Getting the Heat Right in Your Bathroom
Nobody likes stepping out of a hot shower into a freezing bathroom. It’s a shock to the system. But if you pick the wrong wattage for your heater, you’re either stuck with cold spots or you’re just throwing money away on your electric bill. We use short-wave infrared lamps. The cool thing about these is that they don’t bother heating up the air in the room. Instead, they warm you and the surfaces around you directly. You feel the heat the second you flip the switch.
How much power do you actually need?
It mostly comes down to how much space you’re trying to warm up. If you’ve got a tiny powder room—you know, those little half-baths—something in the 250W to 400W range usually does the trick. For a mid-sized bathroom, you’ll probably want a few lamps working together, totaling somewhere between 800W and 1200W. If you’re dealing with a massive master bath, you’re looking at 1500W or more to keep things cozy. But be careful. Don’t just go for the biggest number you see. Putting a 1000W lamp in a tiny stall is a bad idea. It gets way too intense, and you risk overheating the fixture or, worse, actually burning yourself.
The nitty-gritty stuff
Under the hood, most of our units use quartz glass tubes with halogen filaments. We use R7s or SK15 connectors because they’re easy to swap out when the time comes. One detail we’re picky about: in areas with a lot of steam and moisture, we use coated quartz. It stops gunk from building up on the glass, which is important because that buildup can cause the glass to crack when it gets hot.
Finding the sweet spot
Here’s the trade-off. High-wattage lamps get you warm fast. Really fast. But they pull a lot of power. If you put four 500W lamps in one unit, that’s 2kW hitting a single circuit. You’ve got to make sure your wiring can handle that load, otherwise you’ll run into voltage drops. On the flip side, low-wattage setups save energy, but you’ll be shivering for a bit longer while they warm up. If you want the best of both worlds, try a stepped setup. Use one high-wattage lamp to kickstart the heat, and a few lower-wattage ones to keep the room warm while you’re getting ready. It’s the smartest way to do it.