Infrared Sauna vs Traditional Sauna: Which Is Better?

If you want the health effects the research actually describes, a traditional sauna is the better choice, because almost every long-term study of sauna use, including the big Finnish cohort data on heart health, used hot Finnish rooms at 80°C or more. If you want a heat habit you'll actually keep at home, infrared usually wins: it's cheaper, plugs into a normal socket, and the gentler 45°C to 65°C air means you can sit in it for 30 minutes without feeling cooked. Neither one detoxes you or melts fat.

That's the short answer. The rest of this guide covers how each one heats you, what the evidence supports and doesn't, and what each option costs to put in a UK home.

Infrared vs traditional sauna at a glance

	Traditional (Finnish) sauna	Infrared sauna
How it heats	A stove (wood or electric) heats the air and rocks; the hot air heats you	Panels emit infrared radiation that warms your skin directly
Air temperature	Roughly 80°C to 100°C	Roughly 45°C to 65°C
Humidity	Low, rising in bursts when you throw water on the stones (löyly)	Low and constant
Typical session	10 to 20 minutes, repeated 2 or 3 times	20 to 40 minutes, one sitting
Time to a full sweat	A few minutes	Often 10 to 15 minutes
Long-term evidence	Large Finnish cohort studies over 15 to 20+ years	Small trials, mostly short-term or in patients
Home options	Timber cabin, barrel or garden sauna with a stove	Tent, blanket or small timber cabin
Home cost	Usually several thousand pounds installed	Around £200 to £260 for a tent, roughly £900 for a cabin
Power	Electric stoves often 4.5kW to 9kW, dedicated circuit	Usually 1kW to 2kW on a 13A plug

How each one heats you

A traditional sauna works by heating air. The stove gets the room to somewhere between 80°C and 100°C, and that air transfers heat to your skin. Throw a ladle of water on the stones and the humidity spikes for a minute, which is why that burst of steam feels so much hotter than the thermometer reading suggests.

An infrared sauna skips most of the air and aims radiation at you instead. The panels warm your skin and the layers just beneath it, so the room can stay at 45°C to 65°C and you still end up sweating hard. Manufacturers like to say this heat goes "deep into the muscles". A 2025 study tested that by inserting temperature probes into the thighs of 10 adults during a 45 minute far infrared session: the muscle closest to the skin warmed by about 3°C, the deepest probe at 3.4cm by only about 1°C, and core temperature didn't change at all (muscle temperature during far infrared sauna). The authors' conclusion was that commercial infrared saunas provide mostly superficial heating.

That doesn't make infrared feeble. Run one hot enough and it does load your body properly; our infrared sauna benefits guide covers a 2026 study at 65°C where core temperature and heart rate climbed substantially. The difference is that a Finnish room gets you there in a fraction of the time.

How they feel, and how long you'll stay in

The first thing most people notice in a Finnish sauna is that breathing feels hot. Your face and ears take the brunt of it, and 12 to 15 minutes is plenty for a first round. Then you get out, cool down (a cold shower or a jump in the lake if you're actually in Finland), and go back in. That in-and-out rhythm is a big part of the experience.

Infrared feels more like sitting in strong sunshine; the air is comfortable to breathe, and the heat builds on your skin rather than hitting you in the face. You'll sweat more slowly, so sessions stretch to 30 or 40 minutes. Plenty of people who can't stand a Finnish sauna get on fine with infrared, and that matters more than it sounds. The heat habit you'll stick to three times a week beats the one you avoid.

What the evidence actually supports

This is where the two part ways most clearly.

The strongest sauna data comes from the Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease (KIHD) study in eastern Finland, led by Jari Laukkanen. In one analysis of 1,688 men and women aged 53 to 74, followed for a median of 15 years, people who used a sauna four to seven times a week had a much lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease than those who went once a week, even after adjusting for physical activity, income and established risk factors (sauna bathing and cardiovascular mortality in men and women). The risk fell steadily as frequency went up, with no obvious threshold. It's observational, so people who sauna a lot may differ in ways the researchers couldn't measure, but it's consistent with the earlier KIHD work in men.

Every one of those participants was using a traditional Finnish sauna. None of it tells you what an infrared tent at 55°C does over 15 years, because nobody has studied that.

