How to Choose the Best Infrared Home Sauna for You?

Choosing the best infrared home sauna requires a strategic evaluation of your available square footage, your budget, your health objectives, your electrical capacity, and your preferred installation style—whether you opt for a convenient pre-assembled cabin or a fully customized DIY build. By carefully auditing who will use the space, where it will live (indoors versus outdoors), and which therapeutic upgrades—such as chromotherapy, ultra-low EMF heaters, or acoustic resonance—align with your wellness goals, you can pinpoint the ultimate personal sanctuary that seamlessly fits your lifestyle. Investing in a home sauna is an excellent step toward upgrading your daily wellness regimen, offering a dedicated space for deep detoxification, cardiovascular conditioning, stress relief, and muscular recovery without requiring a trip to a commercial spa or fitness center.

1. Why is an Infrared Sauna Better Than a Traditional Sauna for Your Home?

When looking at the broad spectrum of thermal therapy, homeowners frequently find themselves at a major crossroads: choosing between a traditional steam sauna and a modern infrared sauna system. While both options deliver the fundamental benefits of heat exposure, their underlying mechanisms, maintenance demands, energy profiles, and physiological impacts differ wildly. Understanding these core discrepancies is the first crucial step in making an informed purchase that you will remain happy with for years to come.

The Physics of Heat: Ambient vs. Radiant Energy

Traditional saunas rely on convection and conduction to raise your core body temperature. Inside a traditional unit, an electric or wood-burning stove heats a pile of stones. Once those stones reach scorching temperatures, users pour water over them to generate clouds of intense steam. This process cooks the air around you, forcing the ambient room temperature to soar between 180°F and 200°F. To tolerate this environment, your body works overtime to cool itself down through surface evaporation. However, for many individuals, inhaling this superheated, humid air can feel oppressive, heavy on the lungs, and fundamentally uncomfortable, often shortening the duration of their sessions.

Conversely, infrared saunas completely bypass the need to heat the surrounding air. Instead, they leverage the power of radiant heat. Infrared energy occupies a specific zone on the electromagnetic spectrum, utilizing invisible light wavelengths to directly penetrate your physical tissues.

How it works: Think of the way the sun warms your skin on a cold winter day; the air temperature may be freezing, but the direct light waves make your body feel deeply warm.

Because infrared wavelengths transfer heat directly to your body rather than warming the entire room, these saunas operate at a much more manageable and comfortable ambient temperature, typically ranging from 120°F to 150°F. This lower air temperature allows you to enjoy longer, more relaxing sessions while still triggering a profound, deep-tissue sweat.

Traditional Sauna:  [Heater] ──> [Warms Air (180°F-200°F)] ──> [Warms Skin Surface]
Infrared Sauna:     [Heater] ───────────────────────────────> [Direct Penetration (120°F-150°F)]

Maintenance, Hygiene, and the Threat of Moisture

From a practical homeowners perspective, the wet-dry system of a traditional sauna introduces substantial maintenance challenges. When you consistently introduce high humidity and moisture into an enclosed wooden structure, you create the ideal breeding ground for mold, mildew, and wood-rotting bacteria. To keep a traditional sauna sanitary, you must execute rigorous cleaning protocols:

• Scrubbing down the wooden benches after every single use to remove sweat oils.
• Ensuring complex ventilation paths remain entirely unobstructed to allow the interior to dry completely.
• Checking structural seals regularly to ensure moisture isn't leaking into your home's drywall or framing.

Infrared saunas, by contrast, are fundamentally dry environments. Because there is absolutely no water or steam involved, the internal wood faces minimal moisture strain. Sweat is captured easily by placing towels on the benches and floor. Without the presence of stagnant moisture, the risk of bacterial colonization or fungal growth drops to near zero. This makes an infrared unit incredibly easy to care for—requiring little more than an occasional wipe-down with a damp cloth and a mild, non-toxic cleaner.

Energy Efficiency and Operating Costs

In an era where home energy efficiency is paramount, the operational metrics of your sauna matter. Because traditional saunas must heat massive rocks and hundreds of cubic feet of air to near-boiling temperatures, they demand significant amounts of electrical power. A typical traditional home sauna requires a hefty 6kW to 9kW heater, which must run for 45 to 60 minutes just to preheat the space before you can step inside. This long warm-up period translates directly to a noticeable spike in your monthly utility bill.

