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Saunaday
315 S Blount St · Downtown, a block from Lake Monona
BathhouseCo-ed · swimsuits18+
Heat4.0
Cold3.5
Atmosphere4.5
Value3.0
Overall4.0
Madison's first real bathhouse, and a genuinely beautiful one. Go on a weekday morning.
Opened in July 2025 by Roshelle and Jason Ritzenthaler in the corner of The Edge apartments, Saunaday is a 5,000 sq ft Nordic-meets-hammam bathhouse built around a two-hour, self-guided loop: cedar salt-scrub showers, a hammam-style steam room, two Finnish saunas, a cold plunge pool and a lounge.
The social cedar sauna is big, with two tiers seating ten or more and twin electric heaters. You can pour your own löyly (ask your neighbors first). The smaller aspen sauna is always silent, with pale wood and a starry fiber-optic ceiling. The plunge is a proper tiled pool, 54°F and four feet deep, more like a small swimming pool than a tub. Phones stay in the locker, a rule regulars love.
What it looks like
Boutique-hotel polished: warm cedar, deep bottle-green tile, brass fixtures, a turquoise plunge pool, canvas loungers and bright industrial windows. The marketing photos show four to six people per room. Real evenings can hold around twenty, and the floor is mostly given over to the private hinoki tubs.
What people love
- The design. Reviewers and every local outlet call it the most beautiful bathing space in the region.
- Sleep. A recurring theme on Reddit and from staff is the best night's sleep in ages.
- The no-phone rule, which keeps it calm and camera-free.
- The variety: social and silent saunas, the re-steam button and cold sinks in the steam room.
- Friendly, responsive staff, and the toiletries (there's a whole thread hunting down the body wash).
What people gripe about
- Price creep: $55 is fair, but the hot tub and infrared add-ons jump to $130.
- Crowding at peak times, with too little lounge space for the number of guests.
- Fixed two-hour slots, so everyone queues for showers at the same time.
- Wet floors are slippery. Wear the grippy socks they give you.
- It's social and chatty, not meditative, at busy times.
Prices
- Bathhouse session2 hours
- $55
- Hinoki hot soak or infrared + bathhouse3 hours, 1 person
- $130
- Private contrast suite3 hours, 2 guests (+$25 each, max 6)
- $285
- Membership2 · 4 · 8 visits a month
- $105 · $199 · $350
- Packs4 or 8 visits, 6 months
- $210 · $385
Insider tips
- Go 7–10am for daily quiet hours. Weekday daytimes are calmest.
- Free Aufguss (guided heat) sessions run Wednesdays at 5:30, 6:30 and 7:30pm, and Saturdays at 10:30, 11:30 and 12:30.
- Bring a robe (none provided), a sauna hat and a paper book.
- Leave 10–15 minutes to shower and change inside your two hours.
- Closed Tuesdays and one week every July. Free parking across Blount St.
- Best for
- Design lovers, date nights, first-timers who want structure, and anyone downtown or on the east side.
- Skip if
- You want wood smoke and a lake, you're under 18, or you want to stay all afternoon.
Bathhouses & wood-fired saunas.
The real thing: hot rooms you can throw water in, a proper cold plunge, and other people. Madison went from almost nothing to five excellent options in two years.
Saunaday
315 S Blount St · Downtown, a block from Lake Monona
Madison's first real bathhouse, and a genuinely beautiful one. Go on a weekday morning.
Opened in July 2025 by Roshelle and Jason Ritzenthaler in the corner of The Edge apartments, Saunaday is a 5,000 sq ft Nordic-meets-hammam bathhouse built around a two-hour, self-guided loop: cedar salt-scrub showers, a hammam-style steam room, two Finnish saunas, a cold plunge pool and a lounge.
The social cedar sauna is big, with two tiers seating ten or more and twin electric heaters. You can pour your own löyly (ask your neighbors first). The smaller aspen sauna is always silent, with pale wood and a starry fiber-optic ceiling. The plunge is a proper tiled pool, 54°F and four feet deep, more like a small swimming pool than a tub. Phones stay in the locker, a rule regulars love.
