Do Saunas Need Front Heaters?
One of the critical elements in choosing an infrared sauna is the locations of the heaters. The emissivity and power of the heating elements is critical, but their location is an area that many brands struggle to utilize.
A key to deep detoxification and sweating is raising your core body temperature to a high enough degree. You want to have heaters on all sides of your body when seated. This includes behind and beside your legs and importantly on the front wall of the unit.
Front Heaters Increase Detoxification
Unless your front side is heated, you will not effectively detox your body. One of the problems with carbon heaters is that, while the heat they produce can be a higher quality, they produce less of the needed wavelengths. To accommodate for this, many companies add carbon all the way up over your head and nearly up to the ceiling. This essentially heats the air but does not add benefit to the intended beneficial detoxification. You need panels pointing directly at you as light moves in a straight line.
Infrared Sauna Brands with Front Heaters
Brand Comparison
We have a comparison chart that details the best infrared saunas on the market. The top brands all provide an exceptional amount of heat with heating elements in all the required locations.
Heavenly Heat
One exceptional brand which is unrivaled in its purity and medical grade heaters is Heavenly Heat. Heavenly Heat took an excellent approach in its one person unit. The owner of Heavenly Heat noticed that two other brands simply reduced the size of their 2 person units and removed heaters in the process. They have instead designed their one person to have proper amount of infrared.
Heavenly Heat is perhaps the only fully medical sauna due to its commitment to purity. That is the main reason it could have this type of radical design as it has the freedom to do everything exactly as it should be done.
This is the best designed 1 person unit and it is provides the most powerful and low EMF heat on the market.
Clearlight
Clearlight was one of the earliest to correctly implement front heaters. Their earlier models had half windows in front with the carbon panels underneath the glass on the indoor as well as the clearlight outdoor sauna.
Sunlighten
Sunlighten has incorporated large near-infrared heaters in their full spectrum units.
Vital Health
Another brand that is every efficient in its designs to maximize the square inches of wall space available in a cabin is Vital Health. Vital Health infrared sauna is owned and designed by a former engineer which explains the efficient use of cabin space. Pictured above is a front corner of the brand’s smaller units showing how efficiently the space is utilized.
To receive the full benefit of infrared, your body need to be surrounded. The majority of saunas produced even just 12 years ago did not have front heaters. Many also omitted them on the side walls and importantly, behind the legs. Having infrared behind the legs is important for a full body exposure to the healing light waves. But having them behind the legs also helps keep the entire body close to an even temperature.
Brands Missing Front Heaters
Health Mate
Health Mate is a brand that disappointed greatly in this regard. After the quality of their ceramic heater based units decreased, they then added a new unit with carbon heaters. However the only carbon panel in on the back wall. There is no infrared panels on the sides or behind the legs under the bench. They also lack the important front panels.
Even Sunlighten omits under the bench behind the calf carbon on a couple of their products. This is a disappointing factor in an otherwise excellent brand. We hope they remedy that in the future. But as of 2024 those are still missing on some models.
Heater Placement Provides Effective Heating
Many of us were mentioning starting in 2012 that most companies do not include front heating. Since that time, more brands are thankfully beginning to add them. As a result, a higher percentage of brands now included these compared to 12 years ago. However, additional units for the sake of filling walls does not directly correlate to an improvement in the benefits of that company’s products.
Having the right type of high-emissivity panels is what is most important.
As an example, although one popular, yet cheap, brand appears to use weaker generic carbon panels, it has posted on its site an excited announcement that they now include them also in the front. It is announced with all capital letters and an exclamation point!
While we like to see the additions as mentioned by that company’s website, it is only one part of providing you with the most healing benefits.
Clearlight saunas, a top rated brand since 2012 on our Best Infrared Saunas Comparison chart, often shares very clearly where they place their highest emissivity heaters.
They place front and other heaters so that they can produce the optimal wavelengths between 6-12 microns. These wavelengths are those that most closely match those of the human body.
Infrared Light Travels In A Straight Line
It is clear that heating elements on the front wall is a desirable placement to send these healing wavelengths to all sides of your body. It is important to remember that infrared travels in a straight line. Without heating elements in front of you, that portion of your body will not receive the light waves or the healing properties they carry.
These light waves also do not penetrate wood. So it is confusing and disappointing to see a few brands place dozens of wooden slats in front of the heat elements. There are 4 brands which look identical and all have several dozen of these slats. While they promote this as a more comfortable way to lean back into the back wall of the cabin, they are also blocking nearly 60% of all of the infrared.
It should be noted that the reason all 4 brands look identical is because they are. They are all produced in the same assembly line in China and are the identical products. Only the brand name is different and all are actually dealers of the same brand.
When choosing your brand, ensure that there are adequate heat elements all around your body. A second critical component is to ensure that the carbon panels or ceramic elements are actually high emissivity elements.
Please consult our brand comparison chart, read the reviews of the top 4 rated brands. When you choose based on those recommendations, you will have a sauna that will last for decades. And you will have all of the heating elements you need for deep detoxification and the other benefits this therapy is known to provide.