SAUNUM Sauna Revolutionized Heat Distribution And Air Quality

A Finnish Ritual Faced An Estonian Challenge

At the Biohacker Summit 2022 Helsinki, held in Helsinki, Finland on Friday, 3 June 2022, thermal engineer Andrus Vare stepped onto the stage with a proposition that bordered on heresy in the world’s most sauna-literate nation. In a country where, as the host joked, “we have five and a half million sauna experts,” Vare argued that the traditional sauna had long tolerated a design flaw hiding in plain sight: punishing heat at the top, cold discomfort at the floor, and a bathing experience too often mistaken for virtue simply because it was severe.

His presentation, titled SAUNUM sauna, was not framed as a minor upgrade. It was a direct challenge to the architecture of heat itself.

“Saunum is a revolutionary technology that I believe will completely change sauna culture in the future,” Vare said.

The Problem Above The Bench

Vare’s critique was grounded in measurement, not romance. In a conventional sauna advertised at 80C, he said, temperatures could soar to 150C near the ceiling while sinking to around 25C near floor level. The result was familiar to anyone who had sat with a scorching head and stubbornly cold feet: an extreme vertical temperature gradient masquerading as authenticity.

That imbalance, he argued, defined the discomfort many users had simply accepted. The upper body took the assault while the lower body remained underheated, creating an environment that was less restorative than uneven, less enveloping than aggressive.

“When you use Saunum, it makes the heat distribution equal and creates a much more comfortable experience,” Vare said.

Engineering A New Sauna Climate

The promise of Saunum lay in its patented climate system, designed to circulate air and steam so that heat was distributed more evenly throughout the room. Instead of allowing hot air to stagnate overhead, the system redirected and balanced the sauna’s thermal layers, turning an often harsh environment into one that felt breathable, stable and longer-lasting.

The technology also filtered steam through Himalayan salt capsules, releasing salt ions into the air, while an aroma system broadened the sensory experience. The aim was not merely to make the sauna hotter or softer, but to refine its internal ecology: heat, steam, scent and respiration brought into deliberate alignment.

In Vare’s account, the effect was transformative. “I have never seen anyone who wants to have a usual sauna after trying Saunum,” he said.

Born From Discomfort, Refined By Memory

What made the presentation compelling was not only the technical claim, but the personal story beneath it. Vare did not come to sauna innovation as a zealot of heat. He came as its former victim.

As a child, he recalled dreading the weekly family sauna, where his father insisted on temperatures of around 100C and treated endurance as a test of manhood. By Friday, he said, the knowledge that sauna awaited on Saturday was enough to darken his mood. The ritual was not relaxing. It was painful.

The turning point came later, when he restored his grandfather’s old smoke sauna, a structure more than a century old and tied to his family’s history. There, he encountered a different thermal logic. The heat stored in the stones released slowly. Steam unfolded gently. There was enough air to breathe. He found himself able to remain inside for half an hour, not in grim resistance but in genuine pleasure.

That experience became the seed of invention. A trained thermal engineer, Vare began asking why the comfort of the old smoke sauna could not be recreated in a modern one. He rebuilt his own sauna four times. By 2001, he had produced an early version of the concept that would later become Saunum.

From Intuition To Data

Personal insight eventually gave way to formal research. Encouraged by friends to patent the idea, Vare worked with Tallinn University to investigate 100 saunas, measuring temperature distribution and air quality. The research confirmed what his body had already known: conventional sauna design often produced avoidable discomfort.

The invention that followed was not nostalgia dressed as innovation, but engineering informed by tradition. It drew from the slow, breathable qualities of ancestral smoke saunas while using modern analysis to solve a persistent flaw.

That marriage of old wisdom and technical precision gave Saunum much of its force. It was not trying to abolish sauna culture. It was trying to restore something many bathers had lost without noticing.

Winning Over The Traditionalists

Resistance was inevitable. Vare said that when he first brought the solution to market, some accused him of ruining the sauna. For purists, the very unevenness he sought to eliminate had become part of the ritual’s sacred grammar. Heat above, chill below, suffering in between.

But skepticism softened in the face of experience. At the summit, attendees were invited to test the technology outside in a 45-second comparison: Saunum on, then off, the difference made legible not through marketing language but through the body itself. Steam in a conventional setup struck the head sharply. In the Saunum environment, it dispersed more evenly.

“This technology turns the sauna into quality time for the full family,” Vare said.

That may have been his boldest cultural claim. Sauna, in his telling, no longer needed to be an ordeal survived by the toughest member of the household. It could become a shared ritual of comfort.

Biohacking, Recovery And The Expanded Sauna Experience

The Biohacker Summit setting gave the talk an additional layer. The host linked Saunum’s redesigned heat experience to a broader ecosystem of recovery and skin care, including Estonian-made creams and body scrubs derived from wild herbs, intended to support hydration and post-sauna recovery.

This was more than product placement. It reflected the contemporary biohacking impulse to optimize every stage of a ritual once governed mostly by instinct and inheritance. Under that lens, the sauna became not only a cultural institution but a tunable environment, one whose temperature gradients, air composition, steam quality and aftercare could all be improved.

Yet Vare’s strongest point was simpler than any wellness trend. Comfort matters. Breathability matters. If a sauna leaves people happier, calmer and more willing to stay, then perhaps the future of the practice lies not in proving toughness, but in designing better heat.

A Quiet Redefinition Of Tradition

The most striking thing about Vare’s appearance at Biohacker Summit 2022 Helsinki was that he did not describe innovation as rupture. He described it as rediscovery. In the old smoke sauna, he found a clue. In engineering, he found a method. In Saunum, he offered a system that tried to reconcile the two.

For a culture that reveres the sauna, this was a sensitive proposition. But it was also a deeply respectful one. Tradition, Vare suggested, was not the preservation of discomfort for its own sake. It was the preservation of what made the ritual meaningful in the first place.

At the close of the presentation, he returned to the oldest argument any inventor can make. Not theory. Not branding. Experience.

“But if you try, then you understand,” Andrus Vare said.

Frequently asked questions

What is wrong with a conventional sauna?

Its temperature gradient. In a sauna advertised at 80°C, Andrus Vare said, temperatures could reach 150°C near the ceiling while sinking to around 25°C at floor level, producing the familiar combination of a scorching head and stubbornly cold feet.

What does the Saunum system do?

It circulates air and steam so heat is distributed more evenly through the room. Rather than letting hot air stagnate overhead, the patented climate system redirects and balances the thermal layers, aiming for an environment that feels breathable and stable.

Why did a thermal engineer take this on?

Because he had disliked it. Vare came to sauna innovation not as a zealot of heat but as its former victim, recalling a childhood in which he dreaded the weekly family sauna, which is an unusual origin for a product pitch in Finland.

About the event

This recap is part of the Biohacker Summit 2022 Helsinki series, recorded in Helsinki on 3 and 4 June 2022. Read the summary of the whole event or join the next edition, HOLOLIFE Summit 2026 Amsterdam, on 14 and 15 November 2026.