Australia has embraced sauna culture. It’s time to do it naked | Kate Hennessy

Do as the Germans do, I say. Or the rational Scandinavians, where saunas originate. In both places, even in mixed gender rooms, saunas are done naked.

Australia’s enthusiasm for saunas is still rising. In the five years to June 2026, Australian Google searches for “sauna” increased from about 120,000 a month to over 500,000.

Several sauna chains have aggressive expansion plans, but so far swimsuits are mostly mandatory. Australia could at the very least split it down the middle. Some spots could follow in the prudish direction of countries where swimwear is required, such as the US or France. Others could open up to the many benefits of textile-free saunas. Both options would then become normal.

The sauna illuminati ought to act soon though, before the etiquette is entrenched and it becomes like trying to eat out on a Monday night. Or get a coffee after 3pm. That is, full of untapped demand, the denial of which no one can explain in words other than “it’s just how it is”.

The benefits of perspiring naked are many. They range from the fibres of synthetic swimwear potentially disintegrating in the heat (and getting smeared on benches or left in ice baths) to the chance of your wet pants trapping and breeding bacteria. The mandatory rinse after a serious sweat (and before hopping into the shared cold bath) doesn’t feel as effective as showering naked.

Swimsuits also stop your body from sweating uniformly. And it’s women who must cover up the most.

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Outlier Blue Mountains Sauna runs nude sessions to address Australia’s “desperate need of a new sauna culture”, but few – bar saunas for gay men – have followed suit.

My contrast therapy (switching between cold and hot temperatures) club in Sydney’s inner west, Xtra, has three other locations with a whopping 13 more slated from Wollongong to Wetherill Park. Its founders are open-minded and experimenting with social, guided and Aufguss sessions, where essential oils are diffused on the hot rocks and air is puffed around with a towel. But textile-free time slots? “Something tells me that our broad customer base is not ready for it,” the founder, Anthony Simonetta, says.

What is that “something”? Australians cannot be that squeamish about flesh, surely? We’re slathered across beaches wearing Speedos and string bikinis. We’ve seen a thing or two. What’s a thing or two more?

Demi Durrand, the manager of Bondi’s 38 Degrees: The Bathhouse, says, “We’ve chosen to make swimwear compulsory to keep things simple, comfortable and accessible.”

But as long as you use a towel (sitting on one is mandatory in swimsuit-free saunas) being naked is pretty simple. En masse, bodies are not as sexy as newbies might think, and blokes afraid of boners can study Reddit threads dedicated to deflating them.

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If I could, I’d fund an Australian delegation of sauna thought-leaders to Berlin to spend time at Vabali. They’d come back changed, as I did.

This high-end sauna and bathhouse is a labyrinthine complex of 10 saunas, steam rooms, indoor and outdoor pools, gardens, sun decks, massage rooms, fireplace dens and a restaurant. You’ll find reflexology, hot stone massage, smudging ceremonies, Brazilian lymphatic drainage, singing bowl sessions, infrared sauna and pebble walking.

You won’t find swimwear because nakedness is compulsory (robes are worn while walking around or eating). “It’s less about nudity and more about equality and letting go of external roles,” says a Vabali spokesperson. “If it were optional, this dynamic would change significantly. Consistency is essential for the concept to work.”

It surprises people to know that nude sauna culture is common in Germany, “but Germans do not necessarily think of a sauna as a ‘naked place’,” says the director of market management at Visit Berlin, Ralf Ostendorf. “Nudity is often viewed as a practical consequence, not the main feature.”

It doesn’t mean free and loose, either. “A lot of Germans care intensely about sauna etiquette such as sitting on a towel, silence in certain rooms, showering first and following the cooling-off cycle afterwards,” says Ostendorf.

At Vabali no part of your body should touch the wood. You can lie down, or sit across multiple benches, as long as you’re on your towel. It feels much more hygienic than when swimsuited guests leave behind bum-shaped pools of sweat.

People will glare or verbally correct you at Vabali if your towel use slips. Here, break the rules at your own peril. A fellow Vabali devotee recalls a man placing an ice ball on the heated elements, a no-no unless permission is sought, due to the extra steam it emits. Both the Aufguss leader, then the entire room, chastised him until he left.

Be bolder, I say. Build it and they will come. Sydney Dance Company took the risk in 2017 with its naked dance performance at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. When one of the slow-selling shows was re-pitched as a nude-only night for the audience, tickets sold out in a day. Two more were added and snapped up faster than the clothed shows.

I was at that show, reporting while starkers, sans phone or notepad. I experienced the same thing I do at naked saunas in Europe: the bumpiest part is in the change rooms, where the act of disrobing has the air of an involuntary striptease. But from then on, it’s utterly without awkwardness or anxiety and, by default, a profoundly body-positive experience.

It’s a great reset too. Time spent naked is distinct from the rest of your day. You’re literally leaving it all behind.