Keeping People Warm in Steamy Bathrooms
There’s nothing worse than stepping out of a shower or changing in a cold bathroom. You don’t want to wait for a heater to slowly warm up the air—you just want to feel warm now. That’s why we use shortwave infrared (SWIR). Instead of trying to heat the entire room, this tech sends energy straight to you. It hits your skin or the tiles and warms them up in seconds. It’s a different kind of heat. The “Sun” Effect Inside the unit, there’s a tungsten filament tucked into a high-purity quartz tube. The moment you flip the switch, that filament hits its peak temperature. It feels like stepping into a patch of sunlight. Even if the dressing room is a freezing 10°C, you don’t feel the chill. You just feel the warmth hitting you immediately. Dealing with Water and Steam Steam is a nightmare for electronics. To keep things safe, we use IP-rated housings that lock out moisture before it can touch the terminals. Then there’s the glass. We use tempered quartz because it has to be tough. Imagine a tube sitting at 800°C getting splashed with cold water—that’s a recipe for a crack if you don’t use the right materials. We also put gold-coated reflectors behind the tube. This pushes the heat forward into the room where it belongs, rather than letting it soak into the ceiling or the wall. It just makes the whole thing more efficient. A Few Things to Watch Out For These lamps pull a lot of power. If your wiring or circuit breakers aren’t up to the task, you’re going to be tripping breakers all day. It’s worth double-checking your specs before you install them. Also, because that quartz tube gets incredibly hot, the protective grill isn’t optional. One accidental touch without it, and you’ve got a nasty burn. One last tip: give the fixture some breathing room. If you cram it into a tight space, the internal wiring can bake and get brittle over time. Give it some air, and it’ll last much longer.