Getting Your Bathroom Heat Right: A Quick Guide to Infrared
Let’s be honest: there is nothing worse than stepping out of a hot shower into a freezing bathroom. It’s a shock to the system. But if you’re picking out infrared lamps to fix that, you can’t just guess the wattage. If you go too low, you’re still shivering. Go too high, and you’re basically turning your bathroom into a sauna—while wasting a ton of electricity.
How much power do you actually need?
It really comes down to the size of the room. For those tiny powder rooms (anything under 4m²), a single 400W to 600W shortwave lamp does the trick. It hits you instantly. If your bathroom is a bit bigger (4-8m²), you’re looking at 800W to 1200W. My advice? Don’t put that all in one bulb. Split it between two lamps so you don’t have one “hot spot” and one “cold spot” in the room. For the massive master baths over 8m², you’ll want 1500W or more. Here is the cool part: shortwave infrared doesn’t bother trying to heat the air. It goes straight for your skin. That’s why it works so well in steamy bathrooms where old-school heaters just struggle to keep up.
Don’t ignore the water (or the heat)
You can’t just grab any lamp and toss it near a shower. That’s a recipe for disaster. Make sure your units have a proper IP rating. We use sealed quartz glass and heavy-duty gaskets because steam finds a way into everything. If moisture hits the electrical terminals, it’s game over. And a word of caution: high wattage creates a lot of heat—not just for you, but for the lamp itself. If you cram a 1000W bulb into a tiny, cramped housing with no airflow, you’re going to warp the brackets or fry the wiring. Give the hardware some room to breathe.
A few installation tips
Do yourself a favor and put these on their own dedicated circuit. These lamps pull a lot of current the second you flip the switch. If you’ve got a few of them running on the same line as your other appliances, you’ll be tripping your breaker way more often than you’d like. Check your capacity first. It’ll save you a headache later.