Sauna vs banya.
Sauna vs banya: what’s the difference, and how they compare with hammams and steam rooms.
A Finnish sauna and a Russian banya both heat stones on a stove and both end with cold water. A sauna is hot and dry; a banya is steamier, often cooler, and comes with felt hats, herbal tea and a massage with soaked birch branches. Here’s how they differ, where each came from, and how the hammam, the smoke sauna and Ireland’s own sweathouses fit in.
Updated · 8 min read
Sauna vs banya at a glance
A Finnish sauna and a Russian banya are close cousins. Both are wooden rooms heated by a stove full of stones, both use water on the stones to make steam, and both end with something cold. The difference is in the air and the ritual. A sauna is hot and dry, with bursts of steam. A banya is usually kept wetter and a little cooler, and its centrepiece is being beaten, gently, with a bundle of leafy branches.
| Finnish sauna | Russian banya | |
|---|---|---|
| Air temperature | 80–100°C in research1 | Often 40–70°C, though some run much hotter2,3 |
| Humidity | Low, 10–20%, with bursts of löyly1 | High: the air is kept steamy2,3 |
| The hot room | The sauna | The parilka4 |
| Branches | Vihta or vasta: a whisk of fresh silver birch5 | Venik: birch or oak, sometimes eucalyptus, used for a beating massage4,6 |
| Hat | Optional | A felt hat to protect your head from the heat4 |
| Cooling off | Lake, sea, snow or a shower | A cold plunge4, a cold bucket or snow |
| Food and drink | Water, and often a drink and a snack afterwards | Herbal tea and food are part of the visit7 |
| Status | UNESCO intangible cultural heritage since 20208 | A centuries-old public and family tradition |
Is a banya hotter than a sauna?
Usually not by the thermometer, but it can feel like it. Researchers describe the wet steam bath, “also called Russian Banya”, as air at 40–70°C that is fully saturated with steam, against 80–100°C and 5–25% humidity in a dry sauna.2 A 2024 review describes the banya as offering “a milder and more humid heat”.3 Some banyas, and some guides, say the opposite: Time Out called London’s Banya No.1 “hotter than your average sauna”.6
Both can be true. In humid air your sweat can’t evaporate, so you lose your main way of cooling down. When Polish researchers put the same young men in a dry sauna at 91°C and a humid one at 59°C, the humid room raised their core temperature and heart rate more.2 A banya may read 30°C lower and still work your body harder. Our guide to sauna vs steam room explains why.
Inside a banya
A traditional banya has a changing and resting room, a washroom and the parilka, the hot room “where water is splashed on hot stones to produce steam”.4 The stove is a large stone-filled oven, often wood-fired. Bathers pour water or herbal infusions on the stones and climb the benches, which get hotter the higher you go.
The venik and the beating
The venik is “a bundle of tree branches, traditionally birch or oak, used to whip the bathers”.4 It’s soaked in hot water until the leaves are soft and fragrant. A steam master, or a friend, waves it to drive hot air over your skin, then presses and pats you with it from head to toe. It sounds brutal; it feels more like a hot, leafy massage. London’s Banya No.1 uses birch, oak and eucalyptus.6 The ritual is called parenie.
The hat
The pointed felt hat isn’t a costume. It is “designed to protect the wearer from a heatstroke” by keeping the hottest air off your head.4 Wool and felt insulate, so your head stays cooler while your body takes the heat.
Tea, food and cold
Between rounds, banya-goers take a cold plunge or pour a bucket of cold water over their heads, and in winter some roll in the snow. Then they sit, drink herbal tea and eat. For a first visit, ITMO University’s guide advises sticking to non-alcoholic drinks.4 A banya visit often lasts several hours.
A short history of the banya
The earliest written mention of the banya dates to the eleventh century, connected with Novgorod, where archaeologists have also found wooden bathhouses from the same period.9 The word comes from Latin, but the tradition itself “had Finno-Ugrian origins”, the same roots as the Finnish sauna.9 For centuries the banya was the main way to keep clean, a cure for illness and a place where babies were born.9
A famous legend in the medieval Primary Chronicle has the Apostle Andrew travelling north, finding people beating themselves with branches in wooden bathhouses and calling it “voluntary torture”.10 Historians doubt Andrew ever made the trip, but the story shows how old the venik is.
The Finnish sauna
Finland has 3.3 million saunas for 5.5 million people, and UNESCO added “Sauna culture in Finland” to its list of intangible cultural heritage in 2020.8 At its heart, UNESCO says, “lies löyly, the spirit or steam released by casting water onto a stack of heated stones”.8 Finnish saunas come “in many forms – electric, wood-heated, smoke and infra-red”.8
Finns use branches too. The vihta or vasta is a whisk of fresh silver birch, no more than two days old, used to pat the skin and release its scent.5 The difference from the banya is emphasis: in a sauna the whisk is optional; in a banya the venik is the main event.
