How to pick the right infrared heater for your bathroom
Nobody likes stepping out of a hot shower into a freezing bathroom. It’s a shock to the system. But if you’re putting in infrared heaters, you have to get the wattage right. If you go too low, you’re still shivering. Go too high, and you’ve basically turned your bathroom into a sauna. The trick is remembering that infrared doesn’t really “warm the air”—it warms you. It hits your skin and the walls directly. So, the distance between you and the heater is everything. Finding your number I usually break it down by the size of the room. If you’ve got a tiny powder room (under 4m²), a small 400W to 600W lamp is plenty. It creates a nice, cozy pocket of heat without making the room feel stifling. For those medium-sized bathrooms (4m² to 8m²), you’re looking at 800W to 1200W. You can go with one powerful lamp, or split it between two smaller ones so you don’t have any cold spots. Then you’ve got the big master baths (over 8m²). You’ll need 1500W or more here. If you try to skimp on the wattage in a big room, the heat just vanishes before it ever reaches you. Plus, the heater will have to work overtime, which just wears the filament out faster. The deal with IP66 ratings Water and electricity are a bad mix. That’s why you want an IP66 rating. In plain English? It means the housing is sealed tight against dust and can handle a direct blast of water without shorting out. It keeps the guts of the heater dry. But there’s a catch. Because those casings are so sealed, heat can get trapped inside. If you cram a high-wattage lamp into a housing that’s too small, the internal parts basically cook themselves. It’ll kill the lamp way sooner than it should. Just double-check that the fixture is actually built to handle the heat the lamp is putting out. Saving some cash on the power bill A 1200W lamp is great, but running it for an hour when you only need ten minutes of warmth is just throwing money away. The smartest move is to wire the heater to a timer or a motion sensor. That way, it’s on when you’re there and off the second you leave. Also, go for short-wave infrared. It hits instant heat. You don’t have to wait for it to “warm up,” which means you can keep the run-time short and your electricity bill low.