Infrared does have its own evidence; it's just smaller and narrower. Japan has used a form of infrared sauna called Waon therapy in heart failure patients for years. A systematic review of sauna use in heart failure found only infrared trials met its criteria; across seven studies, 15 minutes at 60°C, five times a week for two to four weeks, improved some markers of cardiac function, though it didn't shift blood pressure and the strength of evidence ranged from moderate to insufficient (sauna bathing and heart failure meta-analysis). Those are patients in supervised clinical settings, not healthy people at home. For recovery from training, the infrared trials are small and mixed, which we break down in should you use a sauna after a workout.

So the honest scorecard: traditional saunas have decades of population data and a plausible link to heart health. Infrared has promising short-term clinical results and a stack of marketing claims that run well ahead of them.

Cost, power and installation at home

Here's where infrared earns its popularity in the UK.

A proper Finnish sauna at home means a timber room, a stove and, for electric heaters, usually a dedicated circuit, since common domestic heaters run from about 4.5kW to 9kW. Wood-fired garden and barrel saunas avoid the wiring but bring a flue, a chimney and the faff of lighting a fire. Either way, expect several thousand pounds once it's built, plus 30 to 45 minutes of preheating before every session.

Infrared splits into three formats:

• Tents. A fabric shell with infrared panels and usually a heated foot pad, folding down into a bag. The infrared tents we've reviewed cost roughly £200 to £260, run off a normal plug, and you're sweating within 10 to 15 minutes.
• Blankets. A heated sleeping bag you zip yourself into lying down. No floor space at all, but your head stays out and your arms are trapped. See the best sauna blanket UK roundup.
• Small cabins. Timber boxes with ceramic or carbon panels, often around £900 for a one to two person model, still on a 13A plug.

Running costs for a portable unit are small. A 1,000W tent for 30 minutes uses half a kilowatt hour, so even at 25p a unit it's around 13p a session. Our best home sauna UK guide does that sum for cabins too.

If you want an infrared tent where your whole body, head included, sits inside the heat, the CONLONS is the one we'd point most people towards. It runs to about 60°C, which is warm for a tent, and our CONLONS infrared sauna tent review covers its build and safety gaps.

Check price on Amazon£215.99

Taller users or anyone wanting more legroom should look at the Smartmak instead; it costs more but gives you a roomier frame, as our Smartmak portable infrared sauna review explains.

Check price on Amazon£253.49

Safety is the same for both

Lower air temperature doesn't make infrared risk-free. Both types raise your heart rate, drop your blood pressure as vessels in the skin open up, and drain fluid through sweat, which is why dizziness on standing up is the classic sauna problem whichever kind you're in.

The rules carry over:

1. No alcohol. Drinking before or during a session is the factor that keeps turning up in sauna deaths, because it compounds the blood pressure drop and dulls your judgement about when to get out.
2. Drink water before and after. Around 500ml either side is a sensible starting point; if you're doing long infrared sessions several times a week, an electrolyte drink helps, and our best electrolytes UK guide lists the ones worth buying.
3. Get out at the first warning sign. Dizziness, nausea, headache, cramps or a racing heart that won't settle mean the session's over. The NHS page on heat exhaustion and heatstroke lists the symptoms worth knowing.
4. Check with your GP first if you're pregnant, have a heart condition, low blood pressure or take blood pressure medication. This applies to both types equally.

One practical difference: infrared tents and blankets are cheap electrical heating products used next to sweaty skin. Check the cable before each use, keep the controller dry, and never fall asleep in one.

Which should you choose?

Pick a traditional sauna if you have access to one at a gym, spa or leisure centre, you like intense heat, and you're interested in the cardiovascular associations from the Finnish research. If you can get to a Finnish sauna three or four times a week, that's the option with the strongest evidence behind it.

Pick infrared if you want heat at home without spending thousands or rewiring anything, you find 85°C air unpleasant, or you mainly want a wind-down and soreness tool after training. Just buy it for what it does well rather than for mortality statistics it was never tested against.

If you're also deciding between dry heat and wet heat, our sauna vs steam room comparison covers that. And if you plan to pair heat with cold water, read up on contrast therapy before you start alternating. More heat, cold and massage options sit in the recovery hub.

Recommended reads

• Infrared sauna benefits: what the research shows
• The best home sauna in the UK
• CONLONS infrared sauna tent review
• Sauna vs steam room
• Should you use a sauna after a workout?