Infrared saunas are remarkably efficient. They generally utilize advanced carbon or ceramic heating elements that require far less wattage—typically between 1.5kW and 3kW. Furthermore, because the target is your body rather than the air, preheat times are drastically shorter, usually requiring only 10 to 15 minutes. This structural efficiency keeps operational costs down to mere pennies per session, ensuring your wellness routine doesn't become a financial burden.

2. What are the Structural Differences Between Pre-Built and DIY Home Saunas?

Once you have committed to the superior efficiency and comfort of an infrared system, your next major decision centers on the construction method. Do you buy a professionally engineered, pre-built sauna kit, or do you take on the creative challenge of a custom, do-it-yourself (DIY) build? Both avenues offer distinct pathways to luxury, but they demand vastly different levels of labor, planning, and architectural execution.

                          ┌───────────────────────────┐
                          │   Choose Construction     │
                          └─────────────┬─────────────┘
                                        │
                ┌───────────────────────┴───────────────────────┐
                ▼                                               ▼
     ┌─────────────────────┐                         ┌─────────────────────┐
     │  Pre-Built Cabin    │                         │   Custom DIY Build  │
     └──────────┬──────────┘                         └──────────┬──────────┘
                │                                               │
  • Pre-engineered panels                        • Complete architectural freedom
  • Tongue-and-groove assembly                   • Custom framing & insulation
  • Minimal tools required                       • Perfect integration with decor
  • Fixed sizing footprints                      • Higher planning/labor investment

Pre-Built Infrared Saunas: The Epitome of Convenience

For the homeowner who values a frictionless, reliable path to relaxation, a pre-built infrared sauna cabin is the gold standard. Modern pre-built saunas are masterfully engineered as modular kits. They arrive at your doorstep in flat-packed panels that utilize precise tongue-and-groove construction, magnetic latch systems, or heavy-duty buckle clips. This means that two adults can fully assemble a premium 2-person or 3-person sauna cabin in less than an hour, using nothing more than a standard screwdriver and an Allen wrench.

The primary advantage of a pre-built model is that all the complex guesswork has been completely eliminated by industrial designers. The heating arrays are already positioned at scientifically optimal angles to ensure uniform, full-body infrared coverage. The internal wiring harnesses are safely routed through fire-retardant channels, and the control panels are pre-configured to plug right into your home’s electrical system.

Additionally, these self-contained cabins are highly versatile; as long as you have a flat, stable floor surface (such as tile, concrete, or engineered hardwood) and a nearby power source, you can set them up anywhere. If you decide to remodel your house or move to a new home in the future, a pre-built sauna can be disassembled just as quickly as it was built and transported right along with your furniture.

Custom DIY Builds: Tailored Architectural Integration

On the other end of the spectrum lies the custom DIY infrared sauna. This path is ideal for homeowners who have highly specific aesthetic tastes, unique spatial constraints, or an ambitious desire to build a seamless home spa environment. If you have an awkward alcove under a staircase, an unused walk-in closet, or a dedicated corner of a pool house that cannot accommodate a standard rectangular box, a DIY build gives you total freedom over the design.

Building a DIY infrared sauna requires an advanced understanding of carpentry, electrical engineering, and thermal dynamics. You must handle several critical phases:

1. Framing and Insulation: You will need to construct a sturdy stud wall frame and insulate it heavily using non-toxic, high-temperature-rated insulation (such as rockwool or specialized fiberglass) to maximize heat retention.
2. Vapor Barrier Installation: A high-quality foil vapor barrier must line the entire interior to reflect radiant heat back into the cabin and protect your home’s underlying studs from dry-heat degradation.
3. Heater Sourcing and Positioning: You must source independent infrared heating panels and calculate their exact placement to ensure you do not create cold spots or dangerous overlapping heat zones.
4. Wood Cladding Selection: Choosing the correct wood species is critical for safety and longevity.

Selecting the Perfect Timber: Why Wood Species Matter

Whether evaluating the construction of a pre-built unit or purchasing raw materials for a DIY project, the choice of wood is never just cosmetic. The interior of an infrared sauna is exposed to repeated thermal expansion and contraction, as well as the natural oils and sweat shed by your body.

