Intro

It’s safe to say that there are two primary different types of saunas to choose from. The question is between the traditional sauna and the infrared sauna that you can use for your personal benefit. We shall see what exactly these saunas share in common as well as what separates them in terms of what they bring to the table when it comes to improving your health or general quality of life.

Similarities

First, let’s take a look at what makes them similar. As far as this matter goes, their overall goal when it comes to inducing sweat for the user is more or less the same. Both the traditional and infrared seek to cause sweat and detoxify while relaxing the body so that a better health condition is achieved. Joints and muscles in the body will begin to relax as a soothing heat washes over them, while also contributing a great deal towards helping reduce calorie levels if used wisely and correctly. All in all, both saunas have the same goal: making sure that the sauna user can get the perks and health benefits from having their core temperature raised a bit. Sessions within a sauna can even be more or less the same in length with both clocking in around the thirty-minute mark depending on the area itself. 

Differences for Traditional

What separates them the most, however, is the methods of how they achieve these benefits. The traditional sauna for example will achieve this by heating up the room itself through the method of heated rocks. These rocks are stones that are warmed up either by water or through a heater within the room that helps raise the temperature by a considerable amount. It is through these methods that the temperature within the sauna room is raised to around 180 degrees, with the higher portion of the room going beyond that threshold since heat rises. Traditional saunas also take longer to heat up than infrared since it relies on heating the whole room up more than its counterpart. For the traditional saunas, it could take you around 30-45 minutes to get the room ready and properly heated, whereas infrared would take half that time with around 15 minutes instead. 

Differences for Infrared

When it comes to an infrared sauna, however, instead of just relying on the temperature itself or humidity caused by water and rocks, these types of saunas will utilize heat waves to achieve their goal. The infrared panels generate heat that seeps into the body itself, working to loosen and relax the muscles within a person’s body while also getting their core to warm up to work up a sweat. What this means is that the heating room with an infrared sauna will generally be less hot than a traditional sauna clocking in around 130 degrees. This isn’t a problem, however, since this type of sauna is less concerned with heating up the room and more concerned with making sure that heat waves from the infrared panels directly affect a person’s body. This means you can stay a bit longer within this type of sauna since there is less suffocating heat within the room as a whole, allowing you to get more out of your stay within. The tradeoff is that since this sauna relies on infrared heat, there will be no steam and by extension, no humidity to be found in the room. This can be more of a preferential problem than anything else, but it should be noted all the same. 

Conclusion

Both Saunas do what they are designed to do, the methods on how they get there just differ. Some might like the infrared more since they believe that the infrared energy is more effective at warming the core, while others prefer traditional saunas like the humidity and feeling better. At the end of the day, it’s up to you to come to your own conclusions for which you prefer, and it is through this that you can achieve the best sauna experience that you can find!