How Much Is a Sauna? UK Home Sauna Costs by Type in 2026

A home sauna in the UK costs anything from about £100 to well over £10,000. The type decides almost everything: a sauna blanket runs roughly £100 to £400, a portable steam or infrared tent £100 to £300, a wooden infrared cabin from about £1,300 to £4,000, a traditional indoor cabin from around £1,800 upwards, and an outdoor barrel or garden sauna roughly £3,000 to £10,000 or more. Traditional electric heaters then add an electrician's bill on top, and running costs range from about 10p to £3.50 a session.

UK sauna prices at a glance

Type	Typical price	Power	Electrician?
Infrared sauna blanket	£100 to £400	About 0.5kW	No
Portable steam or infrared tent	£100 to £300	1kW to 1.6kW	No
Indoor infrared cabin	About £1,300 to £4,000	Often around 2kW	Usually not, check the draw
Traditional indoor cabin	From about £1,800, often far more	4.5kW to 9kW heater	Yes
Outdoor barrel or garden sauna	£3,000 to £10,000+	4.5kW to 9kW, or wood	Yes if electric, plus a base

Not sure which type you actually want? Our infrared vs traditional sauna comparison covers the heat, the feel and the evidence before you spend anything.

Sauna blankets: about £100 to £400

A sauna blanket is a heated sleeping bag you lie in for 30 to 45 minutes with your head out. It's the cheapest form of dry heat and the only one that slides under a bed, but you won't get hot air around your face, and you'll be wiping the lining down after every session.

Prices from our best sauna blanket UK guide cover the whole band. The MAXSTRENGTH sat under £100, the REVIIV and the 500W Nebula at around £200, the LifePro at around £300, and the Firzone ProZERO 360 at around £389. Premium models like the HYDRAGUN HeatPod go higher still, to around £570. What the extra money buys is finer temperature control, more even heating and a lining that survives daily use; the basic experience barely changes.

Portable steam and infrared tents: about £100 to £300

For most people this is the realistic entry point to a sauna habit. A steam tent pairs a pop-up fabric shell with a kettle-style generator outside it, while an infrared tent or box has carbon panels in the walls and usually a heated foot pad.

When we checked prices for our portable sauna guide in November 2026, the Runitude steam tent was £114.59, the SereneLife infrared tent £169.99, the CONLONS infrared tent £219.99 and the larger Smartmak £253.49. Some steam tents dip just under £100. Spending more mostly buys a taller frame, better zips and a sturdier chair, which matters more than it sounds if you're over six foot.

Check the Runitude steam sauna price on Amazon

None of these get properly hot by Finnish standards. Expect roughly 45°C to 65°C, against 80°C to 100°C in a traditional room, so they're a heat habit rather than a sauna in the old sense.

Indoor infrared cabins: about £1,300 to £4,000

A timber infrared cabin is the first step up to something that looks like furniture rather than camping kit. You get a proper wooden box with ceramic or carbon radiators, a bench and a glass door, and most one or two person models still plug into a standard socket.

On Amazon UK today, a one person hemlock cabin such as the SaunaMed 1 Person FAR Infrared Cabin sells for £1,649, and two person carbon or full spectrum cabins from brands like Vidalux run from about £1,650 to £2,200. Bigger three and four person cabins from specialist retailers climb towards £4,000, and those larger units sometimes draw enough power to need their own circuit. Check the rated wattage on the spec sheet before you assume the plug will cope.

Check the SaunaMed 1 Person cabin price on Amazon

Traditional indoor cabins: from about £1,800

A traditional cabin is the Finnish version: a timber room, an electric stove with a basket of stones, and enough heat to throw water on. Small two person kits from UK sauna retailers start at around £1,800, and three or four person cabins with a quality heater and controller often land in the £3,000 to £6,000 range. A bespoke build into a spare room or loft costs more again.

