There are cold days, and then there are New York winter days, the ones that feel like the wind has unpaid beef with you. When the temperature drops low enough for your bones to file HR complaints, the only rational move is simple: find heat.
Here are the sauna spots worth escaping to, the kind that make you forget winter exists, even if only for 90 minutes.
Bathhouse — Williamsburg & Flatiron
If “hot but aesthetic” were a place, it would be Bathhouse. Dark stone, cold plunge pools, saunas in multiple moods, and treatments if you want to fully disappear from society. Their steam rooms are reliably intense, and the vibe is downtown wellness without the crystals.
Go for: a full reset, or if you need to sweat out every bad decision you made in 2025.
World Spa — Brooklyn
Three floors, twelve saunas, global bath rituals, and enough heat options to make you forget your legal name. You can do Moroccan hammam, Russian banyas, Finnish saunas, it’s like going on a wellness world tour without leaving South Brooklyn.
Go for: a day of pretending you’re on vacation.
Aire Ancient Baths — Tribeca
Stone pools, candlelit everything, and an atmosphere that feels like a billionaire built a Roman bathhouse underground. There’s a salt bath, a hot bath, a cold bath, and saunas that feel like time moves differently inside them.
Go for: romantic escapism or extreme self-care with no witnesses.
Russian & Turkish Baths — East Village
Classic, old-school, famously intense. If you want a sauna that feels like it’s working through generational trauma with you, this is the one. There’s no fluff, no soft lighting, no scented towels, just extremely hot rooms and people who take sweating very seriously.
Go for: authenticity and the bragging rights that follow.
Why January Is Peak Sauna Season
Because New York winter is emotionally manipulative. Because you deserve warmth that isn’t just from your space heater. Because sweating inside a tiled room for two hours is sometimes the only way to feel alive again. Whether you want calm, chaos, aesthetics, or tradition, the city has a sauna for it. Pick one, thaw out, return to the world slightly less seasonally depressed.
Written by: Wika Soto-Hay
