Buying The Right Sauna For Renters in Small Space

If you’re living in an apartment, a rental, or any temporary situation with limited space or limited electrical, figuring out what sauna to buy can feel impossible. I’ve been in that exact position. When I first started, I was in a small apartment with no ability to change electrical, no extra rooms, and I didn’t want to waste money on something that wouldn’t fit the next place I moved to.

In this video I break down the real-world options for people who rent, have small spaces, or know they’ll be moving within a year. Whether you’re debating between a portable sauna, a budget wooden sauna, or a more permanent model with app control, this will give you a clear path based on your situation. Most people in this position need something that heats well, plugs into a normal outlet, and doesn’t cost $10k or require electrical upgrades. That’s why the LifePro one-person wooden sauna ends up being the best fit for most renters—it’s affordable, it works on standard power, it performs well, and it isn’t a nightmare to move later.

If you’re trying to figure out the best sauna for an apartment, condo, rental house, or any small space, this video will help you avoid mistakes and get something that actually works for where you live right now. And if you want help narrowing down your exact setup, just drop your bullet points in the comments and I’ll point you in the right direction.

Below are the links I always include so you can compare options and decide what fits your setup best.

Read the transcript >

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Transcript

Everyone is in this situation. It would have been better at that time for me to get something cheaper and just bite the bullet on compromise, have no app control, have, you know, decent performance, um, but not have the luxuries just yet because, and it’s just like, I’m saying to Tony, I want to read this for other group members because. This, I, everyone is in this situation. I’ve been in this situation when I first started, you know, I was renting an apartment, I was living on savings. I was starting a new business. You know, I was going through major life change.

One of the things that stopped me from getting a sauna was having a small apartment and I was going to rent sauna sessions, which was great at first until I was like, okay, I don’t want to go anymore because I’m driving across town sweating, they didn’t have a shower. So I’m sitting on towels in my car. And one of the most difficult things was, I know I’m not going to stay in this apartment. This is a very temporary thing. So I don’t want to buy some tiny sauna that’s going to fit in here. And then eight months from now, I go and get a bigger place where I could do like electrical changes or have a garage or, you know what I mean?

And get something that I really would like. So I think this is really important to do a video response to this instead of just typing something. So I’m going to read you, uh, the other group members. I’m going to read you Tony’s question. Hey Matt, love your videos and info. We’d love to know what one person in the home sauna you think is best. It’s a rental house, so it could have to move in one year. If I could turn it on my phone, that would be great. One that heats up fast. Thanks for any help. Um, let’s pull this up. So there’s some responses in here. Um, great recommendations from group members. I hate that Facebook does this. It doesn’t show you everything. Um, it also, I think this happens to a lot of people. Did you see how I have a response here? And I replied, other people don’t see this unless you toggle. It automatically just shows most relevant. Well, you can’t see my responses to anything.

So a lot of times these posts go, you know, unanswered, or you think that there’s no answers. Or when you search, you find another thread. That’s about your topic, but unless you toggle all comments and you go through painstakingly, I don’t know why Facebook makes it like this, but it’s so difficult. My response to Tony was this. Well, neither one of those have remote start from your phone. Um, you could look at the, you know, nothing, nothing under $4,000 is going to have remote start. It’s up fast. Does everything that he wants basically that I know of, maybe there’s something out there that I haven’t seen. It’s very possible.

Uh, there’s probably some cheaper, like Wayfair, Amazon stuff that may have an app controller, uh, or something like that. A lot of times you could do a countdown timer, but you’re not going to be able to turn it on remotely, like coming home from work, which is what I think he wants. Um, so nothing comes to mind that ticks all those boxes. Unfortunately, you could look at something like a clear light sanctuary with remote start. Uh, but I wouldn’t say that it heats up quickly. I prefer the performance of the other ones recommended in a thread, like the heavenly heat, eco, the radiant health, E1H, so on and so forth.

