How Hot Should You Keep Your Sauna?

A home sauna makes it easier than ever to customize your sauna settings to your personal preferences. With a new sauna, you can get all the sauna benefits you need without leaving the comfort of your home. One important factor to consider is the temperature of your home sauna. There are a variety of home sauna heaters to choose from to fit with your ideal sauna design. A good rule of thumb in determining how hot your sauna should be is to consider both the type of sauna heater and the length of your sauna sessions. Below, we have created a helpful guide to determine how hot you should keep your sauna.

Finnish Sauna

A Finnish or traditional sauna usually utilizes a wood-burning, gas, or electric heater. Although wood-burning stoves are the traditional choice, electric sauna heaters are becoming more common nowadays due to their power and flexibility. No matter what type of heater you use, the goal is to heat up sauna rocks, which can then have water poured over them to generate steam. With an electric heater and enhanced control you will be able to set automatic timers to switch the heater off after a certain amount of time. The American standard for traditional saunas is a temperature between 160 and 194°F. Usually, sauna users will spend 10 to 30 minutes in their sauna, with their one to three session times split up by cooling off periods. 

Infrared Sauna

Infrared saunas run on electricity to generate infrared light that deeply penetrates the skin to induce sweating. Due to the unique infrared technology, the required temperature is much lower than a traditional sauna, usually between 100 and 150°F. Infrared technology is able to warm-up the body from the inside out, allowing you to enjoy all the sauna benefits without the high heat of a traditional sauna. Due to the lower temperatures of an infrared sauna, the average session time ranges from 15 to 45 minutes.

Steam Sauna

A steam sauna utilizes a steam generator to boil water and heat up sauna users with steam instead of dry heat. Inside a steam sauna, humidity can reach as high as 100%, but temperatures are lower than traditional or infrared saunas. The average temperature is usually between 90 to 120°F. However, the high humidity will likely make it feel warmer than the actual temperature. Most steam sauna owners will utilize the sauna for sessions of about 30 minutes.

Find The Sauna That's Right For You

At SaunaFin, we sell a range of prefabricated kits and sauna material kits to make it easy to build a new at-home sauna. With regular use, sauna benefits include an improvement to muscle aches and pains, a reduction in anxiety and stress, and improved sleep. After selecting your desired sauna model, you can then choose between a variety of sauna heaters to make your home sauna one-of-a-kind. For more information on any of SaunaFin’s home sauna models, contact us today at 905-738-4017.