Indoor vs Outdoor Sauna

An indoor sauna is convenient, cheaper to heat and usable without going outside. An outdoor sauna gives you more size options, keeps the moisture out of your house, and delivers the experience most people are actually after, walking out into the cold air afterwards. Both are good. The deciding factors are usually space, budget and whether you have somewhere sensible to put it.

Indoor saunas

• Convenient. No coat, no boots, no path to shovel.
• Cheaper to run. The room is surrounded by heated house, so it loses less heat and the heater cycles less.
• Often a smaller heater. Many indoor rooms suit our 4.5kW or 6kW.
• Limited by the space you have, usually a basement or a spare bathroom.
• Moisture has to be managed so it goes outside rather than into the house. Ventilation is not optional.

Outdoor saunas

• Size is up to you, not to your basement.
• Moisture stays outside the house entirely.
• The full experience. Stepping out into cold air or snow after a hot sauna is most of the appeal for many owners.
• Needs a proper base. See sauna foundations.
• Needs a bigger heater, usually our 8kW or 9kW in a cold climate.
• An electrical run out to it has to be planned and quoted.

Things people forget to check

• How far the electrical run is from the panel, which drives a real part of the cost.
• Whether an outbuilding needs a permit where you live.
• Ceiling height indoors, since a sauna wants benches high enough to sit in the heat.
• How you will get an assembled sauna into a basement, if that is the plan.
• Winter access to an outdoor sauna, including the barefoot walk.

The wood question

Outdoors, Western red cedar is the practical choice because it resists rot naturally and stays dimensionally stable through the weather. Indoors you have more options, but plenty of people still choose cedar for the aroma and the look. See Western red cedar saunas.

Procraft builds Western red cedar saunas and makes four CSA-approved electric sauna heaters from 4.5kW to 9kW. See the heaters, read about Western red cedar, or see how installation works.