Top 10 Best One-Person Saunas for Small Spaces (Full Review)

If you live in an apartment, condo, or just don’t have much space, here are 10 of the best one person sauna options you can actually use at home. From compact Amazon minis and full-height wooden saunas to portable tents, domes, and even DIY builds, this guide covers everything from $200 to $8,000+. These are the models I’ve tested that make sense for small spaces and will still give you a great sweat session.

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Transcript

Today is best one-person sauna for small spaces. We’re gonna talk about some different options. I have a one-person full height here. I have a one-person mini, and then we’re gonna throw in some B-roll from a different mini that’s in between these two.

We’re not working within a particular budget. We’re gonna be all over the map. That’s gonna be everything from portable saunas from 500 bucks to mid-size one-person saunas up to $4,500. So if you’re in a small space or you’re in an apartment like I was, you don’t have a lot of room.

Something on this list is gonna be a good fit for you and will help you get sauna therapy in your home. So first, let’s get into a bottom-of-the-barrel, shouldn’t say bottom-of-the-barrel, but lower-budget wooden sauna like an Amazon mini sauna. This is technically a one-person sauna, but as you can see, it’s not full height, like something like the Life Pro or a Costco Dynamic or anything that’s in this price range.

This is about a $2,000 price range. This is anywhere from 900 to 1,200. I think the sauna itself is about 1,000, but Amazon charges a 199 or 229 delivery fee for something like this. So that’s baked into the price.

Let’s go over some key differences because while we kinda like the application of this for certain needs, I don’t even know how to spell the brand of this sauna to tell you what it is because you literally look at the listing and it’s like D-D-S-T-T-C-D-D-D-D-D, and that’s like the name.

So everybody wants like a model number and a brand. Come in here with me and look at this thing. If I can get in. So this is a generic, this is a generic Amazon.

If you look at the control panel, if you look at the serial number, if you look at the model, there’s no branding on it anywhere. It’s literally like a white label, drop-shipped or wholesale company.

I believe the same manufacturer that builds these is the same one that builds all of this style for all the companies. When we tried to Google and search for this brand name, we find nothing. So a little hesitation is present dealing with some of these Amazon Wayfair. I don’t think they’re terrible.

It does work. It will make you sweat. It’s not low EMF. Like it says, it’s not perfect.

The build quality and assembly is actually top notch. I was really impressed with how it goes together. This assembles with the slip latches like a five or $6,000 sauna, which I was very, very impressed with. Now don’t expect 100% build quality.

If you look at the outside, it seems like it has some type of, I wouldn’t call it like a spray on coating, but I mean the fit and the finish isn’t perfect. So don’t expect it to be, you know, a $10,000 sauna for a thousand bucks. That said, I have a little hesitation on saying, you know, check out this brand because I don’t even know what the brand is.

There is a new version of this coming. I don’t know if it’s out yet, but I’m supposed to demo one. It’s a little bit different than this. The window is smaller.

It has red light therapy integrated into the top of it. I think it’s two or $300 more under $1,400 or so. And I believe it’s called the cozy model. So in the next two months we should have review videos on that model.

And it’s a little bit of an upgrade of this. They also did some changes where they raise the height. It’s not this brand either. It’s a brand that I think we can actually find, but they raise this heater up to about here.

So you get more torso infrared coverage, which I think will have an even faster preheat time than this. I think we’ll get a better sweat. I don’t think there will be any improvement on all the other stuff like things that people are looking for, build quality, EMF, dah, dah, dah, dah.

But I think for a couple hundred dollars more, you’ll probably get a better setup. There’s a bunch of these that look similar, but not all of them have this heater here.

Not all of them have this heater on this side, some of them only have a heater on one, and then not all of them have this heater here either. So some don’t have the floor heater or the front, and some of them don’t have both side heaters. In order to get a really good sweat in this thing, you want to have all the heater coverage.

It’s not great and comfortable to get in and out, but once you’re in here, I’m actually not too comfortable. You know, if you’re any bigger than me, obviously you’re kind of SOL here, you are out of luck. But I think the ladies would love this. If you’re in an apartment, you have a really small space, you know, I think this would go, you know, go great.

The reason that I point this out is because for not much more money, you can step into something that’s full height, something that has a brand warranty behind it, everything else. And I know where we can find the company and, you know, get help, get customer service if you need something.

