Owning a sauna or steam shower at home, not a whole lot of maintenance is required. Unfortunately, for some, they find themselves with a problem in smell or appearance such as in mildew or mold. How to get rid of mold, mildew, or bad odors from a steam sauna done right prevents it from returning. Although you may see a bad smell or appearance of mold to be embarrassing, recognize that in some homes, it happens. Albeit rare, if or when it does occur, a timely response is best. Here are some ideas on where to start in tackling ugly sauna smells.
Can a sauna actually grow mold?
Yes, a sauna can grow mold – just like any bathroom or shower can. Bacteria and mold love breeding in environments like a sauna. Any place with heat and moisture provides optimum conditions for mold. If it’s not properly cleaned, mold in a sauna will grow and eventually it can cause permanent damage. The quicker you notice that there’s mold and the faster you respond, the better. Ideally, you will also want to see if there’s a leak or anything out of your control influencing the appearance of mold or bad smells.
The health consequences of bad smells and mold
You aren’t using a sauna to become an unhealthier person. Quite the opposite. Mold in large amounts is dangerous to our health and the consequences can be severe, particularly in homeowners prone to health complications. Mold can cause skin irritation, eye irritation, coughing, nasal congestion, throat irritation, a compromised immune system, and even lung infections. In case you didn’t already have enough of a reason to wash away and clean mold in a steam sauna or steam shower, the risk to your health is another.
Create more ventilation
Although a steam sauna or steam shower is an enclosed room, opening windows in the room surrounding it or encouraging some ventilation after use can be key to moving air and tackling smells. Sometimes all a smell is boils down to a lack of air circulation.
Consider an air purifier
An air purifier is a plug-in device that increases air circulation and removes from the air odor-causing bacteria. Although cheaper models exist between $25 and $50, a high quality top-rate air purifier can cost up to ten times as much. They can be quite expensive but they work at removing bad odors better than a lot of other devices. Again, this can’t be used directly in a sauna or steam shower but purifying the air around it after use can help minimize bad odors.
Create a homemade air freshener
A paste of baking soda and lemon juice, half and half, is a great homemade air freshener to eliminate odors and smells you don’t want. You want its consistency to be almost like a pancake mix. Once you have it just right, take this paste and apply it inside your sauna or surrounding its exterior. Let it sit for up to fifteen minutes. From there, spray your dried paste with white vinegar and let it fizzle. Then, wipe it all up with a damp cloth. If there are some particularly ugly-smelling areas, this homemade recipe is very likely to take care of them.
Is it just a smell or is it mold?
If you smell something strange in your sauna or if there’s a bad odor coming from around your steam sauna or steam shower, hold up. Chances are it isn’t mold or mildew. In fact, it’s highly unlikely that it is mold. It’s more likely that it’s simply the smell of materials in your sauna or something inconsequential. If it turns out to not be mold, covering that smell or eliminating it is easily accomplished in any of the number of ways communicated in this guide.
What if it is mold? Thankfully, there are a lot of ways to tackle mold and mildew in a sauna or surrounding it. A lot us may decide to go to our local Walmart or cleaning supplies store and purchase some chemical cleaners. Be very careful with these. Check with your manufacturer beforehand. You could very well damage the shine of material, any sealant used, cause the appearance of materials to fade, or simply cause harm. Chemical cleaners also emit fumes and airborne particles which can be very risky to our respiratory health. Definitely not the sort of cleaners you want around a sauna!
There are two all-natural eco-friendly sauna cleaners you can use to remove bad odors and smells we want to share. When used correctly, these shouldn’t cause any damage or harm to a sauna. If uncertain though, you can always check with your sauna manufacturer to confirm what’s recommended or allowed. There are so many advantages to using natural, eco-friendly solutions around your sauna including the fact that no chemical fumes are emitted and no property damage should be expected.
A scrub brush and baking soda
If you want to give your steam sauna or steam shower an excellent clean, you will need the best scrub brush you can find and some baking soda. Creating a paste of water and baking soda, you’ll be able to tackle any grout between tiles or in hard to reach places.
Before you begin with your scrub brush, take a paste made from baking soda and water, and apply it to any very dirty places. Leave it on for up to 1-2 hours. After some time has passed, spraying some water on it will loosen it and then from there, you can use a scrub brush with brisk back and forth motions. Afterwards, rinse well and let it dry.
You can take this approach all over your tiles in the bathroom or shower if you want. Doing this eliminates any mold or bacteria that may be cultivating in those area. After completed, the mold’s unlikely to come back. It’s one of the easier ways to tackle bad odors or smells in an environment like a steam sauna or steam shower.
Use mild white vinegar in a spray bottle
Another approach to wrestling away bad smells in a sauna – and arguably easier than even baking soda and water – is to use vinegar in a spray bottle. You may have heard about vinegar before in household cleaning. Usually, it’s diluted with water. You won’t want to do this with vinegar in a steam sauna or steam shower.
Vinegar is the perfect cleaner for mold in a steam sauna and here’s why. Its’ mild acidity at full-strength will cut through and kill mold with ease. Spray it onto moldy surfaces and wait 1 hour. Following that time period, wipe the area clean with hot water and then dry it with a towel.
Surfaces that are damp encourage mold growth and so, a sauna for all intents and purposes is the perfect place for this stuff to flourish. Ensure you wipe away the vinegar clean and even consider using it before mold presents itself. As a preventative, it’s a powerful solution and won’t emit any toxic fumes like bleach or other harmful chemical cleaning ingredients. Do this enough and mold’s going to have a very tough time growing. A recent study suggests vinegar kills 82 percent of all mold species. Keep some in your home for when you need it most.
How to freshen up a sauna’s smell
Sometimes a sauna can emit a smell that doesn’t necessarily mean its’ unclean in any way or necessitates a thorough clean. If you’re in your sauna and the natural smells of the environment around you aren’t pleasing you, you can take care of bad odors or unappealing smells with essential oils like lavender, citrus oil, or others. In a sauna, this type of aromatherapy can be attractive, relaxing, and heighten the impact of certain sauna benefits.