The pandemic saw a boom in buying home wellness aids, with weighted blankets and acupressure mats touted as ways to better the quality of your sleep and reduce aches and pains. But for those who crave the heat and muscle-relaxing benefits of a sauna, the bath may not have been quite enough to scratch that itch. Hence the rise in the popularity of infrared sauna blankets.
You may already know about the mood-enhancing element of saunas – especially if you’re someone who’s always cold. These blankets aim to bring that feeling to your home.
Combined with infrared, the holistic effects promised are quite impressive – a session may well increase circulation, bring down inflammation and alleviate chronic pain. That said, there has been little research surrounding infrared sauna blankets, so there is no scientific evidence of these benefits.
Higher dose infrared sauna blanket V3
This sauna blanket comes with velcro fastenings, so once you’re in you feel snug and comfortable. It offers eight different heat levels (five made us sweat a little bit, eight felt sweltering), has a hand-held controller so you can adjust the temperature without having the palaver of getting out of the blanket each time you want to adjust, and has a timer so it’ll automatically switch off after an hour if you fall asleep (which we did, every time).
MiHigh infrared sauna blanket
With a dial that can take the temperature from 25-80C in small increments, this one is great if you are sensitive to temperature and want to be able to change it while in there. We liked the control it offered when hitting higher temperatures, experimenting with the warmer, more sweat-inducing ones, then cooling it by five degrees when it felt a bit much. In other respects, it is similar to the HigherDOSE model (£539, Higherdose.com), in that it fastens with velcro and has an external body comprised of vegan leather.
Smomar infrared sauna blanket
This Smomar version works similarly to the above two, but the lowest temperature available is 30C, so it’s the one to go for if you don’t think you’ll bother with the coolest setting (though it must be said that 30C just felt like a slightly warmer room and certainly didn’t make us sweat, so it’s still a very good entry-level temperature). This also felt a little more lightweight than the others, so is a good one to go for if you intend on using it in different rooms.
Heat Healer sauna blanket
Boasting 96 jade and tourmaline stones in the lining – which evenly distribute infrared heat – and with a Faraday shield, Heat Healer has made a blanket that is perfect for anyone after a holistic treatment that feels as close to lying in a hot sauna as possible.
This is also the longest model, so if you’re tall, we’d opt for this one. The stones are flat and run down the blanket evenly, by the way, so you don’t need to worry about them being uncomfortable to lie on.
