SaunaNews
The Sauna Industry's Record of Note
The broader wellness, longevity, and biohacking movements driving sauna adoption. Science, culture, and the people behind the thermal wellness revolution.
Bathhouse, the New York-based social wellness club, told CNBC it expects to reach approximately $120 million in run-rate revenue by the end of 2026, a milestone that validates the urban sauna social club as a serious business category.
The global cold plunge tub market hit an estimated $380 million in 2025, with brands like Plunge crossing $100M in revenue. But the bigger story is what cold plunge adoption does for the sauna market: it's creating new sauna buyers, not stealing them.
Research led by Professor Jari Laukkanen at the University of Eastern Finland has found that regular sauna bathers show lower levels of C-reactive protein (an inflammation marker) and fewer flu symptoms than non-sauna-goers. The findings add to a growing body of evidence linking sauna use to improved immune response.
KOS Sauna, a floating sauna on Saratoga Lake in Upstate New York, is booked weeks in advance. Founder Kate Butchart built the concept after years of experiencing Nordic floating saunas in Oslo, working with Norwegian architect Bjornar Skaar Haveland to get the details right.
New peer-reviewed research in Social Science and Medicine finds that shared sauna rituals produce measurable improvements in emotional wellbeing, driven by social belonging and ritual synchrony. The study of 1,907 participants is the first experimental examination of British sauna culture.
A new peer-reviewed study published in Temperature (Taylor & Francis) finds that a single 30-minute traditional sauna session at 163°F significantly raises white blood cell counts, with some immune cell populations staying elevated 30 minutes after the heat ends. The cytokine data, including correlations with interferon activity, points toward a biological mechanism for sauna's long-documented benefits against infection and respiratory disease.
Founded in 2019 in Asheville, NC, Sauna House has quietly assembled one of the more credible franchise systems in thermal wellness — complete with a proprietary sauna factory, a no-phone rule, dual 12-kilowatt commercial heaters, and a pipeline that now stretches from Charlotte to Austin.
Studios are selling hot-then-cold as if the synergy were settled science. A new Springer Nature narrative review by Wafa Douzi, Erich Hohenauer, and Benoit Dugué says the direct comparative trials don't yet exist, and some claims in current contrast-therapy marketing are not yet supported by the evidence. The Finnish version of the practice, by contrast, has been running on population timescales for centuries.
Alzheimer’s is the most feared disease among Americans over 65, ahead of cancer. A New Jersey high school student founded Sauna for Seniors and published a cost-benefit model for deploying saunas in 39 senior facilities. The paper’s economics need adjustment for commercial reality, but the concept taps into a demand signal the sauna industry has missed: families choosing facilities based on brain-health amenities, operators seeing higher occupancy from wellness investments, and residents staying longer in independent living.
WELLSurvey 2.0 found that 71% of wellness consumers trust 'clinically proven' above all other claims. The sauna industry has genuine science on its side, but its marketing often stretches beyond what that science supports. Here is what the data actually says, what it does not, and why the gap matters.
Alisa Cardenas runs Howl at the Moon Sauna Co. out of a converted 1989 horse trailer in West Michigan, and this November she is taking ten guests to a lakefront lodge in southern Iceland for six days of lagoons, wild bathing in Reykjadalur and Þórsmörk, the Icelandic sauna ritual called gúsa, and a mobile-saunagus session at the lodge. Meals, lodging, transport from Keflavík, and every bathing experience are included. Cardenas built Howl at the Moon around the Wildflower, a 1989 horse trailer converted into a mobile sauna with a Finnish-made Iki wood-burning stove and more than 350 pounds of sauna stones. Cedar Grove Sauna in Maine has been doing a related version of this from the other direction, bringing Lithuanian Bath Masters to Popham Beach for their first-ever North American training in 2023. It is the kind of trip more sauna operators with a community at home should be thinking about.
Søberg’s Thermalist Recovery System licenses contrast therapy programming, staff certification, and member tools to wellness venues. The peer-reviewed science is legitimate; the business case is not yet proven.
The perception-science literature has spent twenty years isolating the exact facial signals that move attractiveness ratings. Almost every one of those signals is a documented physiological output of routine sauna use. That is a real argument operators can stand behind.
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