Most people who buy their first home sauna use it wrong for about a month, then quietly work it out. This is the short version of what that month teaches you, so you can skip it.
Heat, then cold, then rest. In that order.
A sauna session is not one long sit. It is a cycle, repeated two or three times: fifteen to twenty minutes in the heat, two or three minutes cooling down, then at least as long resting as you spent in the heat. The rest is not optional padding. It is where your heart rate comes down and where most of the feeling people describe as "the sauna feeling" actually happens. Skip it and you get hot, tired and slightly irritable.
What temperature, honestly
A Finnish sauna sits between 70 and 100 °C, measured at head height on the upper bench. Most people are comfortable around 80 °C. Higher is not better, and a room that reads 110 °C usually means the thermometer is mounted too close to the heater rather than that you are hardcore. Humidity matters more than the number: a dry 90 °C is gentler than a steamy 75 °C.
You cannot judge either by feel after the first ten minutes, which is why a thermometer and hygrometer in a wooden frame is not a decoration. Get one with a readable face; the cheap ones fog permanently within a season.
Löyly: pouring water on the stones
Löyly is the burst of steam that rises when you throw water on hot stones. Use a ladle, not a cup, and pour slowly across the stones rather than dumping it in one place. One or two ladles at a time is plenty. If the steam feels like it is burning your ears rather than your shoulders, you poured too much.
Warm water makes softer steam than cold. Never pour onto the heater casing, only the stones. And if you are adding scent, dilute it in the bucket — never drip concentrate directly onto the stones, where it will scorch and smell like a chemistry lesson.
Sit high or sit low
The temperature difference between the top and bottom bench can be 30 °C. Beginners should start on the lower bench and move up when they want more. There is no prize for the top bench, and there is a real risk of ruining your first impression of a sauna forever.
Protect your head, and sit on something
Your scalp overheats before the rest of you, which is why a wool felt hat exists and why it looks slightly ridiculous. It works. Wool insulates when dry and keeps insulating when damp, which is exactly the situation.
Sit on a towel or a felt pad, always. It is partly hygiene in a shared sauna, and partly that untreated wood at 90 °C is genuinely unpleasant on bare skin.
Drink before, not just after
You will lose half a litre to a litre of water in a normal session. Drink a glass before you go in and keep water outside the room. Alcohol and saunas are a bad combination for reasons that have nothing to do with fun and everything to do with blood pressure.
How to end it
Finish on cold. A shower, a lake, or a cold plunge tub — the sharpness is the point, and it closes the session in a way that a warm shower does not. Then dry off properly, put on something soft, and sit down for twenty minutes without a screen. That last twenty minutes is the half most people skip and the half that makes the difference.
When not to
Skip the sauna if you are unwell, dehydrated, or have been drinking. If you are pregnant, or have heart or blood pressure conditions, talk to a doctor before making it a habit — this is genuinely worth asking about rather than guessing.
We are two people who use a sauna several times a week and test everything we sell in it first. If something in the shop does not survive our own use, it does not stay listed.