Wood Choices:
├── Western Red Cedar: Highly stable, anti-microbial, luxury aroma, repels insects.
└── Hypoallergenic Basswood: Zero outgassing, odor-free, ideal for chemical sensitivities.

• Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata): This is the traditional gold standard for premium saunas. Cedar is uniquely celebrated for its exceptional dimensional stability, meaning it will not warp, twist, or crack when subjected to rapid temperature shifts. It contains natural oils that act as a powerful anti-microbial shield, naturally repelling mold, fungi, and wood-boring insects. Furthermore, it boasts a low thermal density, which means the wood remains comfortable to sit on and touch, even when the air inside is hot. ly, it releases a rich, relaxing aroma that elevates the sensory experience of your session.
• Hypoallergenic Basswood: While cedar is universally loved, its natural aromatic compounds (phenols) can occasionally irritate individuals who suffer from extreme chemical sensitivities, asthma, or severe allergies. For these users, premium clear Basswood is the ultimate alternative. Basswood is entirely odorless, contains no volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and features a tight, knot-free grain structure that does not outgas when exposed to high radiant heat. It is incredibly strong, beautifully pale, and provides a completely neutral, allergen-free environment.

3. How Do You Determine the Ideal Size for Your Personal Home Sauna?

Sizing your home sauna requires finding the perfect balance between your real-world spatial constraints and your personal wellness habits. If you buy a sauna that is too small, you may feel cramped and restricted, limiting your ability to fully unwind. If you buy a model that is unnecessarily massive, you will consume more floor space and draw more power than required, resulting in a less efficient system.

Auditing User Capacity and Daily Use Cases

Start by asking yourself a straightforward question: Who will actually be inside this sauna on a regular basis?

• 1 to 2-Person Cabins: If the sauna is exclusively for you, or for you and a partner to share occasionally, a compact 1-person or 2-person cabin is incredibly practical. These units typically feature a modest footprint (roughly 4 feet wide by 4 feet deep), making them exceptionally energy efficient and easy to fit into tight interior rooms.
• 3 to 5-Person Multi-Person Models: If you view sauna bathing as a social ritual to enjoy with family members, or if you regularly entertain friends, you will want to look at larger 3-person to 5-person multi-bench configurations. These expansive models allow multiple adults to sit comfortably side-by-side without bumping elbows, or let two people recline fully at the same time.

Spatial Dimensions and Active Use Considerations

Beyond counting heads, you need to consider how you plan to move inside the space. If you are an athlete who wants to use an infrared sauna for dynamic recovery, stretching, or practicing hot yoga poses, a standard 1-person bench will not suffice. You will need to look at specialized, deeper cabins that feature easily removable benches or wide, open floor layouts specifically designed to accommodate a full-sized yoga mat.

Custom-built home saunas typically range anywhere from 25 square feet for a modest solo corner up to 80 square feet for a luxury multi-tiered lounge.

⚠️ Critical Architectural Recommendation

No matter how large you decide to make the floor footprint of your sauna, we strongly recommend keeping the ceiling height restricted to a maximum of 7 feet.

Because heat naturally rises, any unnecessary vertical space above 7 feet will simply act as a chimney, trapping your valuable radiant heat way up at the top of the room, far out of reach of your body. Keeping the ceiling low ensures that the infrared wavelengths and ambient warmth remain concentrated directly in the zone where you are sitting or reclining, preserving structural thermal efficiency.

4. Where Should You Install a Luxury Infrared Sauna Inside or Outside Your House?

The decision of whether to place your infrared sauna indoors or outdoors will shape your daily installation logistics, your long-term maintenance habits, and the overall vibe of your personal wellness routine. There is no single correct answer; rather, it depends entirely on your home’s layout, regional climate patterns, and lifestyle goals.

