Getting the Wattage Right for Your Bathroom Heater
If you just grab any infrared lamp and throw it in your bathroom, you’re probably going to waste a lot of electricity—or worse, turn your bathroom into a sauna you can’t stand to be in. Here’s the thing about these heaters: they don’t actually warm up the air. They use short-wave radiation to heat you and the surfaces around you directly. It’s a much faster way to get warm, but you have to match the power to the size of the room. Picking your power You can’t just use one wattage for every room. If you’re dealing with a tiny powder room (under 4m²), stick with something around 400W to 600W. If you go any higher in a space that small, it feels like you’re standing inside an oven. It’s uncomfortable, and it’ll probably burn out the components way faster than it should. For your average medium bathroom (4m² to 8m²), 800W to 1200W is usually the sweet spot. Now, if you’ve got a massive master bath or a commercial wet room, you’re looking at 1500W or more. In those big spaces, you might even want a few lamps working together so you don’t have “cold spots” in the room. Height and Heat Steam and humidity are a given in a bathroom, but the good news is that infrared waves cut right through them. The real trick is where you mount the lamp. Put a high-wattage heater too low, and you’re risking a nasty skin burn. Put it too high, and you won’t feel a thing by the time the heat reaches you. I usually suggest keeping it between 2.2 and 2.5 meters up for a standard home setup. Keeping it safe (and working) Since this is a wet environment, the seals have to be perfect. We use quartz glass and special gaskets to keep the steam away from the electrical parts. If those seals leak? Your breaker is going to trip the second you turn on the shower. Not a great way to start your morning. And a quick word of caution on the wiring: make sure your circuit can actually handle the load. A 1500W lamp pulls a lot of current. If your wiring is too thin, it’ll overheat. Plus, do yourself a favor and check those gaskets every six months. Once the seals wear down and the contacts start to corrode, the lamp’s lifespan just plummets. A two-minute check now saves you from replacing the whole unit later.