Linen Sauna Bench Runner

Coming Soon

A hot wood bench at 190°F is, at best, unpleasant to sit on directly. That is the problem a bench runner solves, and most of the ones sold for it are polyester and/or a cotton terry that holds water and goes cold.

This is 100% European flax in a heavy washed waffle. Linen sheds water rather than holding it, which is why it is the traditional cloth for a sauna and why it dries between rounds and sessions instead of souring.

Why it is this long

26 by 71 inches (66 by 180 cm).

Most bench runners are made at the length of a table runner, because that is what the mills already weave. We produced 71in/180cm instead, which is long enough that almost anyone can lie down on it.

The width is 26 inches for a reason too: that covers your typical bench depth and then some.

The cloth

390 grams per square meter. That is heavy for linen and considerably heavier than a standard towel weave, which is the point: waffle has structure, so it lifts off the bench and lets air move underneath rather than lying flat and wet.

Undyed and unbleached. Washed in water only, with nothing else added. The color is the color flax itself is what you get.

What is usually done to linen, and what we did instead

Most linen you can buy has been through a finishing process nobody puts on the label. Optical brighteners, which are synthetic dyes that fluoresce under daylight to make white look whiter. Silicone softeners, which coat the fiber so cloth feels plush in a shop and absorbs worse for the rest of its life. Chlorine or peroxide bleaching. And on anything sold as easy-care or wrinkle-resistant, a formaldehyde-releasing resin.

None of that is illegal and almost none of it is typically disclosed.

We're selling undyed, unbleached, washed in water only, with no softener and no resin. And because a specification is only a sentence until somebody checks it, we tested the cloth under UV light during multiple sample runs. Optical brighteners glow under UV. Ours did not.

There is a reason this matters more in a sauna than in a linen closet. A wrinkle-resistant resin was formulated for a wardrobe, not for a 190°F sauna, and nobody who makes those finishes has tested them there. We would rather have cloth with nothing on it than cloth with something on it that nobody has thought about.

The one synthetic in this product, and we are not going to bury it

The hem is sewn with polyester thread.

We asked for cotton. The mill refused outright. Cotton thread does not survive repeated laundering, and they were not willing to make an exception.

Another mill we spoke to does offer cotton thread. We did not use them, because their cloth was not the cloth we wanted. That was a real trade and we made it with our eyes open: the fiber you touch is 100% flax, and the thread holding the hem is not.

It is a few grams of polyester in a product that is otherwise entirely flax, and you are reading about it here rather than finding out later.

What we are still confirming

Photography. The runners are still being woven, so what you see here is an actual fabric close-up rather than the finished piece. Real photographs will follow when we receive the shipment.

Availability

Not yet available. Leave your email and we will tell you the day it is.