Um, other criteria, you know, I’m asking for other criteria because if there’s some other, you know, hierarchy of things that matter to a person, it helps me narrow it down even better. So I’m making this, you know, obviously I’m helping Tony in the thread, but a lot of, I mean, all of us are in this position or have been, this is extremely common. So you’re renting a place, not sure what to do. Um, you can’t tear the walls open. You can’t run electrical. You can’t fish, you know, a wire, you know, to a place where you could, you know, power something that would give him everything that he wants or give you everything that you want.

So I’m asking if there’s other criteria to maybe narrow it down that would help me say, okay, you know what, it’s better for you to sacrifice some performance and have some app controller thing, if that’s really important to you. Or it’s better for me to say, you know, Hey, don’t look at these three. Uh, look at this over here because, you know, even though you can’t turn it on remotely, the performance is going to be insane. That would be like the heavenly heat eco. Um, but some other group members have already suggested that to him. And it’s, it’s like, the other thing that is tough is that sometimes to get exactly what you want right now, knowing that you’re going to move is probably not the right decision.

Just like when I was in a small apartment, it wasn’t the right choice for me to go out and figure out how to get overextend myself and get a $6,500 sauna that would give me awesome performance, app control, you know, all this other stuff, it would have been better at that time for me to get something cheaper and just bite the bullet on compromise, have no app control, have, you know, decent performance, um, but not have the, the luxuries just yet because, and it’s just like, I’m saying to Tony, if it wasn’t a rental or if you wait until after you move, maybe there’s an option to pick a place that would, um, allow you to have something else and get everything that you want.

All those things are likely going to be over budget, but if you had every single thing that you wanted, or let’s say you rented an apartment with a garage, most garage door openers are automatically 20 amp. So they usually have a 20 amp circuit pre-wired in the garage. So even if you’re still renting another place, you don’t necessarily have to rewire it just to power, you know, and the only reason I’m saying that, not that he wants a big sauna, I’m just saying a lot of the 20 amp models will do what he’s asking.

They’ll have remote app control. They’ll have really good performance because of a bigger power supply. Yes. The cabin is a little bit bigger, but the heat’s more adequate for the cubic footage of the space. It’s also more premium brands that have all that technology built in. So now you have more product offerings. So it would be slightly over budget, but you could get away with, Hey, let me go and look at apartments or houses or the next place that I moved to and be on the lookout for those things before I, you know, just randomly pick a place.

That’s basically what I did. I moved from a small apartment to a little condo that had an extra room where I could fit this stuff. It also had a one car garage that I could use for all the stuff that I was doing. Um, and it had a 20 amp circuit in there because of the garage door opener. Now it wasn’t perfect. I didn’t hire an electrician and come put conduit down the wall and put an outlet in and stuff. I just got a 20 amp, um, extender and made it work on the existing circuit that was there.

Right. And so that’s kind of like what I would suggest in the meantime, you could do something like the DIY Sonic kit. You could build your own tent, uh, for three, 400 bucks. A lot of people don’t want to do that. So to that, I would suggest maybe look at the life pro they’re on sale. They’re pretty cheap right now. Works pretty good for what it is. Is it going to have remote app control? No. Is it going to have, you know, this, that, and the other? No. Is it going to make you sweat? Yes. Does it work well for what it is? Yes. Is there anything better in that price range that gives you a better, um, you know, sweat that plugs into a regular outlet? No.

Uh, you could also look at portable saunas, um, but you’re going to pay, you pay the same price for like a relaxed, portable sauna as you are for a standup wooden, one person model, like a life pro, especially because they’re on sale right now. So in the group, you can find those posts. Um, I don’t know how, you know, last time they had a sale, they sold out and then the stock’s gone for whatever, you know, people don’t jump on it, but you know, it always comes back around eventually. So there’s definitely options. You could look at, um, the sauna domes. That would be another option. Give you a really great sweat.

