House, Rooms and Furniture in Finnish

Finnish flats have a feature that surprises everyone: most of them come with a sauna. Not the building — the flat. It's a small electric one off the bathroom, and it's normal enough that estate agents list it the way they'd list a balcony.

That's the flavour of this vocabulary. Fifty-five words for rooms, furniture, fixtures and the business of renting — with a few things in the list that only exist in a Finnish home.

Quick note: "I have a flat" uses the minulla on construction rather than a verb for "to have" — Finnish doesn't have one. That pattern is worth learning properly in the to have lesson.

What to Know About Finnish Homes

Shoes come off. This is the single rule a visitor most needs, and it isn't optional or situational — you take your shoes off in the eteinen of every Finnish home, including a brief visit, including a party, including when you're just dropping something off. Nobody will ask you to, because nobody imagines you'd need asking.

The second thing is that Finnish flats are listed by the number of rooms, not bedrooms, and the kitchen is counted separately in a shorthand you'll see in every listing: 2h + k means two rooms plus a kitchen, 3h + k + s adds a sauna. Once you can read that, Finnish property adverts become perfectly transparent.

Third, the sauna really is standard. Around three million saunas serve five and a half million people, and a great many of them are the small electric kind tucked into an ordinary bathroom. If you rent a flat with one, you'll be heating it yourself and picking up the vocabulary fast — what to say in there is a lesson of its own, mostly because none of the etiquette is ever explained out loud.