Most Finns don't wear a sauna hat. The felt hat is a Russian banya habit; the Finnish tradition is to go bareheaded and drape a towel over your head if your face gets too hot. Hats are slowly spreading in Finland because the top bench of a Finnish sauna runs 80–100 °C, and North Americans mostly never picked them up because the sauna arrived here twice and neither time did a hat come with it.
By Fuentes, founder of Lanoviss · October 2026
We sell sauna hats, so it would suit us to say Finns have always worn them. They haven't, as we already admitted in our post on Finnish sauna folklore. Below is what the record shows in Finland and in North America, and where it runs out.
Do Finns actually wear sauna hats?
Some do, but in Finland it is still the exception. In a June 2025 post on Uusi Suomi's Puheenvuoro blog, Finnish writer Jussi Osmola put it plainly: Finns take their sauna in silence, and a sauna cap is a rarity (Uusi Suomi Puheenvuoro, in Finnish). He adds that a hat in a Finnish public sauna still draws attention, usually from someone who breaks the silence to ask where it comes from.
What Finns reach for instead is a towel. Wikipedia's summary of sauna practice notes that bathers drape a towel over the head when the face feels too hot but the body is comfortable, that shielding the face has been found to lower the perceived heat, and that the felt "banya hat" is the Russian version of the same idea (Wikipedia).
The hat is not invisible in Finland, though. Alhon Huopatehdas, a felt maker in Jämsä that has worked wool since 1927, sells sauna hats from €29.90 for a felt beanie to €69.90 for its classic model (Finnish Felt Factory), and an AFAR travel story from Kuusamo called a sauna hat in an outdoor tub "high fashion in Finland" (AFAR, 2018). Nobody has surveyed how many Finns wear one, so there is no percentage to quote.
Where does the felt sauna hat come from?
From the Russian banya, and for many Finns by way of Estonia. Russians take their heat with a hat on, and whisk more gently with two whisks than Finns do with one, Finnish journalist and Estonian-sauna enthusiast Hannele Valkeeniemi told the Federation of Finland-Estonia Associations; Estonian bathing, she added, shows the same Russian influence (SVYL, 2021, in Finnish).
Osmola tells the same story from the bench. In an Estonian island sauna, every man around him wore a felt hat, and he marvelled that sauna culture could change so much across 80 km of sea; many Finns, he writes, first got to know the sauna hat in Estonia.
The banya logic is simple. A banya runs cooler and much wetter than a Finnish sauna, around 60–70 °C at 40–70% humidity, and, as Wikipedia puts it, the felt shields the head so the bather can take more heat on the rest of the body. We compare the two rooms in detail in banya vs Finnish sauna.
Why are more Finns starting to wear them?
Because a Finnish sauna is hottest exactly where your head is. The Finnish Sauna Society recommends 80–100 °C (thisisFINLAND), the upper bench is the hottest spot in the room (YIT, citing the Finnish Sauna Society), and the air at head height typically runs 50–70 degrees warmer than at floor level, as we explain in sauna temperature at head height. A hat traps a layer of still air that slows how fast that heat reaches your scalp and ears; the physics is in do sauna hats actually work?
Two other forces probably help, though nobody has studied either. Finns now meet the hat in Estonian and Russian bathhouses, as Osmola did. And Helsinki has had a public sauna revival, with several new public saunas opening in the years before 2016 (same YIT source); our guess is that a crowded public top bench is where a hat gets noticed, asked about and copied.
Why don't North Americans wear sauna hats?
Because both routes the sauna took into North America were hatless. The first was Finnish immigrants: the oldest surviving immigrant sauna on the continent is a smoke sauna built in 1868 near Cokato, Minnesota, and in the 1960s geographer Matti Kaups found saunas on 90% of Finnish American farmsteads, a higher share than on farms in Finland (PBS POV, excerpting Michael Nordskog's The Opposite of Cold). Those settlers brought birch and cedar whisks and smoke saunas: the bareheaded Finnish culture of their day.
