Cold Plunge Market Hits $380M as Category Creates New Sauna Buyers
The cold plunge tub market reached roughly $380 million globally in 2025. Rather than competing with sauna, the category is proving to be a gateway to broader thermal wellness spending.
The cold plunge market barely existed five years ago. Today, it's estimated at roughly $380 million globally (per SkyQuest's 2025 valuation), with growth rates that continue to outpace most wellness categories. But the more interesting story may be what cold plunge culture is doing for the sauna industry.
The Gateway Effect
Talk to any sauna dealer and you'll hear the same thing: a significant share of their new customers came to sauna through cold plunge. The contrast therapy protocol, alternating between extreme heat and extreme cold, has become the use case that bridges the two categories. People buy a cold plunge tub, get serious about the practice, and discover they want the heat side too.
This pattern is reshaping how sauna brands think about their addressable market. Rather than viewing cold plunge companies as competitors for wellness spending, some sauna manufacturers are partnering with cold plunge brands for cross-promotional campaigns and bundled offerings.
Cold plunge didn't steal customers from sauna. It created an entirely new group of thermal wellness enthusiasts who eventually want both.
Brand Strategy
Several sauna manufacturers have responded by developing their own cold plunge products or partnering with existing brands. Dundalk Leisurecraft now offers the Arctic Plunge and Glacier Plunge alongside its barrel saunas. The logic is straightforward: if your sauna customer is going to buy a cold plunge anyway, better for that sale to happen under your roof.
Plunge, the bootstrapped direct-to-consumer brand founded in 2020, crossed $100 million in revenue in 2024 according to Entrepreneur. That kind of category-creating growth naturally pulls adjacent categories (like sauna) along with it.
Retail and Distribution Impact
The adjacency is reshaping retail strategy. Dealers and showrooms that carry both sauna and cold plunge products report higher average transaction values. The categories sell better together than apart.
What Harvia Is Doing About It
The largest publicly traded sauna company is explicitly eyeing cold wellness as a category to consolidate. On the Harvia Q4 2025 earnings call, CEO Matias Järnefelt named it directly in the M&A wish list.
"We are looking at other significant-sized markets in categories such as cold wellness, digital wellness." — Matias Järnefelt, CEO, Harvia Plc, Q4 2025 earnings call, 12 February 2026
That positions Harvia as a potential strategic acquirer for cold plunge players, which is a different competitive dynamic than Dundalk building its own Arctic and Glacier Plunge products in-house. A Harvia-backed cold plunge brand with Harvia's European distribution reach and MyHarvia digital platform would immediately become the scaled contrast-therapy player in the market.
The cold plunge phenomenon is far from peaking, and its continued growth will likely remain one of the strongest tailwinds for the sauna industry over the next several years. The category is also pulling sauna into new venues, including public land: Idaho's state park system put a sauna and cold plunge concession out to bid at Ponderosa State Park in April 2026, one of the clearest U.S. signals yet that parks departments now see contrast therapy as a recreation amenity worth procuring.
Arlene Scott
Senior Wellness Correspondent & Hospitality Consultant
Arlene Scott brings over fifteen years of reporting and consulting experience across energy infrastructure, sustainable design, and thermotherapy-focused hospitality.
Full byline
Arlene Scott is a Senior Wellness Correspondent for SaunaNews.com, bringing over fifteen years of experience at the intersection of energy infrastructure, sustainable design, and thermotherapy. Her work focuses on the physiological benefits of passive heat therapies and the sustainable integration of sauna culture into modern wellness routines.
Arlene's background is rooted in the clean energy transition. She was a founding writer at MicrogridMedia.com, where she covered the technical and economic viability of desalination projects, microgrid deployments, and distributed renewable energy systems. During the mid-2010s, she was a regular contributor to Greentech Media (GTM) during its independent era — prior to the Wood Mackenzie acquisition in 2016 — reporting on the early integration of thermal energy storage and sustainable infrastructure.
Transitioning her focus from macro-energy systems to human-scale wellness, Arlene now applies her technical background to the hospitality sector. She operates as an independent consultant, advising boutique hotels and eco-resorts on the design, energy efficiency, and historical authenticity of commercial sauna and thermal spa installations. Her consulting work ensures that high-end wellness facilities balance traditional Nordic bathing principles with modern sustainable engineering.
Arlene holds a specialized certification in Applied Thermic Wellness from the Nordic Institute of Passive Heat Studies (NIPHS) and is a recognized associate member of the International Sauna Association (ISA). When she isn't reviewing the latest innovations in infrared technology or consulting on a new resort project, Arlene can be found tending to her own traditional wood-fired sauna in the Pacific Northwest. You can read her complete archive of essays on energy, wellness, and sustainable living at www.arlenescott.com.
