A quiet confession: I spent most of this week doing something I've never done before.
It started with the question I get more than any other — the wall every home sauna buyer hits. Infrared or traditional? Everyone online has an opinion, most of them are selling one or the other, and you're about to spend real money.
The honest answer is that neither one is "better." They're two different rituals. Infrared fits you if the sauna needs to live indoors — a spare room, a garage corner — plugged into a standard outlet, gentler heat, ready in twenty minutes. Traditional fits you if what you're really buying is the ritual itself: cedar, hot stones, water hitting the rocks, stepping out into cold evening air. That experience lives outdoors, usually in a barrel, and it asks a bit more of you — a level base, an electrician, a spot in the yard.
And the part nobody leads with: whatever the sticker says, plan for the quiet line items. A dedicated circuit can run a few hundred to over a thousand dollars. An outdoor base adds more. Either type costs roughly twenty to sixty dollars a month to run. Budget the full number and you'll never regret the purchase.
So here's the announcement: I put the whole answer — who each type fits, the honest costs, and the specific models I'd point a friend to — into a short film. It's the first video on our new YouTube channel, and it goes live this morning.
It's four minutes. No hype, no shouting thumbnails — just the answer I wish had existed when I started researching this. If it's useful, the best thing you can do is simply watch it to the end; that tells the algorithm this kind of quiet, honest content deserves to exist.
The full breakdown, with the numbers side by side, still lives in the free Home Sauna Buyer's Guide at luxeandrestore.com.
Choose the ritual you'll actually repeat. That's the whole secret.
— L&R
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