The second route was a fad. After the 1952 Helsinki Olympics the sauna spread across the United States through magazines, health clubs and hotel pools; by 1962 the Wall Street Journal was reporting rising sauna equipment sales, and in 1963 Life called it a hot fad from Finland (PBS POV). Nordskog concludes that most of the continent got its sauna from Life and home-and-garden shows rather than from Finnish ancestry, and neither shipped with a felt hat.
The third reason is heat. Infrared cabins run around 45–60 °C, where the air around your head never gets hot enough for a hat to matter; our sauna temperature guide compares the types. Hot, wood-fired public saunas are a different story, but how many people wear a hat in them, nobody has counted.
[DATO PROPIO PENDIENTE: count hats vs bare heads on the top bench of one Vancouver public sauna on three visits (a weekday evening, a Saturday, a Sunday morning) and report the share.]
Sauna hats by country: who wears one?
Standard in Russia, common in the Estonian saunas Finnish visitors describe, rare but growing in Finland, and historically absent in North America. Each row says where the claim comes from.
| Where | Hat on the bench? | Usual head cover | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Russian banya | Standard | Felt or wool banya hat | Wikipedia; SVYL (2021) |
| Estonia | Often, in Finnish visitors' accounts | Thick felt hat | Osmola (2025); SVYL (2021) |
| Finland, traditionally | No | Bare head, or a towel when the face gets hot | Wikipedia; Osmola (2025) |
| Finland, today | Rare but visible | Felt or linen hat, sold by Finnish makers at €29.90–€69.90 | Alhon Huopatehdas; AFAR (2018) |
| Finnish-American farm saunas, from 1868 | None recorded | Bare head | Nordskog (2010), via PBS POV |
| Infrared cabins | Rarely needed | Bare head; the air is only 45–60 °C | Our temperature guide |
Should you wear a sauna hat in North America?
Wear one if your sauna is hot and you sit high: a Finnish-style room at 80 °C or more, top bench, several rounds. Skip it in an infrared cabin at 45–60 °C. In a shared plunge pool, take it off first; our sauna etiquette guide covers the rest.
If you want one, our Merino Wool Sauna Hat is pressed from a single piece of 3 mm wool felt with no seams, fits heads of roughly 55–61 cm and costs $59.99 CAD. Going by Osmola's column, the worst that happens in a Finnish public sauna is a question about where it comes from, and now you know the answer: Russia, by way of Estonia.
Frequently asked questions
What is a sauna hat called in Finnish?
Saunahattu, which simply means "sauna hat." Softer knitted or linen versions are often called saunapipo or saunamyssy, the word Osmola uses for the linen cap he bought at a market in Savonlinna.
Is it rude to wear a sauna hat in a Finnish sauna?
No. A hat may prompt a question in a Finnish public sauna, but the rules Finns actually care about are showering first and sitting on a seat cover, which most public saunas require.
When did sauna hats become popular in Finland?
Nobody has dated it. Finnish felt makers sell them today and travel writers noticed them by 2018, but we found no survey that measures how many Finns wear one or when the habit started.
Did Finnish immigrants bring sauna hats to North America?
Not as far as the record shows. Michael Nordskog's history of Northwoods saunas describes immigrant smoke saunas, birch and cedar whisks, births and laundry in the bathhouse, but no hats.
Why do Finns put a towel over their head in the sauna?
Because it is already in hand. Draping a towel over the head when the face gets too hot is ordinary Finnish practice, and shielding the face has been found to reduce how hot the room feels.
Do you need a sauna hat in a gym sauna?
Only if it is hot at head height. If a thermometer near the ceiling reads 80 °C or more, a hat takes the edge off the hottest air; in an infrared cabin at 45–60 °C, it does little.
Fuentes is the founder of Lanoviss, which makes one product: a seamless sauna hat pressed from a single piece of 3 mm wool felt and shipped from Vancouver, British Columbia. We sell hats and still report that most Finns don't wear them; every external claim on this page links to its source, and the Finnish-language sources are translated by us. More about who makes it and why.
Related reading: banya vs Finnish sauna · what to wear in a sauna, country by country · sauna vs banya vs steam room vs infrared