Other sweat baths around the world
| Tradition | Heat | What makes it different |
|---|---|---|
| Finnish sauna | Hot, dry air with bursts of steam | Löyly; 3.3 million saunas in Finland8 |
| Russian banya | Humid steam, often cooler air | The venik, felt hats, tea and long visits |
| Smoke sauna (Finland, Estonia) | Stored heat from stones heated for hours | No chimney; six to eight hours to heat11 |
| Turkish hammam | Warm, saturated air, 40–50°C3 | Marble rooms, a heated central stone and a scrub |
| German sauna | Finnish-style heat | Aufguss ceremonies; usually nude and mixed |
| Japanese mushi-buro | Steam or heated stone rooms | An old sweat-bath tradition, separate from onsen hot springs |
| Irish sweathouse | Small stone huts heated by a fire | Around 300 still stand in Ireland12 |
Turkish hammam
The hammam descends from Roman baths, with hot air running through spaces under the floors and along the walls.13 Bathers move through a changing room, a cool room and a hot room, where they lie on a large octagonal marble slab called the göbek taşı, the “tummy stone”, to be scrubbed and washed by an attendant.13 Men and women bathe in separate sections or at separate hours.13 The air is cooler than a sauna but saturated, about 40–50°C at 100% humidity.3
Smoke saunas in Finland and Estonia
A smoke sauna has no chimney. The fire heats a huge pile of stones for six to eight hours, then is left to die while the smoke clears.11,14 The “Smoke sauna tradition in Võromaa”, in south-east Estonia, was added to UNESCO’s list in 2014, a tradition its community describes as “ritual cleansing of both body and soul”.15
German saunas and Aufguss
In Germany, saunas are usually mixed and textile-free: “no clothes are allowed in the saunas and steam baths”, and no skin should touch the bench without a towel.16 The highlight is the Aufguss, a ceremony in which a sauna master pours scented water on the stones and spreads the heat by flapping a towel. Don’t walk in once it has started.16 Aufguss is now a competition too: the 2022 world championships drew 68 sauna masters from 13 countries.17
Japan
Japan is famous for onsen, its hot spring baths, which are water rather than sweat baths. It also has the mushi-buro, a term for “many different forms of sweat baths”, including kiln-like stone rooms heated by burning green pine.18
Ireland’s sweathouses
Ireland has its own sweat bath. Sweathouses are small stone huts that were heated with a fire, then cleared so people could sit in the stored heat. Tourism Ireland says around 300 still stand on the island of Ireland.12
A note on sweat lodges
The sweat lodge is a sacred ceremony in some Native American cultures, not a spa treatment. Lakota leaders have said the Inipi ceremony is only for the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota nations, led by recognised ceremony leaders.19 In 2009, three people died at a non-Native retreat in Arizona after a badly run imitation.19 It belongs to the people who keep it.
Banya and sauna etiquette compared
- Clothing. Rules vary by venue and country. In Germany, nude and mixed is the norm.16 In Ireland and the UK, swimwear is usual. London’s Banya No.1 runs men-only and women-only sessions.7
- Hats. Expected in a banya, optional in a sauna.
- Steam. In both, ask before throwing water on the stones.
- Branches. In a banya, the steam master leads the venik ritual; book it if it’s offered. In a sauna, a birch whisk is a quiet, personal thing.
- Time. A sauna visit can be an hour. Plan on a long afternoon at a banya.
Which is healthier, sauna or banya?
Nobody has compared them over the long term. The research linking regular bathing with lower blood pressure and fewer deaths from heart disease comes almost entirely from Finnish saunas.3 A systematic review concluded that regular dry sauna “has potential health benefits” and that more and better data is needed.1 There are no long-term banya studies. Short experiments show humid heat works the body harder, so take banya rounds a little shorter at first. Our guide to sauna health benefits grades the evidence.
Where to try a banya or sauna in Ireland and the UK
The UK has at least one dedicated banya, Banya No.1 in London, with a cedar plunge pool and parenie with a resident steam master.7 We couldn’t find a dedicated banya in Ireland. Sauna, though, is booming in both. Ireland had at least 242 independent saunas by late 2025, about nine in ten opened since 2020.20 The British Sauna Society now maps more than 600 publicly accessible saunas in the UK.21 A wood-fired seaside sauna, steamy when the water goes on and finished with a sea dip, is closer in spirit to a banya than you might expect.
Find a sauna near you, and read our first-timer’s guide before you go.
How we wrote this page
We read the studies, reviews and official guidance linked below and checked every number on this page against its source. Where a figure we found only appeared in news coverage or on a seller’s site, we left it out or said so. Temperatures for banyas vary widely between venues and sources; we give the ranges from published research and say where popular sources disagree. Where a detail of banya tradition appeared only in unsourced articles, we left it out. We last checked the sources on 21 October 2026. Spotted something wrong? Email us.
Olladay makes booking software for saunas, so we’d like more people to use them. That’s a reason to be careful with claims, not to oversell them.
