Scandi-style hillside home with garden sauna overlooking Killiney Bay for €3.75m

• Published date: 23 March 2023

The house was designed and built in 2013 by architects Boyd Cody and Andrew Lohan so that from the highest point in the garden you could see the sea. Standing on a site that was formerly part of the land belonging to the neighbouring Hill House on Torca Road, it's high above other houses on the road with clear views across Killiney Bay

The steeply sloping wild garden was created from scrubland by one of the owners with Chelsea-award-winner Mary Reynolds. Nothing would grow on the compacted soil for two or three years, however, it was restored with 70 downy birch trees planted, along with many different plant species, including fig, pear, plum, wild strawberries and apple trees. No pesticides or herbicides were used developing the garden, where there's a pond at the front in which frogs spawn every year. The house has a sedum roof; a thermal panel on it heats the water. High in one corner of the garden is a wood-fired sauna; the owners say they can get the fire going, run down the nearby Cat's Ladder walkway to the Vico swimming spot, and enjoy the sauna on their return.

IO House, Torca Road, Dalkey, Co Dublin, a 274 sq m (2,950 sq ft) detached four-bed, is for sale through Sherry FitzGerald, seeking €3.75 million. The owners' two daughters are now attending college and the couple are ready to move on. They've moved houses roughly every seven years and say "we probably do like a project".

IO house – the name is Greek and also the name of a moon – is shaped in two wings, nearly at right angles; the front door opens into the downstairs but most of the living space is upstairs, with the livingroom/diningroom/kitchen in the section looking directly over the sea. Most of the bedrooms are in a long wing stretching back into the hill.

Stairs with a glass balustrade lead up to the long open-plan living space; it has floor-to-ceiling windows the length of both sides and a high, beamed ceiling. In the livingroom, as well as in bathrooms and bedrooms, the owners have hung distinctive wooden blinds from Danish company Nolastar. Open shelving in the middle of the space marks the division between the livingroom and dining area which is next to the Silestone-topped island unit and neat kitchen, fitted with oak units. There is a large pantry in a corridor off the kitchen.

At one end of the space, a door opens on to a small patio where another bedroom could be built – there was...