Jaia yurts and tipis

18/12/2025

🎄 Summer has a way of filling houses 🎄

Family arrive. Friends follow.
And suddenly, every spare corner is spoken for.

A Jaia Yurt offers a gracious solution —
a place apart, yet close enough for shared meals and long evenings.

Handcrafted in the Tasman region, New Zealand, our yurts combine
🌿 a low carbon footprint
🛠️ exceptional craftsmanship
🏡 genuine comfort, all year round

We’re a family business, building beautiful, durable spaces that respect the land and quietly elevate everyday living.

Extra room for guests.
Extra calm for you.
And a space people remember fondly long after they’ve gone home.

✨ Made locally
🌱 Built thoughtfully
🎁 Ready for summer

25/11/2025

We thought we'd showcase a quite common use of our yurts as Air BnB accomodation. From remote bush hideaways to some pretty swanky upmarket glamping. One of our yurts just won the Air BnB 'Best Nature Stay' award ... I'll throw a link in for that later. Many potential customers enquire where they can view a yurt, if we have one local to them. We no longer try to arrange viewings with nearby owners, but we do have a list of yurts around the country, that we know are rented out as accomodation ... over 30 that we know about, in some pretty awesome locations. We suggest that people take a wee break, book in for a night or two and really get the feel of a yurt, the space, simplicity ... It's a win win win for the hosts, for the customer, for us ... we'll never know when it doesn't work out, but we often find out when it does!

12/11/2025

Here's a wee time lapse of a recent 6m yurt installation ... 3 hours from start to finish, with lots of little pauses to take photos for our new instruction booklet ... Simple As!

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

09/10/2025

We 💖 Jigs here at Jaia ... Showing off our latest addition to the family ... As is often the case our old prototype has served us well for 19 years, but its time has come to meet its maker and keep us warm 🔥 It might seem a little OTT but we were getting a variation of a few mm on the lengths of the canes that bind into the Tono, or central wheel. The centre of the Yurt , the focal point ... Attention to detail rocks our world ! 🥳

03/10/2025

Do you need a big tiny space?
Our petite 4m diameter yurts have a decent 12.5 m2 floor area.
That is the size (but not the shape) of 4 Queen size beds!
It's bigger than a 4 x3m cabin... and way more stylish.
😎

23/09/2025

Make it your own!
We provide the kitset and you add the character.
There are infinite ways to customize the inside of your yurt to give it the look and feel that you want. Bedroom, lounge, studio or workshop... it's up to you.

We would love to see any Jaia yurts out there with there own style, feel free to pop a photo in the comments. 😉

09/09/2025

Open, versatile spaces.
Our yurts have been used as dances spaces, music rooms, yoga studios and more. An unfurnished yurt can be anything you need it to be. The high centre and radial geometry somehow make the inside space feel vast.

01/09/2025

Built using premium woods.
Native Tawhai - Red Beech timber sustainably harvested from near Murchison is what we use for our roof poles and wall lattice.
Canadian Red Cedar is the only wood we have found that has long flexible grain to laminate our compression wheel in the centre. Cedar is beautiful to work with and the wheel is like a functional sculpture.
Our doors are made from Redwood, locally harvested and milled here in Golden Bay.

26/08/2025

We also make tipis!
Our two pole tipis are a fantastic space for camping adventures. They only take 10 minutes to set up making them perfect for festivals, car camping, or even a day at the beach.

18/08/2025

Genuine Yurts, made in New Zealand 🌳🌳🌳
For over 20 years we have been creating quality yurts, refining our designs and making beautiful sleepouts, studios and homes for Kiwis.

With up to R2.9 wool insulation they are warm, cozy and fantastic value for the amount of floor space. We offer continuous customer support and can help you design a space that suits your needs.

We have been seeing more cheap imported yurts advertised lately, some with AI generated images of yurts. The first hand accounts of these yurts show that the quality and craftsmanship are very low.
We want to let you know that a Jaia yurt is an option that will give you true value for money.

We offer a bespoke product that is made by a small team in Golden Bay, Aotearoa New Zealand. We stand by the authenticity and quality of our product. 😊❤️

Check out our website yurts.co.nz for more information or contact us on [email protected]

04/08/2025

Accommodation made easy 😁

One of the popular uses for our yurts is extra accommodation. Airbnb, sleepout, farmstay, granny flat. Yurts make a cozy bedroom, especially when complemented with an auxiliary kitchen and bathroom.

Here is a beautiful example at The Green Tent in Matakana.
Check out the website: https://thegreentent.co.nz/

01/08/2025

Steaming day at Jaia!!🔥🌫

Every slat that makes up our khanna (wall lattice) gets steam bent on its journey to becoming a frame.
Our custom steamer is built from an old Zip water heater and a self leveling gravity water feeder. Plus a ply-wood steam chamber. Each batch of Tawhai (Red Beech) wood gets steamed for an hour before being bent on the rack.

The curve of the wood encourages the khanna to create a natural arc, it smoothly follows the circumference of the yurt and creates a straight wall.
Without the steam bent curve the walls would have a concave.

The steamed wood smells great and steaming day is always fun.