Sauna Mat vs Towel: What Should You Sit On in the Sauna?

Always sit on something. A towel is the minimum and it's what most public saunas require. A wool felt mat does the same hygiene job and adds two things a towel can't: it insulates you from the heat stored in the bench, and it stays dry enough to use round after round. If you sauna once a month, a towel is fine. If you sauna weekly or more, a mat is the better tool.

What you're sitting on and why it matters

Sauna benches are timber, usually spruce, aspen or cedar, chosen because they don't get as hot as denser woods. But they still get hot. In a traditional sauna at 80 to 100°C the top bench surface can sit well above 60°C, and the hottest layer of air is right at bench and head height [1]. Bare skin on a hot bench is the second most common reason people move down or get out early, after their head overheating.

Then there's hygiene. You sweat, everyone else sweats, and timber is porous. The Finnish convention is a seat cover of some kind on every sitting, and Finnish public saunas commonly hand out disposable paper seat covers (pefletti) at the door for exactly this reason [2]. Most Australian gyms, bathhouses and recovery centres require a towel under you, and many will ask you to leave without one.

So the question is never "should I sit on something". It's "what works best".

The towel

Cotton towels do the hygiene job. They catch sweat, they're washable, and they're what everyone already owns.

Where they fall short:

• Insulation. Cotton has almost no insulating value once it's damp, and it's damp within a few minutes. Wet cotton conducts heat far better than dry, so bench heat comes straight through [3].
• Rounds. A towel that's absorbed one round of sweat is a wet rag for the second. Most people end up sitting on the same damp patch or carrying two towels.
• Slipping. Towels move. On a polished bench with sweat underneath, you spend part of every session repositioning it.
• Size. A gym towel covers about a third of a bench. Anything longer becomes a wet lump to carry home.

None of this makes a towel wrong. It's just a towel, doing towel things in a room it wasn't designed for.

The wool felt mat

A wool felt mat is a purpose-built seat layer. Wool traps air, so felt insulates against bench heat even when it's damp, and it absorbs up to 30% of its weight in moisture vapour without feeling wet [4]. Wool is also naturally resistant to odour-causing bacteria, so a mat hung to dry between rounds stays usable through a full session and doesn't need washing between visits [4].

The Halo sauna mat is 7mm of dual-layered Australian wool felt at 50cm by 70cm, which covers a full sitting and rolls or hangs by its loop between rounds. In practice it does three things a towel can't:

1. It insulates from below. The bench heat that drives people down a level stops at the felt.
2. It stays dry enough to reuse. Hang it during your cool-down and it's ready for the next round.
3. It's yours. In a shared sauna it's a personal layer that goes home with you, not a communal towel from the gym basket.

Downsides: it costs more than a towel, it's another thing to carry, and it needs to be hung to dry after the session rather than thrown in a bag.

Sitting on nothing

Don't. Even at home, timber absorbs sweat and oils and becomes a hygiene problem over time. In a public sauna it's a fast way to get asked to leave. And bare skin on a hot bench is uncomfortable enough that you'll cut the session short, which defeats the point.

Public sauna etiquette in Australia

Australian sauna culture is young and mostly grew up through gyms, recovery centres and bathhouses, so the rules are a mix of Finnish convention and local house rules. The consistent ones:

• Something under you, always. Towel or mat, covering everything that touches the bench.
• Shower before you go in.
• Don't pour water on the stones without asking the room.
• Hang your hat and mat to dry rather than leaving them on the bench between rounds.
• Take your gear with you when you leave.

A wool mat fits these rules better than a towel because it stays where you put it, dries between rounds, and doesn't turn into a puddle by the third round.

Which to use where

The takeaway

A towel is the floor. A wool felt mat is the upgrade for anyone who sits through more than one round and would rather not think about the bench. Pair it with a sauna hat and the two hottest surfaces in the room, the air at your head and the timber under you, are both handled. The complete set is here.

Sources

1. Hannuksela ML, Ellahham S. Benefits and risks of sauna bathing. American Journal of Medicine. 2001;110(2):118-126.
2. Finnish Sauna Society (Suomen Saunaseura). Public sauna etiquette and the pefletti seat cover. sauna.fi.
3. Engineering ToolBox. Thermal conductivity of common materials. engineeringtoolbox.com. (Water conducts heat roughly 25 times better than still air.)
4. The Woolmark Company. The science of wool: moisture management and odour resistance. woolmark.com.

Written by Liam Connors, founder of Halo. About Halo.