Built Different: The Plunge Pool Nobody Thought Could Work

Welcome to the latest edition of Made to Order, where we profile the artisans and makers behind the innovative products making their way into custom homes.

When Karen Larson started Soake Pools with her husband Brian in 2014, she remembers spending a lot of time explaining exactly what a plunge pool was.

“We had to prove the concept,” she says. “People kind of made fun of us. ‘Oh, we heard the Larsons are swimming around in a little pool.’”

Then, the skeptics experienced it for themselves.

“They came over and they saw it and they were like, ‘Whoa, that is beautiful,’” she says.

Looking back, though, Larson says that’s exactly why the idea worked.

“When we met people in the pool industry, everyone said, ‘You’re doing what? You can’t do that. That’s not possible,’” she says. At the time, pools were largely built on-site. The idea of building a tiled concrete pool in a factory, shipping it across the country, and setting it in place just wasn’t what the industry was doing.  

“But we didn’t know that. We didn’t know that it wasn’t possible,” says Larson. “And I think that worked to our advantage.”

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The couple spent roughly a year and a half working through engineering, materials, and construction details before installing a prototype in their own backyard. One of the biggest challenges, Larson says, was determining whether a tiled concrete vessel could survive shipping.

“If I had a dollar for everyone that said, ‘Isn’t all the tile going to fall off when you ship it?,’” she says.

Their solution was simple enough: load that prototype on a truck, drive it over rough roads, and inspect it afterward.

“We opened it up and the tile hadn’t fallen off,” she says. The prototype remains in their backyard today.

Why concrete, why tile

The aesthetics drove the idea for tile first. The plunge pool in Vermont was lined with large-format tiles, nothing like the smooth molded blue liners common in residential pools at the time.

“We were outside in this gorgeous plunge pool in the winter, and they had this large dark grey tile,” Larson says. “We were blown away by how beautiful it was, because the aesthetic was night and day."

Beyond appearance, tile offered practical advantages. Unlike other finishes, it doesn’t require periodic refinishing, and it can’t be punctured.

“Both the aesthetics and the durability made it an obvious choice for us,” she says.

Once they committed to tile, concrete became the logical pairing. At the time, choosing a concrete pool had meant building entirely on-site over several months. But Larson says they wanted to change that, using a pre-cast model they could ship.

While fiberglass was an increasingly popular material for that, it had a downside in that it flexes during transport and installation, making it a poor match for tile.

"We would have had popping issues," she says. "It would not have been a good idea."

Building pools like products

Today, every Soake pool is cast in custom steel forms, then hand-tiled at the company's New Hampshire facility before shipping as a single fixed unit in about four to six weeks. Pools are delivered on a flat bed, then crane-set into place. Contractors and their subs complete excavation, installation, and any exterior work.

The company offers four standard sizes, ranging from a 4-foot-by-4-foot cold plunge to its most popular 7-foot-by-13-foot plunge pool. Interior tile selections include more than 50 large-format porcelain options, from soapstone and slate looks to colorful stripes, checks and custom mosaics.

"The sky is the limit," Larson says. "If you wanted us to do a mosaic with the image of your dog on the floor, we could do that."

Because the same crew tiles every pool in a controlled factory environment, Larson says the finish reaches a consistency that’s difficult to replicate in the field, where weather, subcontractor availability, and site conditions all introduce variables.

"When we tile these pools ahead of time and we ship them out fully finished, we just saved that builder or landscaper … it could be months," she says. "If a home builder is trying to get a certificate of occupancy or get something finished, the builder's got total project control."

Beyond the wellness trend

The explosion of interest in wellness and cold plunging has helped introduce more consumers to the category, but Larson says cold plunge products are actually just a small portion of the company's business.

The company’s smallest 4-foot-by-4-foot model serves that dedicated cold-plunge market, but most Soake installations function as year-round pools—heated in colder months and cooled in warmer seasons—designed for relaxation and entertaining. Some clients refer to them as a cocktail pool.

The company also developed a 7-foot-by-7-foot model in response to customer demand for a more social, hot-tub-style experience with perimeter seating. Some clients will even buy multiple sizes and run them at different temperatures simultaneously to run through a hot-cold plunge cycle.

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“We've really listened to our customers,” Larson says.

Features have expanded over time as well. Partnerships with cover manufacturer CoverSafe and swim-current provider Slipstream allow clients to add automatic covers and exercise capabilities without changing anything about the pool itself.

Growing on its own terms

Today, Soake Pools employs about 26 people and ships several hundred pools a year from a single manufacturing facility in New Hampshire. More than 1,500 installations are spread across 44 states, along with a handful of international projects.

“We don't need to be the biggest,” Larson says. “We just want to be the best in all ways.”

That philosophy traces back to advice from a former mentor.

“I asked her once about growth, and she said, ‘Decide who you want to be and grow to that,’” Larson says. “Don't grow just for the sake of growing. Decide where you want to go, who you want to be, and then make that your goal.”

Early opportunities often came from production-oriented projects seeking the lowest bid, Soake increasingly works with luxury builders who view outdoor spaces as an extension of the architecture rather than an afterthought.

"We're not the cheapest," she says. "But if you want a very nice plunge pool for your $15 million home, and all the advantages of a precast pool, that's really who we are."

It’s an approach the Larsons say works, because it worked on them.

Soake’s experience center, opened in late 2024, is designed to recreate the experience they had in Vermont. Prospective customers meet the team, tour the production facility, and even change into robes and swim in the pools before deciding. Larson says that once someone experiences a plunge pool, the concept tends to sell itself.