The 20 Best Resorts in Sweden

An old red-brick power plant on the Västerås lakeside has been stretched into an 18-story, 227-room luxury hotel, and the interiors lean hard into what the team calls "industrial-romantic." There's an upscale steakhouse, a rooftop bar, a lounge with an indoor pool heated by one of the original turbines, and an eight-floor indoor water park with waterslides, which is not a sentence you often write about a design hotel.

The Bay Bay Pool Club spans 1,750 square meters of sunbeds, firepits, and bass you can feel through the tiles, which sets the tone for this country club resort tucked into Sweden's lake country just outside Gothenburg. The pitch is sociable weekends outdoors, lakeside rides, lobby bar games, and Spanish bites in the sun. It's a place people arrive to unwind and somehow end up with a story about it.

A ring of timber suspended over a frozen river in a village most maps don't bother with, Arctic Bath is a design hotel and spa in Swedish Lapland where the plunge pool in the central courtyard is kept, deliberately, at ice-cold. Cabins sit among the pines or out on the ice itself. The days go to dog sledding and snowshoeing, the evenings to sauna ritual and long dinners built on local game. It holds a Michelin Key.

Peter Bohlin, the architect behind a string of Apple stores, turns out to have a convincing rustic side. This five-star ski resort in Åre sits at the base of Mount Åreskutan, all soaring timber forms, rough-hewn stone, and classic furs where you might have expected glass and steel. Heated bathroom floors, kitchenettes, a spa, and a dedicated gondola for guests round out the picture. There's fine dining, a lounge bar, and a slopeside outpost for when you can't be bothered to ski all the way back.

Eight treehouses, each designed by a different Swedish architecture firm, perched in the pines just south of the Arctic Circle. The Mirrorcube disappears into the forest; the UFO looks like a prop from a 1970s Scandinavian sci-fi film. A restaurant serves locally inspired food, and there's a sauna and riverside hot tub, but services are otherwise kept intentionally spare. The point, clearly, is the trees.

A boutique eco-hotel two hundred meters from the Baltic on the island of Öland, StrandNara keeps things crisp and Scandinavian without going cold. The rooms run toward a disciplined palette, and breakfast comes with the stay. Dinner is a three-course modern Nordic affair worth staying in for. Beijershamn nature reserve is a short drive when you do venture out, and the beach is essentially at the door.

Rooms built from ice cut out of the Torne River, sleeping around four degrees below zero, and yet somehow the place is always booked. This Lapland hotel runs year-round: winter brings seasonal ice rooms and artist-carved Art Suites, while the solar-powered Icehotel 365 keeps permanent ice suites cold through summer. Warm chalets are available for guests who prefer a bed that won't slowly melt, along with three restaurants drawing on the traditional flavors of Jukkasjärvi.