Boutique-hotel polished: warm cedar, deep bottle-green tile, brass fixtures, a turquoise plunge pool, canvas loungers and bright industrial windows. The marketing photos show four to six people per room. Real evenings can hold around twenty, and the floor is mostly given over to the private hinoki tubs.
What people love
What people gripe about
Prices
Insider tips
Madison Saunas
Wingra Park, 824 Knickerbocker St · Lake Wingra
The one Madison has been waiting for: wood heat, a real lake, and $27 at the door.
Run by the folks at Wingra Boats, Madison Saunas opens two custom cedar, wood-fired saunas on the shore of Lake Wingra on November 6, 2026. You plunge straight into the lake.
Each sauna has big lake-view windows and a transition room, and they burn kiln-dried hardwood to around 175°F. Community sessions hold nine or ten people. There's an outdoor fire pit, free lockers and a cold rinse shower. Plan on early mornings: they're open 7am to 8pm daily through at least early March. Note for the first season: there are no hot wash showers yet, so head home salty.
The most polished build in the wood-fired category: charcoal-clad modern cabins with a horizontal window strip and cedar doors, set right on the lakeshore path with red Adirondack chairs and a woodpile. Inside: clean light cedar, U-shaped benches, a picture window to the water and a cylindrical rock-cage stove.
What to look forward to
Know before you go
Prices
Insider tips
Kindled Community Sauna
Mobile · Nov–Dec 2026 residency at Tricky Foods, 121 E Lakeside St
The warmest welcome in Madison sauna. Strangers arrive, friends leave.
Kindled is a pair of six-seat, wood-fired trailer saunas run by Jaclyn Ryan, an ICU nurse who started with backyard sessions west of Madison and now pops up at breweries, cafés, farms and festivals across Dane County.
Sessions are 60 minutes with a guide who tends the Harvia stove and keeps the conversation easy. The cold is usually two stock tanks of hose water, sometimes a creek or river. This winter Kindled is in residence at Tricky Foods on E Lakeside St from November 1 to December 31, 2026, with Tuesday social saunas from 5 to 7pm and private groups Tuesday through Saturday.
Handmade and charming rather than heavy-timber: a timber frame with translucent greenhouse-style walls you can see the trees through, light slatted benches, hanging greenery and herbs on the stove. Cozy, bright, very photogenic. The thin shell holds less heat than a solid log room.
What people love
What people gripe about
Prices
Insider tips
KOSA Wellness Spa & Retreat
3241 Garver Green · Garver Feed Mill
Less sauna club, more spa retreat, and a lovely way to lose an afternoon.
Madison's first fully Ayurvedic spa sits upstairs in the restored Garver Feed Mill. Its community sauna sessions give you three hours of hot-stone sauna, aromatherapy steam and a cold rain shower, plus a tea lounge with snacks and chilled towels.
The heat is gentler than a club sauna, and there's no plunge, but the setting and hospitality are the point. Saturday late-afternoon sessions are billed as a "happy hour" with music. There's also a private steam-and-sauna suite by the hour.
Exposed brick, string lights and plants in a busy, robe-clad lounge. A modest, modern light-spruce sauna with two benches. A rain shower behind textured glass. Social and cozy.
What people love
What people gripe about
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Insider tips
Tuli Sauna & Plunge
Seven Acre Dairy, Paoli · ~25–30 min from downtown
Our highest-rated sauna in the area, and the drive is part of the ritual.
Opened in August 2025 by Emily Thompson beside the Seven Acre Dairy Co. in Paoli, Tuli is a custom, glass-walled wood-fired sauna built in Ashland, Wisconsin. It sits on a bend of the Sugar River, a protected trout stream, and that's your plunge.
Expect 160–200°F off roughly 500 lb of stone, social sessions of eight to ten, and a river that runs about 70°F in summer and near freezing in winter, two to five feet deep with a sandy, rocky bottom. Open year-round, with yoga, forest-bathing and brunch events.
Nature-forward and seriously photogenic: a dark-ceilinged sauna with floor-to-ceiling glass looking into willows, a tall rock-cage stove framed by the view, and wooden steps down into rippling river water. Branded Turkish towels, a heated dome for your things.
What people love
What people gripe about
Prices
Insider tips