Sauna Towel: Sauna Products Explained

The sauna towel is the accessory you can’t opt out of: whatever else you buy or skip, something has to sit between you and the bench (hygiene, and universal sauna etiquette) and something has to dry you at the end. The question isn’t whether — it’s the material, and the answer is the reason Finnish saunas run on linen while British bathrooms run on terry. Prices for the picks below were checked July 2026.

The two-towel rule (and what each one does)

• The bench towel lives in the hot room. It’s the barrier between skin and shared wood — it keeps sweat out of the benches (timber that stays dry outlives everyone) and keeps the 80°C bench surface off the backs of your legs. Big enough to sit and put your feet on: 80×160cm is the standard.
• The drying towel stays outside the hot room and does its one job after your final rinse — it should never come in with you, because a towel that’s been in a 90°C room is warm, damp and useless for drying.
• The optional third: a small hand towel (50×70cm) for wiping your face mid-session — the cheapest quality-of-life addition on this page.

Materials: the actual decision

Linen is the Finnish answer for physical reasons, not nostalgia: the fibre wicks moisture along its length, so a pellava towel is dry again by your next session, resists mustiness in a warm humid cabin, and gets softer the more you hot-wash it. Terry’s plushness works against it in a sauna — it holds water, dries slowly, and repeated 60°C washes turn it to cardboard.

Waffle weaves split the difference: mostly-cotton airiness with much faster drying than terry, at prices between the two.

Named picks (Finnmark Sauna, July 2026)

The Luhta pellava bench towel is the buy-once option — 80×160 covers bench-sitting with feet up, and linen at this weight is a ten-year textile. The Rento Kenno at £7.99 is the honest budget answer for the drying-towel role and for guest sets. All from Finnmark Sauna’s towel collection; compare linen and waffle sauna towels on Amazon for current pricing on equivalents — the search terms that matter are “linen” or “waffle”, not “sauna”.

Care: one rule, repeated

Hot wash, no fabric softener, ever. Softener coats fibres in exactly the wax-like film that stops them absorbing — it is the single most common way good towels get ruined. Line-dry when you can (linen loves it), low tumble when you can’t. Wash bench towels after every session or two; they’re catching a full session’s sweat, which is the whole point of their existence.

How many to own (the rotation maths)

The number that keeps a home sauna civilised is higher than people budget for: with three sessions a week and bench towels washed every session or two, a two-person household wants four to six bench towels and two or three drying towels in rotation — enough that a wash cycle never leaves you improvising with beach towels. Guests add fast; the £7.99 tier exists for exactly that drawer. Under-buying towels is the most common way a tidy sauna habit turns into a laundry bottleneck.

Etiquette: the towel rules travel further than you do

Worth knowing before any public sauna trip, because towel norms are the ones tourists get wrong:

• UK and Ireland: towel on the bench under everything, swimwear usually worn in gyms and hotel spas.
• Germany, Austria, Netherlands: the towel rule is absolute — no skin touches wood, including feet — and swimwear is typically not worn in dedicated saunas. Your bench towel needs to be big enough for all of you; this is precisely what the 80×160cm format is for.
• Finland: relaxed about most things, firm about the bench towel (called a laudeliina — literally “bench linen”) and about showering before you go in.

One habit covers every country: bring a towel big enough to sit on entirely, and keep a second for drying. Nobody in any sauna culture has ever objected to too much towel.

Beyond towels: when fabric does more jobs

If you find yourself wanting the towel to stay put on the bench, that’s not a bigger towel — that’s a seat or bench cover (fitted linen covers run £26.99–£28.99 at the same retailer, covered in the accessories buying guide). And for after the session, the drying-towel role eventually upgrades into a proper sauna robe — particularly for the outdoor-cabin walk in January. Inside a sauna blanket, the towel takes yet another form: a liner between you and the vinyl, which the blanket guide covers.

The bottom line

Two towels minimum, linen or waffle over terry, and never let softener near them. £7.99 covers the budget end today; £45.99 buys the pellava bench towel you’ll still be using in 2036. It’s the least glamorous item in the accessories line-up and the one you’ll use every single session — including the spa-day-at-home sessions where warmed towels do half the luxury.