How many doors do you open or close on a typical day? The door to your home or apartment. The door to your car. The door to the local variety store. The door to your office or school. The door to your bathroom. Now, how often do you really think about these doors? Probably only when you can?t get into them, right?

If you?re planning to buy a sauna, you should think seriously about your sauna door. Indeed, one of the most important components of a sauna is its door. A sauna door is much more than just a sauna?s entrance and exit, and sauna shoppers need to give this essential part of the structure the consideration it deserves. If you want to impress your friends by owning a great sauna, your sauna has to have a great sauna door.

Your sauna door must be of high quality, not just for aesthetic reasons but for practical reasons as well. It is not the same as the door to your bedroom closet; a sauna door and all of its parts must be able to withstand the high temperatures and humidity for which saunas are so famously known. This applies to the wood of the door as well as the hinges, handle and other hardware on the door. Not only must they be able to stand up to the extreme heat and humidity of a sauna bath, but the sauna door and its parts must successfully endure the temperature and humidity changes also.

Remember, too, that your sauna door will likely get a lot of use during its lifetime. It will be opened and closed repeatedly by you, your family members, your friends, and anyone else you invite into your sauna for a soothing dip in the heat. For this reason, your sauna door and all its working parts must be durable. You wouldn?t want the handle to fall off after only a few months of use, would you?

To keep the heat and humidity of your sauna bath inside your sauna, your sauna door must be well insulated. An indoor or outdoor sauna that loses heat or humidity through its door is simply not acceptable. Not only does the quality of the sauna bath suffer, but, when heat and humidity escape from inside an indoor sauna, furniture and walls can easily become damaged as time goes by.

Some sauna owners prefer sauna doors with windows. A window in a sauna door can let in outside light and allow bathers inside the sauna to look out and people outside the sauna to look in. To better preserve a bather?s privacy, consider having a tinted window in the sauna door. Tinted or not, the window in the sauna door should be tempered and able to withstand the extremes and changes characteristic of a sauna bath.

Whatever door, hardware or window you choose for your sauna, make sure your selection complements the rest of your sauna unit. While aesthetics aren?t as important to some sauna bath enthusiasts as functionality and efficiency, to others it can mean a great deal. And, really, what?s better than a sauna that works perfectly and looks beautiful, too?

Pertti Olavi Jalasjaa is the Finnish-born author of ?The Art of Sauna Building,? an acclaimed reference book on sauna construction. He is also the general manager of Great Saunas, which has been manufacturing and selling high-quality saunas and sauna kits to sauna enthusiasts around the world since 1974. Visit Great Saunas online at http://www.greatsaunas.com.