References
- Hussain J, Cohen M. Clinical effects of regular dry sauna bathing: a systematic review. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine. 2018;2018:1857413. 10.1155/2018/1857413
- Pilch W, Szyguła Z, Pałka T, et al. Comparison of physiological reactions and physiological strain in healthy men under heat stress in dry and steam heat saunas. Biology of Sport. 2014;31(2):145–149. 10.5604/20831862.1099045
- Laukkanen JA, Kunutsor SK. The multifaceted benefits of passive heat therapies for extending the healthspan: a comprehensive review with a focus on Finnish sauna. Temperature. 2024. europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC10989710
- ITMO University. A quick guide to the Russian banya. 2 March 2026. news.itmo.ru/en/news/14747/
- Finnish Sauna Society. Quality guidelines for sauna whisks. sauna.fi/en/sauna-knowledge/quality-guidelines-for-sauna-whisks/
- Banya No.1. Time Out London. www.timeout.com/london/health-and-beauty/banya-no-1
- Banya No.1, London. Official website. www.gobanya.co.uk/
- UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. Sauna culture in Finland. Inscribed 2020. ich.unesco.org/en/RL/sauna-culture-in-finland-01596
- Kovalev RK. Banya. In: Encyclopedia of Russian History. Via Encyclopedia.com. www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/banya
- Review of Pollock E. Without the Banya We Would Perish: A History of the Russian Bathhouse (Oxford University Press, 2019). Publishers Weekly. www.publishersweekly.com/9780195395488
- Visit Estonia. An inside look at the Võro smoke sauna tradition. visitestonia.com/en/an-inside-look-at-the-voro-smoke-sauna-tradition
- Tourism Ireland. Heat and healing: Ireland’s ancient and modern sauna culture. 10 June 2025. www.tourismireland.com/international/en-us/news-releases/article/heat-and-healing--ireland-s-ancient-and-modern-sauna-culture
- Ertuğrul A. Istanbul hammams and their architecture. In: A History of Istanbul, vol. 9. istanbultarihi.ist/711-istanbul-hammams-and-their-architecture
- Finnish Sauna Society. A good smoke sauna. sauna.fi/en/sauna-knowledge/a-good-smoke-sauna/
- Estonian Ministry of Culture. Smoke sauna tradition in Võromaa added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. 27 November 2014. www.kul.ee/en/news/smoke-sauna-tradition-voromaa-added-unesco-representative-list-intangible-cultural-heritage
- The truth laid bare: what you need to know about Germany’s sauna culture. The Local. 18 October 2019. www.thelocal.com/20191018/the-truth-laid-bare-what-you-need-to-know-about-germanys-sauna-culture
- Historic number of winners crowned at 2022 Aufguss World Championships. Spa Business. www.spabusiness.com/wellness-news/Historic-number-of-winners-crowned-at-2022-Aufguss-World-Championships/350186
- Aaland M. The Japanese mushi-buro. mikkelaaland.com/the-japanese-mushi-buro.html
- Sweat lodge. New World Encyclopedia. www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Sweat_lodge
- King B. The sauna boom in Ireland. Spas.ie. 17 November 2025. spas.ie/blog/the-sauna-boom-in-ireland
- Public Sauna Bathing Charter launches ahead of International Sauna Congress as sector expands. Health Club Management. 23 September 2026. www.healthclubmanagement.co.uk/health-club-management-news/Public-Sauna-Bathing-Charter-launches-ahead-of-International-Sauna-Congress-as-sector-expands/363667
Questions
What is the difference between a sauna and a banya?
Both are wooden rooms heated by a stone stove. A Finnish sauna is hot and dry, usually 80–100°C, with bursts of steam when water goes on the stones. A Russian banya is kept more humid and often cooler, and its centrepiece is the venik, a massage with soaked birch or oak branches. Banya-goers also wear felt hats and drink tea between rounds.
Is a banya hotter than a sauna?
Usually not by the thermometer: research describes banyas at around 40–70°C in saturated air, against 80–100°C in a dry sauna. But humid heat stops your sweat from cooling you, so a banya can feel hotter and work your body harder.
What is a venik?
A bundle of leafy branches, traditionally birch or oak and sometimes eucalyptus, soaked in hot water and used in a banya to fan hot air over the skin and pat the body, like a hot, fragrant massage.
Why do people wear hats in a banya?
Felt or wool hats keep the hottest air off your head, which helps prevent overheating and dizziness while your body takes the heat.
What do you wear to a banya?
Swimwear or a towel, a felt hat and flip-flops, unless the venue says otherwise. Some banyas run men-only and women-only sessions. Bring two towels.
What is the difference between a banya and a hammam?
A banya is a wooden steam room with a hot stone stove and the venik ritual. A Turkish hammam is a marble bath heated from under the floor, with warm, saturated air at around 40–50°C and a scrub on a heated stone slab.
Is there a banya in Ireland?
We couldn’t find a dedicated Russian banya in Ireland. There are hundreds of saunas, many of them wood-fired by the sea, and around 300 old stone sweathouses still stand on the island.
Is a banya good for you?
There are no long-term studies of banyas. The health research is almost all on Finnish saunas, where regular use is linked to better heart health. Humid heat strains the body more, so start with shorter rounds.