With this, I really don’t know because I can’t find it myself. Doesn’t mean it’s not a good fit for somebody out there, link in the description if you want to check it out. Let’s move on to the next one. So let’s go to a full height, one person, right?

And I wanted to show these side by side because most people in an apartment will gravitate towards something that fits their space and are both plug and play. It’s very important to note that when we say plug and play, we mean no electrical upgrade from an electrician in a condo or apartment or something like that.

You’re not going to want to have to make any of those modifications. A lot of the times it’s not even possible. Like you shouldn’t be doing stuff like that anyway, and it’s not your forever home. It wouldn’t be a good investment or you wouldn’t be spending your money wisely either.

Both of these units, while completely different sizes, offer a totally different experience in the way that you sit in them and somebody forgot to turn off their telephone. What I want to point out to you is that there’s a bunch of different models that you can get within a similar price range, 500 to $2,500, depending on where your budget falls.

There’s a couple of different models that can plug into a regular outlet. Basically, if you can run a vacuum cleaner, you can run one of these saunas. But if you spend four or 500 bucks more, you get something that is…

A lot bigger. You get something with an actual door that I don’t have to crouch in, right? And has full height. Some people are short enough to where, you know, they could stand up in something like this.

I obviously can’t. Depending on what your needs are, there’s a ton of options that’ll work for small spaces and apartments. We’re actually going to go over some portable sauna options too. Some people, like I used to be in a studio apartment and I had a 10 by 10 hundred square foot office attached.

It was the greatest thing in the world, but I didn’t have room for a sauna like this. I just couldn’t shove it in the corner of a living room and have the place feel halfway decent. So the right solution for me at that time would have been a portable sauna where you could take it, fold it up and stick it in a closet when it’s not in use.

And then in the evenings, whenever you want to do your sauna session, after you go to the gym or something like that, you pull it out, turn it on, go make your sauna drink, come back to your session, hop in the shower. Once you get out of the shower, the portable thing is all aired out and cooled down.

You fold it up, put it back in the closet. For some people, that’s the right choice. For other people, they can’t stand to be zipped up, you know, in the little thing with the zippers and your hands sticking out the front and you can’t do anything. They just don’t like it.

They want their head in. They’re looking for a different experience. The money doesn’t matter to them. They’re kind of like, you know, I’ll pay to be more comfortable or to have like a wooden sauna like this, but there’s a ton of different options that’ll work for apartments.

So I just want to take you through all of them before I forget. If there’s something that you see that you want more in depth info on a specific model, we’ve got every single individual review on the YouTube channel. So just go to the YouTube channel, check out the recent videos, go to the last six months or two years or something like that, or search for the individual brand name and it’ll pop right up.

So there’s a couple of things that I particularly like about this life pro that I think are best in class or beat out other models that are the same exact price in the marketplace. Specifically, people like the, to compare this to the Costco sauna, which I think is a fair comparison.

In my opinion, this is like 1750.

sometimes a little cheaper if you use the group buy discount that’s in our Facebook group. What I want to point out to you is that this is $1,750. The Costco model is like $1,950. So for a couple hundred bucks less, not only do you get control panel on the outside and the inside, it mirrors each other.

You also get better heater coverage because you have heaters in the floor and heaters on the sidewalls. If you look at my individual review videos, you’re going to see that some particular models in this price range, either come without floor heaters, which leaves your feet feeling a little cold and no sweat from the knee down or without sidewall heaters or without both.

And this isn’t limited to the thousand, $2,000 price range Saunas either. If you look at something higher in like a $5,000 or a $4,000 Sunlighten, like a Signature Series or something like that, unless it’s an Amplify model, there’s really not a lot of heat coverage down low. There’s no, there’s nothing under the bench.

There’s no calf heater. Um, the floor heaters can be relatively weak just as a comparison for you. So this is a feature set that I would encourage you to really look out for. It’s not really price dependent.

It’s more of brand design dependent. And I would really, this makes or breaks your sauna session. If you can stay within your budget, whatever that is and get a better heater layout, you’re going to get a better sweat. You’re going to get faster heat up times, and you’re going to get a more even keeled heat experience throughout your sauna session.