                               ┌───────────────────────────┐
                               │    Placement Strategy     │
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                                             │
               ┌─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┐
               ▼                                                           ▼
    ┌─────────────────────┐                                     ┌─────────────────────┐
    │   Indoor Oasis      │                                     │   Outdoor Sanctuary │
    └──────────┬──────────┘                                     └──────────┬──────────┘
               │                                                           │
 • Year-round climate control                                • Beautiful natural ambiance
 • Proximity to showers/bathrooms                            • Ideal for pool/patio pairings
 • Zero structural weathering                                • Requires weatherproofing/roof
 • Requires flat floor & basic venting                      • Needs dedicated outdoor line

The Indoor Oasis: Ultimate Convenience and Environmental Control

Indoor infrared saunas are surging in popularity because they effortlessly transform any underutilized space into a luxury day spa. An indoor unit is completely shielded from rain, snow, and scorching summer sun, meaning its exterior wood will never experience UV degradation, water staining, or structural weathering.

When mapping out an indoor installation, consider these key parameters:

• Room Selection: Master bathrooms, converted walk-in closets, finished basements, home gyms, and even quiet corners of a master bedroom are all excellent candidates.
• Flooring Foundations: Ensure the underlying floor is perfectly flat, level, and water-resistant. Ceramic tile, polished concrete, and high-quality luxury vinyl plank (LVP) are perfect. Avoid placing a sauna directly on top of thick, plush carpeting, as this can restrict airflow beneath the unit and cause stability issues over time.
• Proximity to Amenities: Ideally, your indoor sauna should be located close to a shower. Stepping directly from a deeply detoxifying 140°F sweat session into a cool, refreshing rinse is the ultimate way to close your blood vessels and maximize the cardiovascular benefits of thermal cycling.

The Outdoor Sanctuary: Connecting with Nature

If your interior floor plan is already tightly optimized, or if you want to create a stunning backyard retreat, an outdoor infrared sauna is an exceptional alternative. Imagine stepping into a warm, glowing wooden cabin on a crisp autumn evening or a freezing winter morning, watching the snow fall while you bask in deeply penetrating radiant heat. If your backyard features a swimming pool, hot tub, or cold plunge tank, an outdoor sauna serves as the perfect cornerstone for advanced hot-cold contrast therapy.

However, outdoor installations require a higher level of structural planning and protection:

• Weatherproofing Shield: Wood is a natural, porous material. To survive outdoors, an infrared sauna must be equipped with a heavy-duty, weather-resistant roof (such as a sloped metal or asphalt shingle canopy) to shed rainwater and heavy snow loads. The exterior timber must also be sealed with a marine-grade, UV-resistant, non-toxic stain to prevent sun-bleaching and rot.
• Foundation Slab: You cannot place a heavy wooden sauna structure directly on raw grass or dirt, as soil moisture will quickly rot the floor joists. You must pour a level concrete pad, construct a reinforced wooden deck, or lay down a solid stone paver foundation.
• Privacy and Power Routing: You will want to position the sauna in a secluded area of your yard away from nosy neighbors, while keeping it close enough to your home’s electrical panel to avoid overly complex, expensive underground wire trenching.

5. What Essential Accessories and Upgrades Can Maximize Your Sauna Health Benefits?

While a baseline infrared sauna experience is profoundly therapeutic on its own, integrating advanced wellness technologies can elevate your cabin from a simple heated box into a powerful, multi-sensory biohacking chamber. By layering multiple natural therapies simultaneously, you can target various bodily systems at once, drastically compounding your long-term health outcomes.

Chromotherapy: Visual Medicine and Circadian Alignment

Chromotherapy, often referred to as color light therapy, utilizes specific visible wavelengths of light to alter your body's neurochemistry and energetic state. Inside the sauna, an array of medical-grade light-emitting diodes (LEDs) allows you to flood the cabin with targeted colors, each triggering unique physiological and psychological responses.

Chromotherapy Wavelengths:
├── Red Light (630nm): Stimulates collagen, boosts energy, enhances circulation.
├── Blue Light (470nm): Calms the nervous system, targets acne bacteria, reduces inflammation.
└── Green Light (520nm): Alleviates chronic pain, balances mood, reduces cortisol.

• Red Light (approx. 620–750 nm): This deeply stimulating wavelength helps activate cellular metabolism, boost systemic blood circulation, and encourage natural collagen production within the skin. It is ideal for morning sessions when you want to energize your body for the day ahead.
• Blue Light (approx. 450–495 nm): Known for its soothing properties, blue light helps lower blood pressure, calm an overactive central nervous system, and target surface-level bacteria, making it excellent for managing acne and skin inflammation.
• Green Light (approx. 495–570 nm): Green is the universal color of balance and harmony. It helps lower systemic cortisol levels, relieve chronic muscle tension, and reduce emotional stress, making it the perfect choice for unwinding after a high-pressure workday.

