Sauna Rooms and Heaters Have New Standards. A White Paper Says Operators Need One Too.

Three standards tracks are converging on the US sauna industry at once. Europe published its first room-construction standard in February. The US published its first modern heater-safety standard last June. And in April, a solo trade attorney published a 5,000-word white paper arguing that none of it will matter much unless operators build their own certification infrastructure.

MacKenzie Boling, the founder of Longevity Law LLC, wrote “Building Defensible Standards for Sauna, Thermal Bathing and Contrast Therapy” and posted it on Substack in early April. Five weeks later, on May 12, Sauna from Finland republished it through the trade body’s member news channel. Finland’s sauna industry trade body chose to amplify a solo practitioner’s argument that the operator side of the business has no structural floor.

The republication follows two hardware-standards milestones that SaunaNews has already covered. The physical product is getting institutional infrastructure; the people running the rooms are still on their own.

The hardware side is getting real infrastructure

Within the past year, the sauna industry’s physical products picked up two major institutional standards, each the result of years of committee work.

UL 60335-2-53, published in June 2025, gave the US a modern safety standard for electric sauna heating appliances and infrared cabins alongside UL 875, which remains active. It carries ANSI approval and harmonizes the US with the international IEC 60335-2-53 framework for the first time. Manufacturers can now certify to a modern standard instead of only an aging domestic one. The transition has implications for every electric sauna heater sold in the country, from residential to commercial models.

EN 18164, published in February 2026, gave Europe its first pan-continental standard for public wellness climate rooms. Developed by CEN Technical Committee 136, Working Group 16, it covers the design and construction of sauna rooms, warm-air rooms, steam rooms, and soft steam rooms in public facilities. It took years of negotiation and significant Nordic pushback to get to publication.

Both standards have institutional backing. UL has a standards committee, a certification infrastructure, and a commercial testing model. CEN has national standards bodies, a formal objection process, and a rule that every member body adopt its standards and withdraw conflicting national ones. Both standards have budgets, timelines, and organizations behind them.

The operator side of the industry has none of that. No US body certifies sauna operators. No voluntary standard defines what a well-run sauna facility looks like. No professional association maintains a code of conduct with enforcement authority. Boling’s white paper is an attempt to name that gap.

Boling proposes certification, practice standards and an association

The white paper is a detailed argument, not a standard. It spans roughly 5,000 words and makes the case that the US sauna and thermal-bathing industry needs its own operator-certification infrastructure before regulators or litigators build one from the outside.

The core claim: as the category grows, the absence of voluntary operator standards creates legal, operational, and reputational risk. If operators do not define what “good” looks like, someone else will, probably through litigation or local ordinance, and probably without industry input.

Boling proposes a framework organized around three layers. First, third-party certification for individual operators, modeled on credentials in adjacent industries like personal training and food safety. Second, voluntary practice standards developed by industry working groups covering areas like temperature protocols, sanitation, staff training, and emergency procedures. Third, a professional-association model to house and enforce both.

Boling is an attorney and the founder of Longevity Law LLC, a firm focused on regulatory and risk work for wellness and longevity operators. She is a former public defender and former licensed massage therapist. Her consultancy offers operator risk reviews and a subscription legal-education product.

That does not invalidate the argument, but the person proposing an operator-certification framework also runs a business positioned to benefit from one. The structural question she raises exists whether or not her firm is the one to answer it.

Sauna from Finland gave it a platform

Sauna from Finland, the trade body representing Finland’s sauna industry, published Boling’s paper on its member news channel. The network counts more than 250 member companies, by its own count, and functions as the industry’s primary international marketing and standards-adjacent body.

The republication is not an endorsement. Sauna from Finland regularly publishes member contributions, and the member news channel carries less editorial weight than the organization’s own research or policy reports. But hosting a US attorney’s argument for operator certification on that platform suggests the institutional side of the industry sees the gap too.

Sauna from Finland is a marketing and trade promotion body, not a standards organization. It does not write standards, accredit operators, or run certification programs. CEN writes EN 18164. UL writes UL 60335-2-53. Nobody writes the operator equivalent. Boling’s paper is naming a vacancy that the industry’s own institutions have not moved to fill.

No US state certifies sauna operators

There is no federal framework for sauna operator licensing in the United States. No state requires certification to operate a commercial sauna facility. Health departments in most jurisdictions treat saunas as an afterthought in pool and spa codes, if they address them at all. Cold plunge adds a new layer of complexity, with facilities working through a patchwork of local pool codes never designed for deliberate cold-water immersion.

The consequences show up in municipal zoning. In Minneapolis, 1980s-era city code classified saunas and bathhouses alongside adult entertainment venues. The categories were never separated. When operators tried to open legitimate Nordic-style sauna facilities, they ran into a regulatory structure that could not tell the difference between a löyly ritual and a strip club. The city eventually revisited its approach, but the episode shows a pattern: without operator-level standards, cities default to whatever regulatory category they already have, and that category is often wrong.

Boling’s paper argues that voluntary, industry-written standards would give operators something to point to when a code official, insurer, or judge asks what “standard practice” looks like. Right now, the answer is that there is no standard practice. Every operator invents their own. Operators building seven- and eight-figure facilities, as in every bathhouse development story SaunaNews covers, have no industry credential to point to and no professional body to consult when a code official asks hard questions.

No committee, no sponsor, no timeline

A white paper is not a standard, and a Substack post republished by a trade body is not a standards project. Several large questions remain open.

There is no committee. EN 18164 took years of multi-country negotiation through a formal CEN technical committee. UL 60335-2-53 went through ANSI’s consensus process. Boling’s proposal has no committee, no institutional sponsor, no funding, and no announced timeline.

The industry may not want operator standards. Compliance costs money. Defining a standard of care creates a litigation benchmark that does not currently exist. Some operators will see voluntary certification as a competitive credential; others will see it as a barrier to entry that favors larger, better-capitalized players. The trust question in this industry cuts in more than one direction.

Self-regulation carries its own risks. If the people writing the standards are also the people selling compliance services, the framework can drift from consumer protection toward gatekeeping. That concern is not unique to sauna, but it applies in a category where the certification market does not exist yet and the first movers will define its shape.

And there is no announced next step. The white paper does not name a pilot program, a working group, a founding committee, or a timeline. For now, it identifies a structural problem without a concrete mechanism to solve it.