Health Update: Health Update: Luxury wellness businesses boom with Greenville newcomers – What Experts Say– What Experts Say.
The communal sauna and cold plunge space is brightly lit with pure white walls, minimalist decor and solid, black furniture reminiscent of a modern Norwegian hotel. Private rooms, secluded down a narrow corridor, are styled with matte black walls and dim lighting.
For $45, visitors can spend two hours alternating between the sauna and the cold plunge in the public room. For $200, up to four people can retreat to the Sauna Cabana, where they won’t be disturbed and have Bluetooth plug-ins and can order healthy house-made drinks.
“This was kind of a foreign concept for Greenville when we opened,” Liles said. Yet he sees places like Sauna House as the natural evolution of an active community that built much of its identity on outdoor amenities like the Swamp Rabbit Trail and Falls Park.
Unlike the Swamp Rabbit Trail, though, many of the new businesses opening in Greenville come at a high cost, explicitly branding themselves as luxury spaces.
Sauna House opened in May 2025, and the business has already gained a following on social media.
Take Arve Aesthetics, the chic new medspa opening at The Commons.
“We are positioning ourselves to be that luxury, high-end brand,” said Joseph Laterza, one of the business’ owners.
What began less than two years ago as a safe place for gender affirming care quickly snowballed into a business offering a full suite of services, such as injectables, fillers, red light therapy, laser treatments and more. The business’ growth is a testament to how badly people want these services, Laterza said.
While business owners emphasized that plenty of Greenville natives want to use these wellness services, many of their customers are transplants. Places like Sauna House or Evolve would have been more difficult — if not impossible — to open just a few years ago, business owners said.
“A few years ago, Greenville would not have been ready for a Sauna House,” said Meredith Nelson, president of Oase Day Spa in the Overbrook community, which opened in 2020. “People would have been like, ‘Not cool,’ or like, ‘I’m not going to spend my money on a sauna.’”