Halotherapy: Respiratory Cleansing and Dermatological Detox

Halotherapy involves infusing the dry air of your sauna with micro-particles of pharmaceutical-grade pure sodium chloride (salt). This is achieved by installing a compact device known as a halogenerator onto the wall of your cabin. As you relax and breathe deeply, these microscopic salt particles travel deep into your respiratory tract.

Salt is naturally hydrophilic, anti-bacterial, and anti-inflammatory. When inhaled, it acts like a microscopic brush throughout your respiratory system, attracting and binding moisture to trapped allergens, environmental pollutants, and deeply embedded mucus, allowing your body to expel them naturally. This makes halotherapy an incredible asset for anyone suffering from chronic asthma, seasonal allergies, sinusitis, or smoker’s cough.

Furthermore, as the micro-salt settles gently onto your warm skin, it naturally balances your topical pH levels, sloughs away dead skin cells, and accelerates the healing of stubborn skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis.

Red Light Therapy & Photobiomodulation Towers

While standard chromotherapy provides full-cabin ambient light illumination, a dedicated Red Light Therapy Tower delivers concentrated, high-irradiance near-infrared (NIR) and red light directly against your skin from close range. This specialized process is known as photobiomodulation.

When these precise wavelengths strike your skin, they penetrate deep into the subcutaneous layers, where they are actively absorbed by the cytochrome c oxidase enzymes located inside your cellular mitochondria. This absorption triggers an immediate surge in the production of Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP)—the fundamental energy currency of your cells.

By maximizing cellular ATP production during your sauna session, you significantly accelerate deep muscle recovery, reduce systemic joint pain, lower systemic inflammation, and enhance your body's natural fat burning and detoxification capabilities.

[Red/NIR Light Waves] ──> [Penetrate Skin Cells] ──> [Absorbed by Mitochondria] ──> [Surge in ATP Production] ──> [Rapid Muscle & Tissue Repair]

Vibration Resonance & Sound Therapy

To completely uncouple your brain from daily stress, your sauna should be an acoustic sanctuary. Vibration Resonance Therapy (VRT) couples high-fidelity audio sound systems with specialized transducer speakers built directly into the structural frame of the sauna benches.

Instead of simply hearing music through your ears, VRT transforms the sound waves into gentle, rhythmic physical vibrations that resonate right through the wooden bench and into your body's musculoskeletal structure. When paired with soothing binaural beats, nature sounds, or ambient meditation tracks, this deep physical resonance helps guide your brain waves out of a stressed state and down into a deep, restorative state. This shift balances your heart rate variability (index), lowers acute anxiety, and prepares your body for deep, restorative sleep.

🌟 Deep Dive: Two Premium Features to Look For

When shopping for the ultimate infrared sauna, do not just focus on the woodwork. To ensure you are buying a safe, effective, and truly high-end therapeutic system, look for these two premium engineering features:

Feature 1: Ultra-Low EMF and Low ELF Shielding Technology

Every electronic device emits an electromagnetic field (EMF) and an extremely low frequency (ELF) radiation field. Cheaper, poorly constructed infrared saunas often utilize low-grade carbon heating mats that emit shockingly high levels of EMF and ELF directly into your body while you sit close to them.

While short-term exposure to everyday electronics is common, sitting inches away from a high-EMF heater panel for 45 minutes inside an enclosed space can stress your cellular structures over time.

Premium sauna manufacturers build their heating arrays with advanced, patented double-shielded wiring configurations that actively cancel out magnetic and electric fields. Look for cabins that are independently tested and certified to maintain EMF emissions below 3 milligauss (mG) and ELF levels well below household background baselines, ensuring your wellness cabin is entirely non-toxic.

Feature 2: Ergonomic S-Curve Backrests and Adjustable Loungers

Standard budget saunas often feature flat, completely vertical wooden slatted walls that force you to sit at a rigid, uncomfortable 90-degree angle for your entire session. This can strain your lower back and create uncomfortable pressure points along your spine.

