Luxury living in Belle Meade, Brentwood, Franklin, and other affluent areas of Middle Tennessee means more than just an estate with beautiful interiors. Increasingly, high-end buyers are looking for properties with tailored outdoor amenities and impeccably maintained landscapes. This means opulent gardens, precise hedging, stone pathways, and wellness features that deliver resort-style relaxation.
That shift in demand for fitness and wellness attributes has many homeowners asking: does a sauna add value to a house? A sauna can add value to your home, but sophisticated property design takes a more holistic approach to wellness. The greatest lifestyle and long-term property value comes from a cohesive outdoor plan that integrates a sauna, plunge pools, and a spa into a retreat that reads as a natural extension of the home. While luxury real estate research identifies cold plunges, saunas, and tranquil spa features as high priorities for wellness-minded buyers, these features are at their best when they feel like an intentional part of your property.
At Landscape Solutions, we bring more than 15 years of experience designing distinct outdoor environments customized to reflect our clients’ goals, priorities, and vision. Through superior craftsmanship and a passion for backyard sanctuaries that sit seamlessly within the surrounding ecosystem, we specialize in creating exceptional spaces that align with your desired lifestyle and function beautifully season after season.
Why Saunas Are in High Demand in Middle Tennessee
A mainstay in Finland (where residents have about as many saunas as they do cars), a backyard sauna is now a desirable component of residential design here in the States. This is due to both the beauty and the many benefits of a home sauna. While a private, year-round retreat just steps from a home’s back door can contribute to healthy property values, it also contributes to your health, allowing you to decompress after a long day’s work and soothe tired muscles after working out. Research also reveals regular sauna use can contribute to a better night’s sleep (a valuable extra for today’s tech-saturated culture).
If you’re considering a sauna for your home, you have a few styles to choose from, including the more compact barrel model, a traditional Finnish-inspired structure, an infrared cabin, and a fully customized installation. Barrel saunas offer an efficient footprint and recognizable Scandinavian form. A custom cabin-style sauna can become a true extension of your property, with carefully selected cedar, refined detailing, and glass windows positioned to frame your garden, pool, or a wooded view.
In planning a home retreat, those who know they’ll eventually put their homes on the market ask: do home saunas increase property value? The answer is that a well-designed sauna broadens a luxury property’s appeal by distinguishing it from comparable listings. A professionally executed, appropriately scaled sauna supported by attractive landscaping can certainly draw the attention of an upper-tier homebuyer who prioritizes wellness.
Backyard Plunge Pools: A Stunning Visual Anchor
In addition to a sauna, many homeowners are incorporating plunge pools. This feature gives you a pool experience within a more compact footprint. Among the benefits of plunge pools is the obvious: they require less water and therefore fewer chemicals than a full-sized swimming pool. But plunge pools also provide an elegant visual anchor for your wellness courtyard, creating a restful, relaxing place to gather with friends and family or spend time alone as a break from life’s daily demands.
In addition to a warm plunge pool, a separate cold plunge offers complete contrast hydrotherapy in your own backyard. The cold plunge pool benefits that homeowners most often cite begin with the opportunity to enjoy an invigorating post-exercise dip for accelerated recovery. Cold plunges also help elevate mood and mental focus by triggering the release of endorphins and norepinephrine. And, surprisingly, just as saunas do, cold plunges can also improve your quality of sleep.
A vital element of your wellness zone is the visual connection between its features. Since your sauna and plunge pools function as one wellness circuit, their placement and design should make moving between them feel natural. As we develop our design scheme with you, we help you select the right materials, settle on preferred architectural details, and define the relationship between your property’s zones and pathways. By coordinating material selections, we create a cohesive outdoor oasis with the feel of a five-star retreat.
Backyard Spas: The Ultimate in At-Home Relaxation
A custom spa completes a wellness-focused outdoor design by creating a dedicated place for warm-water relaxation, recovery, and connection. When thoughtfully integrated with your hardscape and softscape elements, it provides you and your guests with a comfortable gathering place that extends the use of your backyard well into the cooler months.
Accentuated with an outdoor shower, towel storage, and bench seating, and framed by layered gardens and manicured landscaping, your wellness area can offer the seclusion of a fine resort and an aesthetic that may just break Instagram.
Does a swim spa add value to a home? Any quality addition to your home is likely to add value, but, of course, these features don’t appeal to everyone. A swim spa may appeal to buyers who value both fitness and relaxation, especially when there’s not enough room for a conventional lap pool. As with a sauna, its ROI potential depends on a range of variables specific to each buyer. Of course, if you’re staying put and you plan to get plenty of use out of your pool-spa combo, then the value can’t be measured in strict numerical terms.
Complete Your Wellness Sanctuary With Custom Lighting
A sophisticated lighting plan completes your wellness retreat, setting the right mood and creating visibility, depth, and visual continuity across the surrounding landscape.
Warm, diffused LED lighting in the sauna, beneath benches, or behind backrests creates a calm, cocoon-like atmosphere. If a decorative salt wall is included, we recommend subtle backlighting to highlight its color and crystalline texture.
At the cold plunge, restrained underwater lighting can improve visibility while making the water appear clear and inviting. Around a hot spa, amber or warm-white light supports a quieter mood.
Custom property lighting also elevates your multisensory retreat by establishing warmth, ambiance, and texture. Selective lighting ties everything together, uplighting a majestic tree, showcasing your landscape aesthetic, and establishing a high-end feel. A controlled hierarchy of lighting techniques imparts a sophisticated and intentional quality, the final addition to a complete wellness oasis.
Choosing Design-Build Expertise for Long-Term Value
For many homeowners, a backyard designed around wellness becomes an indispensable part of the property. And when every element works together (from pathways and patios to the sauna, spa, pools, and gardens), the result is an outdoor area that makes five-star resort living your everyday experience.
As a comprehensive design-build firm, Landscape Solutions brings exceptional expertise in luxury design and craftsmanship. For homeowners planning complex installations, we ensure the process is easy and streamlined by providing one trusted point of contact from initial design through construction and completion. This continuity maintains consistency across all project phases and ensures that questions are answered by a team that understands the complete vision. The result is always a highly refined outdoor escape tailored to our clients’ property, their home’s architecture, and the way they intend to experience their outdoor spaces.
Impeccable landscape design, construction, and care are the three pillars of our services at Landscape Solutions, helping to elevate your property and strengthen its long-term value.
If you’re considering a custom sauna, plunge pool, spa, or complete at-home wellness zone, contact Landscape Solutions to schedule a consultation. Together, we’ll transform your ideas into a spectacular outdoor sanctuary designed exclusively for your lifestyle.