And you’ll like it a lot better. So the little brother, this is the big brother to the Heavenly Heat Mini Eco. I think they changed the name to Eco when I first got it, it was called the Mini. Obviously this is not in the same price range.

So I would, but I just wanted to show you that if you’re looking for a dual therapy sauna, this might be something that you’d be interested in. This is a red light therapy sauna, which is considerably more expensive than the others. But this particular sauna does run on a 15 amp, 120 volt circuit.

So in theory, you could use two separate outlets and power the red light therapy panel, or just not use it along with the sauna. And you can still get a dual therapy device and not have to do an electrical upgrade.

Great. For most people, this is going to be too expensive. I forget how much it is now. It used to be around five, 5,500 or 6,500.

I think those prices have increased to somewhere around 7,500 or 8,500. But if you’re looking at getting like some bio max, you know, red light therapy, you know, dual panel plus a sauna, plus this, plus that. It’s still a great fit for some people in small spaces because you don’t have to have two separate areas where you can use it.

They integrate the red light therapy right into the front wall of the sauna. So just thought I would mention that. So the heavenly heat mini is going to be one of your most expensive options for a small sauna, but it’s built like a tank and will last you a lifetime.

And I don’t think there’s anything else on the planet that has the same heat up time as that. It’s basically I don’t want to say that it’s instant, but it’s pretty dang quick. I mean, you get into that thing. It’s also one of the only infrared saunas that goes up to above 160 degrees.

And it feels incredibly hot. It’s very intense. You’ll see me sweating in this video. We’ve done a couple overviews.

We have individual reviews of this on the channel. I’d highly recommend you check it out. It is a little bit more expensive now than when we first got it. I think when we first got it, it was a thousand or twelve hundred dollars less, you know, than it is right now.

So it is in the upper end of your safer apartment slash small condo. You know, one person saunas. But it is one of the best choices that you could possibly get if you’re looking for a forever mini sized one person wooden sauna. Now let’s get into some other options like collapsible, portable saunas, non-wooden.

You can also throw sauna domes into the mix. I’m not a huge fan of sauna blankets. You could if you really like them. But it’s really kind of like I feel like I’m heating up in a cadaver bag.

Basically, I’ve tried them. Not all of them work the same. Some of them have woven coil, you know, heating elements that don’t actually give you infrared. It’s kind of like a giant heating pad with a zipper that turns it into a bag, which I find a little bit weird.

You also sweat into your own like container of sweat, which is a little odd to clean all that up. Every after every session, I think.

The influencers that put them on their bedspreads are crazy because I would never use it like that after trying it for the first time. My point is, for portable saunas that you could easily store away in a closet, you’ve got the Dome sauna. So the OneLove Dome, look at our review videos on those.

They have a non-low EMF version, I think, for under $1,000, and they have an ultra-low XL, which is what you see me in because I’m bigger, for around $1,500, $1,600. I think with the group buy discount code inside the Facebook group, you save 10% or something like that. So it’s still around the, you know, under $1,000 or a little over halfway to $2,000.

Next on the list would be something like a really affordable portable tent sauna. If you go on my Amazon store page under the Matt Justice heading, you’ll see something called the HeatWave. It’s a $200 portable sauna box, or collapsible tent, I should say. One of the things that works great about that is you can kind of try with low investment.

You’re probably not going to be happy with it long-term. I stained the heck out of the thing. It’s a small cabin. I’m crouched.

It comes with an uncomfortable chair. All the stuff that you’d recommend. It’s not extremely low EMF, it’s not low VOC, but it will make you sweat, it’ll introduce you to sauna therapy, and I have videos and reviews on it if you check those out separately. Next on the list would be something like a relaxed portable sauna.

This is going to be high-end. This is going to be for somebody that loves portable saunas and knows they want to use one for a long time. Now they continue to raise the price on these. When I bought mine, I think it was in the $1,200 price range, which is a lot for a portable sauna.

The way that it heats up, though, is almost like the Heavenly Heat Mini. It’s damn near instant. It doesn’t have to take a long time for you to do a session. You basically turn it on, go make your sauna drink, come back, and you’re ready to rock and roll.

That said, I think they continually raise the price. You’ll have to check the link in the description to see what the current price is, but it’s going to be expensive, but you only cry once for quality. Of the portable saunas, it’s probably the highest quality one that you can get.

And last but not least, I always like to throw this in because, as always,