If you use a tanning bed regularly you might look at installing your own one at home. It saves having to book yourself an appointment and could be cost effective in the long run. After the initial purchase the only thing to consider is the power consumption. This will help you to install it correctly and work out how much electricity a tanning bed requires.
Below we will discuss and test tanning bed wattage, explain how to work it out for yourself, and calculate the total electricity required.
How Many Watts is a Tanning Bed?
The average tanning bed uses between 1500 to 9000 watts.
The exact number depends on the size and model of your tanning bed. For example, a small home sunbed uses less than 3000W while large commercial units run at 9000W or more!
There’s two things to note here. These are very high-powered appliances and they vary massively in power consumption. This discrepancy comes down to the power and number of UV bulbs installed in the bed. Most home systems have 20 to 30 100W UV lamps. Large commercial beds have 40 or 50 180W lamps.
The more UV lamps the more power it consumes!
How to Find Out Your Tanning Bed Wattage
There’s 3 ways you can work out the wattage of a tanning bed.
- Check Product Specification
The quickest way is to look at the tanning bed’s specifications. The watts (W) is usually written on a sticker on the base of the appliance. If not, you can check the user manual or the manufacturer’s website for technical details. Often you might only be able to find the power rating for each individual UV bulb. In this case, simply multiply the individual bulb wattage by the total number of bulbs.
- Use a Wattmeter
A wattmeter is brilliant for getting a live wattage reading and tracking total energy usage of any appliance. You can simply plug it into your tanning bed to get instant information.
I used one to test a home tanning bed which gave a live reading of 2731W.
- Wattage Formula or Calculator
If you know the amperage and voltage of your tanning bed you can use this to find the maximum watt rating. Simply use the formula Amps x Volts = Watts. Or you can head over to the ‘Watt Calculator’ to work this out.
Tanning Bed Wattage Examples
Let’s take a look at specific examples of how many watts a tanning bed draws. Below is a collection of modern tanning beds with their listed power ratings.
| Tanning Bed Model | Power Rating (Watts) |
| SYMPHONY SPECIAL EDITION | 12,000 |
| VITESSE SPECIAL EDITION | 12,000 |
| W4 Sunshine Solarium | 2800 |
| W3 Sunshine Solarium | 2800 |
| X26 Home Standup | 2600 |
| W3C Collagen | 2800 |
| W1C Collagen Bed | 1200 |
| F10 Solarium Sonnex | 13,000 |
| F8 Solarium | 9800 |
| F6 Solarium | 8700 |
| W5 Sunshine Solarium | 6200 |
| W6 Sunshine Solarium | 7600 |
As you can see, the power ratings vary between different tanning beds. So you should take the time to check your own bed.
How Much Electricity Does a Tanning Bed Use?
You can use tanning bed wattage to work out how much electricity it uses. Plus this can be useful in understanding how much it costs to run your tanning bed.
A watt (W) is a measurement of power at a single point in time. A watt-hour (Wh) is the total amount of electricity used in an hour. For example, a tanning bed drawing 6000W would use 6000Wh when running for an hour.
Happily, electricity bills are recorded in kilowatt-hours (kWh). A kilowatt is simply 1000 watts. So a 6000W tanning bed running for 1 hour uses 6.5kWh.
In reality, you use a tanning bed for 5 minutes a week. This means a 6000W tanning bed uses about 500Wh or 0.5kWh electricity a week. That’s 2.15kWh a month and 25.8kWh a year.
That’s an electricity cost of $0.32 a month or $3.87 a year to use a mid sized tanning bed for 5 minutes a week.
How Many Watts Does a Tanning Bed Use Summary
I hope you now have a clear understanding of how many watts a tanning bed uses.
There is no way around the fact that a sunbed uses a lot of electricity. You’ll certainly notice an electricity spike when you switch it on. This is because it will be running dozens of powerful UV bulbs. As you have discovered, the power consumption varies dramatically between devices.
It’s clear that a home tanning bed uses less power than a professional machine, although you might have to stay in there for a little longer.
Large commercial sunbeds are some of the most powerful appliances around, in some cases exceeding 10,000W (10kW). That’s the equivalent of running around 200 LED TVs simultaneously!
