The only Kohler Waters Spa outside America sits inside the Old Course Hotel, and after a five-month rebuild in 2025 it is the most serious spa on the east coast of Scotland. You do not need to be a guest, and you certainly do not need to play golf.
The best moment at the Kohler Waters Spa happens outside, in the weather. You climb the stairs from the pool in a robe, cross a roof garden with the wind coming straight off the North Sea, and lower yourself into a tub of hot water with the whole of St Andrews Bay in front of you: the West Sands, the estuary, the grey line of the Angus coast, and, if you turn round, the seventeenth hole of the Old Course with someone on it hoping for the best. It is a Scottish idea of luxury — warmth in the face of the elements, rather than instead of them — and it is the reason people who have been once talk about it for years.
The spa belongs to Kohler, the Wisconsin family company that makes the world's more expensive bathtubs and bought the Old Course Hotel in 2004. They opened this in 2006 as the first of their spas outside the United States, rebuilt it for eight million pounds in 2017, and closed it again for five months in 2025 to add what the trade calls contrast therapy and what everyone else calls very hot followed by very cold. It reopened at the end of September 2025. Day guests are welcome, and on a wet afternoon in St Andrews there is nothing better to do.
Why go
Because it is a proper spa, of a scale and seriousness the town has nowhere else: 25,000 square feet, a twenty-metre pool, a hydrotherapy pool, a cold plunge, sauna and steam, eleven treatment rooms including two for couples, a gym next door, a café that does lunch, and that roof. And because since the rebuild it has something no other spa in Scotland has: a snow cabin. You sit in a sauna designed by the German firm Klafs, walk into a room where it is snowing, and come out feeling like a different, better person. The Espuro foam steam room next to it — the first in the UK, where the steam arrives as a warm, scented foam — runs three times a day and is included in the entry.
The other reason is who it is for. The Old Course Hotel is a golf hotel, and golf hotels leave the non-golfer with a long afternoon. This is the answer. Book the golfer a tee time on the Jubilee and the other one a spa day, and meet in the Jigger Inn at six with two very different kinds of tiredness.
What happens
You arrive at the spa entrance on the ground floor, are given a robe, slippers and a locker, and are pointed at the water. The hydrotherapy circuit is the thing to do first: the warm pool with its jets, then the sauna, then the cold plunge, then again — the regulars say three rounds — before the foam steam room, which is timed at eleven, two and five. Then the snow cabin, which takes two at a time and needs to be booked at reception. Then the roof.
Treatments run through the day in the eleven rooms, on heated beds under quilts, and are the reason most people come: massages, facials, body treatments and rituals using Omorovicza, Ground, Margaret Dabbs and Phytomer, and a hot-stone massage that reviewers keep returning for. Any treatment includes the full run of the spa for the day. Lunch is at the spa café, in your robe, and the relaxation room afterward has daybeds, low light and no clock.
"Warmth in the face of the elements, rather than instead of them."
The detail people remember
The plunge after the snow. You have been in a sauna at ninety degrees; you have walked through a room where it is snowing; you drop into water at ten degrees and come up gasping and laughing. Then the roof, and the hot tub, and the sea. Nobody remembers the facial. Everybody remembers this.
Who it is for
The non-golfer on a golf trip, above all. Couples, for whom there are two treatment suites built for two. Mothers and daughters; friends on a weekend; anyone with a rainy afternoon and a birthday to mark. Hotel guests, obviously, who have it under the same roof. And anyone in Fife who wants a day of it without driving to Gleneagles.
It is not cheap, and it is not always calm: a full spa day with a treatment runs well over two hundred pounds a head, and on busy Saturdays the pool and the thermal suite can feel crowded and the service stretched. Go midweek, book the first slot, and it is a different place. Children are not the point here; check the age policy before bringing them.
A little history
Kohler has made baths since the 1880s, and the family opened its first Waters Spa at its home in Wisconsin in 2000 on the simple theory that people who make baths ought to know something about being in water. When they bought the Old Course Hotel in 2004 — their first hotel outside America — a spa was the first thing they built, opening in 2006. It was rebuilt and doubled in 2017 and closed again from spring to September 2025 for a five-month renovation that added the snow cabin, the foam steam room, a new hydrotherapy suite and a treatment menu built around what the spa calls coorie, the Scots word for warmth and comfort. It remains the only Kohler Waters Spa outside the United States.
What to do nearby
Stay upstairs: Read: The Old Course Hotel, the hotel golfers aim over. [when published]
Send the golfer out first: Read: St Andrews Links, more than the home of golf.
Meet in the Jigger Inn afterward, by the seventeenth, for a pint by the fire.
The West Sands, five minutes' walk, for the same view from sea level.
The other hotel with a view and no spa of its own: Read: Hotel du Vin, the wine hotel on the Scores. [when published]
Build it into the Saturday: Read: A perfect weekend in St Andrews. [when published]
Know before you go
Address: Kohler Waters Spa, Old Course Hotel, Old Station Road, St Andrews KY16 9SP. Spa entrance on the ground floor. Tel +44 (0)1334 474371; spa@oldcoursehotel.co.uk.
From the Old Course: On it — the hotel sits beside the seventeenth. Five minutes' walk from the first tee, ten from Market Street.
Hours / season: Daily 8am–8pm, all year. Foam steam room sessions at 11am, 2pm and 5pm. Snow cabin bookable at reception, two people at a time.
Price: Treatments from around £100; a 75-minute massage around £136, with full spa access for the day included. Spa day packages with lunch from around £220. Non-residents welcome; hotel guests have access included.
How to book: Online through the hotel's spa page, or call. Book treatments and the snow cabin ahead; weekends fill weeks out.
Good to know: Robe, slippers and towels provided. Free parking with EV chargers at the hotel. Spa café for lunch in your robe. Quieter midweek and first thing. Check the age policy for under-16s. Gift vouchers available.
Best time: A cold, bright weekday in October or February, when the contrast therapy makes sense and the roof is yours.
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