The cabin is only half of the cost, because the heater drives the wiring. Harvia, one of the biggest heater makers, rates its small Qubic 4.5kW heater for rooms of 3 to 6 cubic metres on a single phase 20A fuse. Its larger Cilindro PC90XE 9kW heater suits 8 to 14 cubic metres, and on single phase it needs a 50A fuse and 10mm² supply cable. That's a serious load for a domestic supply, roughly comparable to an electric shower.

Outdoor barrel and garden saunas: about £3,000 to £10,000+

Garden saunas are where budgets drift. A small barrel or cube kit starts in the low thousands, a well finished cedar pod or cabin with a changing area easily passes £10,000, and wood-fired versions trade the electrician for a flue, a chimney and a supply of dry logs.

Three costs catch people out, and none of them appear on the product page:

• The base. A concrete slab, paving on a compacted sub-base or a ground screw frame. Timber sitting on wet grass rots.
• The electrical run. A new circuit from your consumer unit, armoured cable to the bottom of the garden, RCD protection and an isolator. The further from the house, the bigger the bill.
• Delivery and assembly. Barrels can arrive as staves on a pallet that needs several people and a free weekend.

Our garden sauna guide covers planning rules, bases and heater sizing in detail.

Installation: what the electrician is for

Plug-in tents, blankets and most small infrared cabins need nothing beyond a nearby socket. Avoid running them off an extension lead, because a 1.6kW steam generator on a cheap reel is a fire risk you don't need.

Any traditional electric heater is different. A 6kW to 9kW stove needs its own dedicated circuit, sized fuse and cable, and in England that's notifiable work under Part P, so use a registered electrician who can self-certify it. We can't give you a fair single number for the job, since an indoor cabin next to the consumer unit and a garden barrel 25 metres down the lawn are very different jobs. Get at least two quotes before you order the sauna, and ask the electrician to check whether your main fuse and consumer unit can take a 9kW load at all. Sometimes the answer is a smaller heater.

Running costs, with the working shown

The sum is simple: heater power in kW, multiplied by hours running, multiplied by your unit rate. We've used Ofgem's GB average electricity unit rate of 26.32p per kWh for Direct Debit customers under the price cap from 1 October to 31 December 2026.

Setup	Time on	Electricity used	Cost at 26.32p
500W sauna blanket	45 minutes	0.5 x 0.75 = 0.375kWh	about 10p
1kW steam tent	1 hour	1 x 1 = 1kWh	about 26p
2kW infrared cabin	1 hour	2 x 1 = 2kWh	about 53p
6kW traditional heater	1 hour	6 x 1 = 6kWh	about £1.58
6kW traditional heater	1.5 hours (warm-up plus session)	6 x 1.5 = 9kWh	about £2.37
9kW traditional heater	1.5 hours	9 x 1.5 = 13.5kWh	about £3.55

So a 6kW heater used for one hour is 6kWh, and 6 x 26.32p is £1.58. Treat every figure in that table as a ceiling. Once the room reaches temperature the thermostat switches the elements on and off, so the heater isn't drawing full power for the whole session. Your own rate will also differ by region and tariff, and the cap changes every quarter, so rerun the sum with the unit rate on your latest bill.

Over a year the gap between types gets wide. Twice a week on the 6kW example, at the 1.5 hour ceiling, comes to about £246 a year (104 sessions x £2.37). Three 30 minute tent sessions a week at 1kW comes to roughly £20.

Which price band makes sense?

Spend money where you'll actually use it. If you've never had a regular sauna habit, a £110 to £250 tent tells you within a month whether you'll keep it up, and you can sell it on or fold it into a cupboard if you don't.

Go for an infrared cabin if you want something permanent in a spare room without rewiring the house. Go traditional, indoors or in the garden, only if you specifically want 80°C plus and löyly (steam from water on the stones), and budget for the electrician and base from the start, rather than finding out after the kit has arrived. And if storage is the real constraint, a blanket is the only option that genuinely disappears.

Recommended reads

• Best home sauna UK: cabins, tents and blankets compared
• Garden sauna UK: types, costs and planning rules
• Portable sauna: types, real temperatures and costs
• Best sauna blanket UK
• Infrared sauna vs traditional sauna