What Should I Put in My Sauna? A Guide to Sauna Essentials

Kitting out a sauna is mostly an exercise in restraint: the room needs perhaps six things, everything else it needs to not have, and the difference between a sauna that’s a joy at year five and one that’s grey and musty is a maintenance rhythm that takes minutes. This is the owner’s-manual version — what goes in, what stays out, what lives just outside the door, and the upkeep that keeps timber sweet. (For which specific products to buy, the accessories buying guide has named picks and prices; this page is about setting the room up right.)

Inside the hot room: the complete list

Six items, and genuinely nothing more:

1. Thermometer/hygrometer on the wall, readable from the bench — the room’s only instrument. Analogue, wood-cased, mounted away from directly above the stove.
2. Bucket and ladle beside a traditional stove — the löyly kit. Wood or anodised aluminium; clean water only, and essential oils only ever diluted into the bucket, never neat on stones.
3. Sand timer on the wall by the door — flip on entry, 15 minutes of structure, no battery to cook.
4. Backrest and/or headrest — the comfort that makes proper session lengths pleasant; the backrest guide covers designs and the pillow guide the lying-down version.
5. Towels or bench covers on every surface anyone sits on — hygiene, etiquette and the thing that makes benches last decades (the two-towel rule).
6. The stones themselves (traditional stoves) — technically part of the stove, practically a consumable: proper igneous sauna stones, re-stacked loosely once a year, crumbling ones replaced.

Everything on this list shares two properties: it works at 90°C forever, and it has no battery, screen, cable or coating. That’s the admission standard.

The keep-out list (and why)

• Phones, wearables, speakers, anything with a battery. Consumer electronics are specced to ~40–45°C ambient; hot-room ceilings run double. Heat kills batteries slowly and the point of the room instantly — the full skip-list argument applies.
• Plastics and glued goods not rated for saunas. Softening, off-gassing, delaminating — if the label doesn’t say sauna, the answer is no.
• Varnished, painted or pressure-treated wood. Finishes go sticky and can off-gas at temperature; treated timber has no business against skin. Bare, sandable softwood is the entire material palette.
• Exposed metal where skin lands. Screw heads, hooks, trim — at 90°C they brand. Good sauna joinery hides every fixing; your additions should too.
• Candles and naked flames. Romantic in photographs, oxygen-hungry and hazardous in a small sealed hot box. Warm low light belongs behind the door glass or via the cabin’s own sauna-rated fitting.
• Drinks other than water. Alcohol in the heat is the cardinal safety violation; anything sugary in a hot room is a cleaning incident pending. Water lives just outside anyway — see below.

Just outside the door: the staging area

Half of “what should I put in my sauna” is actually about the two square metres outside it:

• Hooks — robe, towels, and the hat between sessions. (The robe never enters the hot room; it works the corridors.)
• Water station — bottle or jug filled before the session, because hydration you have to fetch is hydration that gets skipped.
• A cool-down seat — bench, chair, garden seat: the cool-down between rounds is half the ritual and wants somewhere to happen.
• Sandals by the door for garden cabins — frost and gravel versus bare wet feet is a short argument.
• Sound and light, if wanted — speaker at low volume and any mood lighting live outside the heat, where electronics survive and the hot room stays a room without a feed.

The maintenance rhythm

Timber saunas are nearly immortal with a rhythm that costs minutes; they fail from trapped moisture, detergent and neglect, not from use.

Every session: towels on benches; afterwards, door and vents open, heater off, room airs bone-dry. This one habit is most of the battle.

Weekly-ish (or after heavy use): benches and backrests wiped with plain water (never detergent inside — it aerosolises into your next löyly); glass wiped; towels and covers to the wash, no fabric softener.

Yearly: stones re-stacked and casualties replaced; fixings checked (timber movement loosens screws — rust-streaking plain steel swapped for stainless); timber inspected, greyed spots refreshed with fine sanding; wooden bucket and ladle given their paraffin-oil wipe.

As needed: deep clean of benches with a sauna-specific cleaner and thorough rinse-dry if grime wins a round. Prevention (towels + airing) makes this rare.

The first proper session (a run-through for new owners)

The room is kitted; here’s the shakedown sequence that catches setup problems while they’re free to fix:

1. Preheat empty and vented the first few times — new cabins and stoves cook off manufacturing residues; you want that happening without an audience. Traditional stoves typically want 30–45 minutes to bring the room and stones up; infrared cabins are ready in 10–15. Your thermometer (now on the wall) tells you the truth about both.
2. Check the gauge against comfort. Aim for the conservative end first — 70–75°C traditional, mid-settings infrared — and find your number over several sessions rather than opening at 90°C because the dial goes there.
3. First löyly, small. A modest ladleful over the stones tells you how sharply your room responds — cabins vary enormously with size and ventilation. Work up.
4. Time it properly from day one — flip the sand timer on entry and treat the 15–20 minute guidance as the shape of a session, with the beginner’s build-up if the heat is new to you.
5. Full airing afterwards — door open, vents open, walk away. Day one is when the habit forms or doesn’t.

Seasonal care (outdoor cabins especially)

• Winter: condensation is the enemy — a cold cabin heated hard produces moisture that wants to sit in corners and window rebates. Air thoroughly after every session even when it’s -2° outside (especially then), and keep the path to the door safe: frost plus bare wet feet is the sandals-by-the-door argument in earnest.
• Summer: heat is free but stale air isn’t — an unused cabin in July should still get its vents opened weekly, or you return in September to a musty room. Summer is also stone-restack and sanding season: maintenance is nicer at 20°C than at -5°.
• Year-round: watch the base of an outdoor cabin — vegetation growing against timber holds damp; a strimmed perimeter is cheap rot insurance.

Safety setup: the once-only checks

Set these up when you set up the room and they mind themselves: session-length guidance visible (the sand timer is the reminder), water always within reach, no lockable latch on the door (a sauna door pushes open, always), heater guard fitted if children use the house, and the who-should-check-with-a-doctor list actually read by everyone who’ll bathe. None of it is dramatic; all of it is the difference between a sauna that’s casually safe and one that relies on luck.

The bottom line

Six things in the room, restraint about everything else, vents open after every session, and a yearly hour with a screwdriver and fine sandpaper: that’s the entire ownership manual. Spend where it counts — the named picks with prices cover the six properly for around £100 — and let the room itself stay what it’s supposed to be: hot, wooden, and empty of everything that beeps. If you’re still choosing the room itself, the types of sauna guide is the place to start.