The best infrared saunas in the UK

The Sanctuary 2 Pro is the cabin the rest of this list is measured against. Two 700W full-spectrum heaters by the door face you, and carbon-ceramic far infrared panels line the back wall, side walls and leg area, so you're warmed from the front as well as the back. The cabin is FSC-certified okoume with a glass roof and a removable solid wood floor, and it draws 2,500W through a standard 13A plug.

It costs £9,999, the full list price. If you saw it at £5,999 over the summer, that was an end-of-line cedar customer return sold as clearance, and it's no longer available. What the money buys is Clearlight's limited lifetime warranty for home use and free delivery with professional installation to most of mainland UK, and nothing else here comes close on either.

Plan for the size: it's 132cm wide, 121cm deep and 196cm tall. Adding Clearlight's red light tower or mini heater takes it to 2,700W or 2,800W, and Clearlight asks you to check with an electrician whether a dedicated circuit is then needed.

The Infrared 130 copies most of the Clearlight layout for £3,599. Four full-spectrum heaters sit front and back, two carbon panels warm your sides and a seventh heater sits by the bench, 2,400W in all, so the heat doesn't come from one wall only. Inside is smooth thermo-aspen behind an 8mm grey glass front, and a K3 touch screen sets the heat and timer.

It plugs into a 13A socket, and Hekla says to keep it off extension leads and off a shared socket. The cabin is 130cm wide, 115cm deep and 200cm tall, but Hekla wants 50cm clear above it, so the room needs a ceiling of about 2.5m. That rules out many lofts and some basements.

The warranty is 2 years, a long way short of Clearlight's. Delivery is £99 flat-packed to the kerb or £249 carried in and built, so the real total is £3,698 to £3,848.

The same seven heaters, the same 2,400W and the same 13A plug as the 130, in a cabin 30cm wider. The bench grows from 120cm to 150cm, the difference between sitting shoulder to shoulder and having room to turn. It costs £3,999, £400 more.

The wider cabin has about 25% more floor inside (151cm by 106cm), and those seven heaters now warm all of it. If two of you will use it together most of the time, the space is worth having; if it's usually one person, the 130 keeps you closer to the panels for less money.

Everything else matches the 130: thermo-aspen inside, a grey glass front, a 2-year warranty and £99 or £249 delivery. It also needs the same ceiling height of about 2.5m.

£2,163 buys a two-person far infrared cabin that plugs into a standard socket and draws 1,900W. It's 120cm wide, 105cm deep and 190cm tall, the smallest two-person footprint here. A control panel and app, Bluetooth speakers and an air ioniser are included.

Pro-Line Direct publishes an EMF figure, which most sellers don't: below 0.3µT at 5cm from the heating element. The warranty is 1 year on the electrics and 2 years on the timber, and the listing's estimated delivery runs from 3 November to 1 January, so order early if you want it this year.

Far infrared only means no near-infrared heaters, and the evidence that those add anything beyond a warmer feel is thin. The gap to the Hekla 130 is £1,436 before delivery, and what it buys there is mainly warranty, heater layout and finish.

The MyoSauna is a one-person cabin whose walls clip together without tools, on a 90cm by 90cm footprint. A 1,500W carbon and ceramic infrared system heats it to between 40 and 65°C from a 13A socket, with app scheduling and red light. At £1,299 it's the cheapest sit-in cabin on this list.

Myo Master's page leaves gaps. It doesn't say what the walls are made of, and it quotes build times from 5 to 30 minutes in different places. The warranty is 1 year, there's a 60-day money-back trial, and delivery is free and takes 3 to 4 weeks, with a £299 build service in some postcodes.

It's also the cheapest to run: 1,500W at full power costs 39p an hour at the current price cap. If you aren't yet sure a cabin will earn its place in the room, this is the low-risk way to find out.