High-end cabins offer custom-sculpted, ergonomic backrests crafted from smooth timber that matches the natural S-curve of the human spine. Some premium luxury multi-person models feature fully adjustable wooden loungers. These allow you to recline your body into a weightless, zero-gravity position, lifting your knees slightly above your heart. This position relieves all compression pressure from your intervertebral discs, allows your muscles to fully relax, and maximizes your body's surface area exposure to the incoming infrared rays.

6. When is the Best Time to Invest in a Premium Infrared Home Sauna?

There is no better time than the present to take control of your long-term health and vitality. Investing in an infrared home sauna is far more than a simple luxury home improvement project; it is a profound, proactive investment in your physical and mental longevity.

By integrating regular thermal therapy sessions into your weekly lifestyle, you establish a highly reliable, accessible foundation for lifelong health. Whether you are looking for a sanctuary to ease chronic pain, a powerful biohacking tool to accelerate athletic recovery, a proven way to support cardiovascular health, or simply a quiet, warm escape from a chaotic world, an infrared sauna delivers.

Your Daily Wellness Loop:
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│  Morning: Red Light Energy   │
└──────────────┬───────────────┘
               ▼
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│ Post-Workout: Deep Recovery  │
└──────────────┬───────────────┘
               ▼
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│ Evening: VRT Sound/Stress Rx │
└──────────────────────────────┘

When you choose a globally recognized, meticulously engineered brand like Clearlight Infrared Saunas, you can move forward with absolute confidence. You are securing a system defined by medical-grade, non-toxic, sustainably harvested materials, advanced low-EMF heating technologies, and an unwavering commitment to world-class customer service and lifetime structural warranties.

Do not wait for a medical warning or chronic burnout to force you into prioritizing self-care. Bring the restorative power of a world-class luxury wellness spa directly into the comfort of your own home today, and start experiencing the life-changing physical and mental rewards of daily radiant heat.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How much electricity does an infrared home sauna use, and will it spike my utility bill?

Infrared home saunas are incredibly energy efficient, especially when compared to traditional steam saunas or hot tubs. A standard 2-person infrared sauna typically operates on a 15-amp or 20-amp circuit and draws roughly 1.75 kW to 2.1 kW of power.

If you use your sauna for 30 minutes, four times a week, you are consuming roughly 4 kWh of electricity per week. Based on national average residential electricity rates, running your sauna will cost you approximately $1.50 to $3.00 per month. It is a remarkably low operational cost that delivers an immense return on your wellness investment.

Can I plug an infrared sauna into a regular standard household wall outlet?

This depends entirely on the size and wattage of the specific sauna model you choose:

• 1-Person and 2-Person Models: Many compact 1-person and 2-person infrared saunas are specifically engineered to operate on a standard 120V, 15-amp household circuit. These models can plug directly into any standard, unshared three-prong wall outlet in your home without requiring any specialized electrical modifications.
• 3-Person and Larger Models: Larger 3-person, 4-person, or outdoor models draw more power to heat their expanded interior volume. These units typically require a dedicated 120V, 20-amp circuit or, in some luxury multi-bench configurations, a 240V line. This requires a licensed electrician to run a dedicated breaker and install a matching commercial-grade outlet (such as a NEMA 5-20R) to safely handle the electrical load.

How often should you clean an infrared sauna, and what are the best maintenance practices?

Because infrared saunas generate completely dry heat, they require very little hands-on maintenance. To keep your cabin pristine, follow these simple guidelines:

1. Always Use Towels: Always sit and place your feet on clean, absorbent cotton towels during every session. This simple step captures your sweat oils and prevents them from staining or discoloring the raw interior wood.
2. Post-Session Ventilation: Leave the sauna door cracked open for 10 to 15 minutes after you step out to allow any ambient humidity to vent completely.
3. Wipe Down Periodically: Every few weeks, wipe down the benches and floor with a damp microfiber cloth. If the wood requires deeper cleaning, use a specialized, non-toxic, natural sauna wood cleaner, or a mild mixture of warm water and organic castile soap.
4. Avoid Harsh Chemicals: Never use harsh chemical bleach, synthetic detergents, or abrasive scrubbing tools inside your sauna, as the porous wood will absorb those toxins and release harmful chemical fumes when reheated.