold, and 15 minutes in an infra-red sauna before bed. In the couple’s London home, Sloane House in Chelsea, said to be worth £170 million, their basement is designed ‘with absolute wellness in mind’, he adds, describing the huge pool ‘where you can swim under a footbridge’, a Jacuzzi that seats 20, and a luxury sauna and steam room.

Covid lockdowns have unquestionably fuelled this devotion to wellness for those who can. Remote working has made the old ‘cash rich, time poor’ disconnect a thing of the past. Now you can have both and devote all those spare hours to physical and mental self-improvement. It’s more of a case of ‘all play and no work’ for today’s rich young things too, as they revel in me-time after selling their tech companies for a fortune, or else they get others to do the daily grind while they hit the beach gym in Tulum, or re-energise at BXR Retreats in Crete.

These are men who still do wellness the alpha way, though. One in three of super-prime London buying agent Jo Eccles’s clients are hedge funders, who have more time flexibility than bankers or traders, she says, ‘and it’s very common that they can be obsessive and competitive with their personal health. Ultra-fitness is a big trend right now, and this filters into their lifestyle and property requirements.’

One of her clients is building a £3 million basement extension in his £10 million house in St John’s Wood in north-west London, with a full-sized pool, gym, sauna and cryo chamber. ‘He’s completely unfazed about devoting a third of the entire square footage of his home to his personal health and wellness. It’s often the part of the house that such clients are most passionate and particular about,’ says Eccles, founder of Eccord.

Home swimming pools are rarely just places to do a few laps these days either. They come with retractable glass walls so you can admire your super-car collection or entertainment zone while you float. Some disappear entirely and turn into dance floors or – in the case of one house in Manhattan Beach, California, installed by UK-based Guncast – a garden terrace and children’s play area. ‘The client is rarely in need of the versatile space it can offer, but it certainly makes a great talking point,’ comments Guncast’s design and commercial director, Andy Carr. ‘When working with clients at the very top end of the market, we have to ask ourselves “how” rather than “why”,’ he adds of the ‘because we can’ demographic.

Over in La Quinta, an upmarket golf resort near Marbella, the name of one vast new villa says it all. Big Daddy, priced $12 million through Solvilla, shouts ‘look at me’ with its elevated sea-view plot and expanses of glazing that give nosy passers-by a hint of this wellness and entertainment haven. Discreet luxury it’s not. Even the champagne has its own ice bath here, sunk between the hot and cold plunge pools in the spa, ‘which is as much an entertainment centre as a wellness space,’ comments Solvilla’s CEO, Stacy Welch. ‘The rarest feature is the 130in TV that comes out of the edge of the swimming pool, so you can watch it from the comfort of your Jacuzzi,’ he adds.

You can’t help thinking that when it comes to wellness and the super-rich, it’s often a case of having all the gear and no idea. ‘People don’t feel as great as they’re told they should be feeling. I’m very pro-technology, but you need to start with the problem and find the solution rather than start with the product,’ comments Oliver Patrick, clinical director at Pillar Wellbeing, a personalised fitness and wellness service co-founded by the celebrity trainer Harry Jameson.

He meets men hankering after a pair of compression trousers like those of footballer Erling Haaland. ‘They are £800 trousers that simply mimic the effects of walking,’ Patrick laughs. Cheaper, however, than the Michelin Man-like £8,500 Body Balancer trousers that Jennifer Aniston recently revealed she puts on to help with lymphatic drainage and circulation.

A mattress with cooling technology won’t necessarily change your life either. ‘If you’re a guy with high muscle mass who trains every evening, a cooling bed could be genius. But for a 27-year-old guy who is physically inactive and spends too long on YouTube with blue light, the mattress won’t help him sleep,’ he says.

What Patrick calls the ‘gamification’ aspect of wellness – measuring, comparing and improving your stats – will always be irresistible to many men, though. It’s less a case of, ‘Will it help me?’ and more a question of, ‘Where can I get one?’ Especially when you’re talking the kind of wellness designed by Porsche.