Front and inside views of a wooden sauna installed on the back deck of a house. Background green fabric texture.
Photograph: Parker Hall; Getty Images
Maybe it’s my Scandinavian roots, but I've had a love affair with the sauna ever since I started tagging along on my wife’s gym membership. Whether my workout has been strenuous or not, I find that about half an hour of sweating in a box makes me feel genuinely excellent.
Ever since having a kid, I’m no longer a heavily optimized fitness nerd who wears smartwatches and fitness rings and subscribes to Strava. Yet I have found that even after using the cheapest sauna I could find on Wayfair, my anxiety, depression, and sleep schedule (I live in the world and have a 10-month-old, respectively) have shown major improvement.
If you’ve been wondering if cheap saunas from China could approach the relaxation you feel when sweating next to ripped climbers in your local climbing gym, I can definitively say yes—especially with the built-in Bluetooth speakers. They’re not going to let you watch the latest episode of The Penguin on full blast while sweating it out at the local schvitz, but freedom is still free at my house.
Between Two Saunas
[Front and side view of wooden sauna on the back deck of a house
Photograph: Parker Hall](https://cna.st/p/4pDSKR9fHyZqTp39e4j82Z2RHsHpr62Sy9fkuYRiM2ev33tbpuCrPDAWngbqvK6GJfozn1naCEBQfyXaaPr6sJJenW7zpyTem4w58AnRszqmAVvEw6vhciYPGoPuaok87zHyQ43nWYM5tCQiQwSX2r17dbUwGQUrbXd2nLcrg3nZ6YZHDFsegSVYw1Jbg2DZQDYPu3v4ZoUohJHGj8cHhBreyTMZAaAXY25TpsVrZTQroJ3PYpajTZFLtwo6fT59qvRXgEKj1pReYvLYV92BbGeKzyvLjqJ5DDao9EwPxzKXst7EviPjd7tX8)
Yiwushilanyuedianzishangwuyouxiangongsi Bluetooth-Compatible Infrared Sauna
$1,250 $1,006 at Wayfair
Cheap isn’t that cheap when it comes to standalone indoor saunas. This “Yiwushilanyuedianzi-shangwuyouxiangongsi”—not kidding, that's the name of the brand on Wayfair—lists for $1,250 but it's often on sale. No, it's not an impulse buy. But if you've ever browser window-shopped for a sauna online, they're often much pricier.
The sauna has a lot of proven benefits (and a lot of anecdotal ones), but you need to know that you use and like them before taking the plunge on a purchase like this. There are two main types of saunas: traditional heated and infrared.
Traditional saunas are what you're probably familiar with and use a stove of some type (usually electric, but occasionally wood or propane-fired) filled with rocks to heat a wooden room to a very high temperature (around 170 degrees Fahrenheit). They heat the air directly and so when you’re in them, it’s the ambient heat of the air that makes you hot.
Infrared saunas use infrared heating panels to heat your body directly, rather than passively heat the wooden room. They have less ambient heat output overall—maxing out at about 140 or 150 degrees—with the heaters themselves able to penetrate the skin of the human body and heat it directly.
They’re slightly different experiences and different ways to overheat your body but both achieve the same results: You sweat immensely, make your blood flow rapidly to your skin, and can feel the warm air loosening up any gunk in your lungs.
A Hot Box
Wayfair's cheapest model, like most saunas I have found under a couple of thousand dollars, is an infrared model that shows up in a flat-packed box about the size of a modern TV box. It’s a stout Canadian hemlock room that assembles in a click-together style with latches and only two optional screws to hold the seat in place. I found the setup to be shockingly easy, and I’m the type of person who usually breaks something even when carefully following instructions.
Just pop everything together, make sure the heaters and thermostat are plugged together, and you're off to the races. (The sauna also comes with a small computer-fan-driven air ionizer that I quickly decided did nothing and unplugged.) It plugs straight into a normal 120-volt wall outlet, no special wiring needed.
This is an indoor model, but I have had no issues storing and using it outside on a level, covered patio. If you live somewhere with more inclement weather or frigid temperatures, you will want to make sure you have room inside your house or garage for this, but because it is so small, it’s about as easy to place as a medium-sized bookshelf.
At 59 inches high, 27 inches wide, and 32 inches deep, this sauna is what I’d call cozy. It’s large enough to fit most people, but larger folks may have trouble. To squeeze my 6’2” 210-pound frame inside, I have to open the glass door and sit down on the seat while facing the door before closing the door behind me. It’s a bit of a “put your stuffed animal in a cupboard” situation and my wife thinks I look hilarious in the thing. But I am perfectly comfortable (or perfectly uncomfortable, due to the heat) sitting in it for a long time.
This sauna isn’t made of cedar but cheaper hemlock, which means you don’t get the same glorious cedar smell you’d be familiar with from more classic saunas. That said, the Canadian hemlock does have a nice woody aroma that has lingered after many months of use; it’s still a calming place to be, aroma-wise, even with all that sweat.
Quick and Painless
Unlike traditional saunas, which can take a long time to pre-heat, this infrared model is quick and painless. You press the buttons on the built-in thermostat inside the door to decide how hot and for how long you want it to run and it instantly begins heating. I usually give it at least 20 minutes to warm up the ambient temp of the tiny box.
The included thermostat goes to 149 degrees Fahrenheit, but I’ve only consistently been able to get it to about 145 degrees after 45 minutes of pre-heating. The timer counts down from 99 minutes, so you can have it pre-heat and then remain on for however long you want to sit in there. The sauna is lightweight and not well insulated, so I'd keep it inside if I didn't have it in Portland, Oregon's mild winter climate.
There are infrared heating panels behind, on the sides, below, and behind your legs for relatively even heating on the body. I found the floor heat can get a bit toasty if you have your feet right above the space beside a slat on the wooden floor, but otherwise, I was fully sweating as much and feeling as overheated after a similar time in a traditional sauna.
It's nice to sit outside under the covered area, look out at my garden, and sweat it out for a few minutes before heading to my non-gross, non-gym shower. It truly feels like I'm at a spa. And I can pair to the built-in Bluetooth speakers and watch my latest shows or a YouTube meditation.
If you, like me, don’t have regular access to a sauna at the gym anymore and have discovered how much you miss heat exposure time, there aren't many options as affordable and easy to set up as this. I've even moved it between houses with no issues (the movers didn't have to disassemble it because it's so light). How long it will last is a different question and only time will tell, but it has held up for me for several months.
You can’t share the experience with friends and loved ones, but that’s fine as I use my sauna time at the end of the day to wind down from social interactions. If you want to host sauna hangs at your house, you’re better off with a larger model or a traditional sauna, which of course, Wayfair also sells.