I don’t think from the sounds of it, that this is, that’s the fit for everybody. Cause not everybody wants to like lay down and put the thing away. And they’d rather just have, you know, a, I’m, I’m like that too. I’d rather have a standup model. I go open the door, turn it on, I get out, I wash my towels and I’m done. There’s no, you know, laying down, folding the thing up, doing this, doing that. If you have the space to do that, usually you have the space to do, you know, something else, but everyone’s different. Some people just like the idea of laying down. It’s more comfortable to them.

Here’s a bunch of options that I’ve thrown at you. If you guys have, you know, more details, I can help you narrow it down. So in the comments below, if you just do bullet points, like this is my situation. Uh, duh, duh, duh, duh. This is the space. This is the electrical. This is how long I’m going to be here. You can kind of get like a better idea of what your options would be or what your next best choice would be. There’s going to be some compromise in, in this position when you’re renting an apartment, you know, it’s not like you, first of all, you’re not allowed to really change the electrical number two, you’re not going to want to spend money on a place that isn’t yours.

Nobody wants to hire an electrician for 600 bucks to come in, put some dedicated line. That’s why I suggested, you know, when you move to the next place, whether you’re buying or renting, it doesn’t really matter, look for things that can work for you like garage, you know, circuitry. So use that to your advantage. If there’s space in there, if the electrical is in there, it doesn’t matter if you buy it or you rent it. Uh, you could make that work for you. And so my suggestion would be in this case, unless there’s some other criteria that makes sense to, you know, bite the bullet and buy something now, and your situation’s not going to change very much over the next one to two years, three years, you know, otherwise you, I would get something cheap, you can always just sell it on marketplace afterwards, maybe you lose a couple hundred bucks, whatever.

But you’re, you’re getting started implementing heat therapy now, and you can get.

Something that doesn’t tick all the boxes, but it’s also not $4,000. You can get something cheaper, uh, to hold you over. And then that also gets your feet wet, gets you building a routine, make sure sauna is for you. So you’re not like overly invested in some $10,000 product. And you don’t even use the thing that does happen to some people. But usually when you spend that much money, you’re also motivated to use it. So it works, it works both ways, but those would be my suggestions.

And really just wanted to make you the video and say, I totally understand I have been in this position. This happened to me when I first got exposed to sauna. You know, I lived in a building that had a traditional sauna. I would use it sometimes for fun, but I never really got the health benefit or the uptick like I did when I really started getting serious with the infrared.

I guess you can’t see it cause the camera, the camera won’t focus, but there’s many saunas behind me. I mean, you could do one of those also, but it’s only going to be a few hundred dollars cheaper than like a life pro one person. And I’m much, I have the life pro right over here. You can’t see it. It’s off camera. If you look at the other videos, the only reason that I suggested so much in these cases is because for a few hundred dollars more, you’ve got something with a full glass door on the front and you don’t have to crouch down and turn sideways just to get in and out of it. It’s a lot more comfortable to me, the performance and the comfortability matters because I’ll use it more if it’s, if it’s more enjoyable and it really doesn’t take up that much more space.

Um, so I would suggest something like that. If that doesn’t sound right, you know, for you and you’re willing to give up some performance and you really want that remote start and the next place that you live, you know, you already know that it’s going to be exactly like this place. Then I would look at the clear light sanctuary one with the remote start. Jen can tell you about those. If you have specific questions about the model, but it’s going to be a larger one person sauna. I think it’s out of budget for what you’re, I don’t think they’re $4,000. I think they’re more right now.

Um, but it would do everything you want and you could take it with you from place to place works on a regular outlet. You’re going to give up some performance with that. It’s not going to heat up as quickly as the others, but you will get the tech, you know, that you’re asking for. Aside from that, I would do what I recommended in the beginning, you know, be thinking, do something cheap for now, be thinking about the next place that you move. Um, it also give you time to save up for a little bit more. If you spent five or $6,000, you got a bunch of things to choose from and you can get everything that you want.

The problem is you need a 20 amp circuit in order to consider those options. So hope that gave you a pretty good overview. Like I said, I can help you narrow it down personally. If you give me, you know, the details, um, in bullet points, you know, in the comments, but, uh, I’m happy to do a follow-up for you.