Steam rooms for Moroccan villas and riads, in zellige or marble

In a Moroccan house the steam room is usually the guest's room and the hammam the family's. It runs hotter and wetter than a hammam, which makes the waterproofing under the zellige or marble the part that decides whether it lasts past its second winter.

Typical project in Morocco: MAD 50k – 160k, supplied and installed · six to ten weeks per room after the drawing is approved, plus shipping.

Across the continent: Steam rooms & hammams in all eight countries →

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Steam rooms for Moroccan villas and riads, in zellige or marble

Waterproofing before any zellige goes on

Steam at 45 °C and full saturation condenses on every surface, and water that finds a gap reaches the pisé, brick or block behind within a season. So the order on site is fixed: a liquid membrane brushed over floor and walls and carried onto the ceiling, bandage tape wherever two planes meet, a sand-cement bed falling 1:50 to the gully, and only then the mosaic, zellige or marble.

Overhead we tilt a flat ceiling a few degrees so drips travel to the walls instead of onto shoulders. A dome solves the same problem by its shape — one practical reason the traditional Moroccan vault suits a steam room so well.

Generator sizing and the cost of stone

Output is calculated on volume with a correction for the finish. Glass mosaic and porcelain need less; marble and thick stone are thermally heavy and absorb the first ten minutes of every session. A marble bench is superb and it costs you generator capacity — we price both rather than quietly choosing the cheap one.

We put the generator in a cupboard or plant niche next door, never inside the steam room, with a short pipe run and a door wide enough to descale it without dismantling anything.

Water, and why Moroccan water matters here

Much of Morocco's mains water is hard. A steam generator on hard water scales, and a scaled generator fails. We fit a softener or a descaling regime as part of the job and put the descaling interval in the handover notes — it is the single most common reason a two-year-old generator stops working.

Budget and programme

A two-to-three-person steam room sits at 50 to 78 thousand MAD installed; a four-to-six-person room in hand-cut zellige with a domed ceiling runs 84 to 160. The generator, controls and benches come from our Istanbul factory, where they are tested before crating, and a single room takes 6–10 weeks from drawing approval to commissioning.

Send the room dimensions and a photo of where the generator could live; we reply with an itemised quote within one business day.

In short

Membrane on floor, walls and ceiling, bandage tape wherever planes meet
Floor falls 1:50, ceiling pitched 3–5° or domed so condensate runs to the walls
Generator sized on volume with a correction for marble against mosaic
Softener or descaling regime specified — Moroccan mains water is hard

Questions

Steam rooms in Morocco

Steam room or hammam?

A hammam is warm, humid and centred on a heated slab; a steam room is hotter, wetter and centred on the air. If the room is for guests who expect a spa, steam. If it is for the household, hammam, nearly always.

Can you convert a bathroom?

Sometimes — it needs a drain, a serviceable spot for the generator and a ceiling we can pitch. It almost always means stripping to the slab, because tiling over a floor with no fall buys the problem twice.

How often does the generator need descaling?

On typical Moroccan mains water, every three to six months without a softener and annually with one. We put the date in the handover notes.

Your project

Want it priced for your site?

Send us a photo of the spot and the rough size. Within one business day you get photos of comparable rooms we have finished and an itemised, position-by-position quote.

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