Infrared saunas and traditional saunas produce similar health benefits, but they aren’t identical. Traditional Finnish saunas generate a stronger cardiovascular response overall, while infrared saunas achieve meaningful results at lower, more tolerable temperatures. The best choice depends on what you’re after and how much heat you can handle.
How Each Type Heats Your Body
The fundamental difference is how the heat reaches you. A traditional sauna heats the air around you using electric, wood, or gas heaters with stones, creating a hot environment between 150°F and 195°F. You can pour water over the stones to add humidity. Your body heats up because the surrounding air is extremely hot.
An infrared sauna skips the air entirely. Infrared panels emit light waves that penetrate your skin and warm your body directly, similar to how sunlight warms you on a cool day. Because the air itself stays cooler (typically 120°F to 140°F), sessions feel less intense. You still sweat heavily, but the experience is more like sitting in strong sunshine than stepping into a furnace.
Cardiovascular Effects: Traditional Has a Slight Edge
Both sauna types raise your heart rate and increase blood flow, mimicking some effects of moderate exercise. But a 2025 study published in the American Journal of Physiology measured the cardiovascular responses side by side and found consistent differences. Traditional saunas increased heart rate by about 34 beats per minute, compared to 26 beats per minute for far-infrared saunas. Cardiac output (the total volume of blood your heart pumps per minute) rose by 2.3 liters per minute in a traditional sauna versus 1.6 liters per minute in an infrared sauna.
These differences weren’t statistically significant in every measure, which tells you the gap is real but not dramatic. Both types push your cardiovascular system in a beneficial direction. Traditional saunas simply push harder because the heat load is greater. For context, hot water immersion outperformed both sauna types across nearly every cardiovascular marker in that same study, increasing heart rate by 39 beats per minute and cardiac output by 3.7 liters per minute.
Blood pressure responses were similar between the two sauna types, with both producing only modest drops during the session. Neither caused the large blood pressure reduction seen with hot water baths.
What the Long-Term Health Research Shows
Here’s where things get complicated. The large, well-known studies linking sauna use to reduced cardiovascular disease risk, lower rates of dementia, and longer lifespan were conducted almost exclusively in Finland using traditional saunas. One landmark Finnish study found that using a sauna four to seven times per week was associated with significantly lower cardiovascular disease risk compared to once-a-week use.
Infrared saunas have their own body of evidence, but it’s smaller and focused on different populations. A specific form of infrared therapy called Waon therapy (using a far-infrared sauna at a steady 140°F) has shown benefits for patients with heart failure, including reductions in markers of cardiac stress. These are promising findings, but they come from clinical settings with controlled protocols, not from the kind of large population studies that built the case for traditional saunas.
A comprehensive 2024 review in the journal Temperature noted that no peer-reviewed studies have directly compared long-term health outcomes between the two sauna types. The authors flagged head-to-head comparisons as “urgently warranted.” So when someone claims one type is definitively better for longevity or disease prevention, they’re extrapolating beyond what the science currently supports.
Does Infrared Light Penetrate Deep Into Tissue?
One common selling point for infrared saunas is that the light penetrates deep into muscles and joints, providing therapeutic benefits that surface heat can’t. The reality is more nuanced. Research on near-infrared light penetration through human tissue found that the energy reaches depths of about 3 centimeters (roughly an inch), but only a tiny fraction of the original energy makes it that far. High-powered infrared lasers delivered just 0.5% to 3% of their energy to that depth, and lower-powered sources showed no detectable energy at 3 centimeters.
Infrared sauna panels are not high-powered medical lasers. They operate at far lower intensities. The warming sensation you feel is real, and some infrared energy does reach beneath the skin’s surface, but the idea that infrared saunas deliver deep tissue heating in a way that a traditional sauna fundamentally cannot is overstated. Both types heat your body’s core through sustained exposure. The main practical difference is that infrared does it without making the room unbearably hot.
The Session Experience
Traditional sauna sessions typically run 5 to 20 minutes, with experienced users going up to 30 minutes. The heat is aggressive. Many people alternate between the sauna and cold exposure (a cold shower, plunge pool, or just stepping outside), repeating the cycle two or three times. Breathing can feel intense at higher temperatures, and the humid versions add a heaviness to the air.
Infrared sessions run longer: 15 to 30 minutes is standard, with experienced users sometimes going up to 45 minutes. The lower air temperature makes it easier to sit comfortably for extended periods. You’ll still sweat significantly, often more than you’d expect given how moderate the air feels. There’s no steam, and the dry, gentle warmth appeals to people who find traditional saunas overwhelming.
Both types are generally safe for daily use. If you’re new to either, starting with 10 to 15 minutes and gradually increasing is a reasonable approach.
Which One Should You Choose?
If you want the strongest acute cardiovascular stimulus and you enjoy intense heat, a traditional sauna delivers more. It also has the deeper base of long-term health research behind it. If you find high temperatures uncomfortable, have trouble breathing in hot or humid environments, or simply prefer a gentler experience, an infrared sauna gets you many of the same benefits at a lower thermal cost. The sweat response, the relaxation, and the mild cardiovascular challenge are all present in both.
Cost and access matter too. Infrared saunas are cheaper to buy, easier to install at home (many plug into a standard outlet), and use less electricity. Traditional saunas require more infrastructure, ventilation, and typically a dedicated electrical circuit. Gym and spa access varies by location, but traditional saunas remain far more common in commercial settings.
The honest answer is that both types are beneficial, neither is a clear winner across all measures, and the best sauna is whichever one you’ll actually use consistently. A person who sits in an infrared sauna four times a week will almost certainly see more benefit than someone who visits a traditional sauna once a month because the experience is too punishing to repeat.