Sun Home’s Luminar Sauna Did Not Convert Me to Infrared Saunas

On the plus side, the finishes are very nice. It looks and feels sturdy. The faint scent of cedar in the air when you step inside is lovely. As my daughter and the neighborhood kids can attest, it is a beautiful, cozy little nook in which to curl up and read a book if you’re the little kid of a perpetually cold person, and are also a perpetually cold person.

For me, it’s way more convenient to open the Sun Home app, let the sauna warm up for 30 minutes, and step into the backyard than it is to walk three blocks to my gym, where I have to justify going into the sauna by working out beforehand.

You can connect your phone either via Bluetooth or USB and listen to music or a podcast with Sun Home’s ceiling-mounted speakers, which have a decent depth of sound, even if you do really hear the plosives when you’re listening to podcasts. You can turn on party lights with the touch of a button on the control panel, for your party of two.

There is also a chromotherapy panel in the ceiling, which turns the sauna a kind of purplish pink. There are some small-scale studies that support the idea that chromotherapy reduces anxiety. I turned it on multiple times but found that sitting under a pink light panel somehow did not make me forget that I might get Freddy Krueger-ed in my own backyard. You can also opt for an additional infrared therapy panel on the door.

At this price, you want the sauna experience to be seamless and wholly satisfying. You don’t want to deal with assembly or delivery issues. You don’t want to wait an hour or more to get to full heat, and once you’re in, you don’t want to perch on the bench, gingerly touching your back to make sure it’s not burned. You don’t want to worry about glass shattering or a neighborhood 5-year-old getting locked inside.

There are a lot of other saunas where you can sit back without a qualm and don’t have to worry about the door shattering. For example, this one from Plunge is also Bluetooth-connected, you can lean back against the seats comfortably, and it has a wooden door! For $4,000, you can get a traditional home sauna from Costco. There is one person, however, in my household who does regularly hold sauna parties, and I do think my 10-year-old likes the Sun Home much better than I do. A sweaty, steamy room full of naked parents is a much less appealing reading nook.