Red light at home: panel vs mask vs bed

Who this class fits

• A closet, spare room, or garage wall that can take a panel or a mat.
• People who will actually measure distance, because dose falls off as you step back.
• Buyers willing to ask for mW/cm² at a stated distance and wavelength in nm.

Skip this class if

• You want a disease treatment or a clinic protocol. That is not this directory.
• The brand will only quote “watts” with no distance. That is not enough to compare classes.

Ask for irradiance, not marketing watts

Wall-plug watts and LED-chip watts describe power into the device, not light at your skin. The comparable number is irradiance: milliwatts per square centimeter (mW/cm²) measured at a stated distance, with the wavelengths (nm) the maker actually uses.

Fluence (J/cm²) is irradiance multiplied by time. Without distance, the watt figure is not a dose. ThriveHop will not invent an irradiance for Joovv, Mito, PlatinumLED, HigherDOSE, or anyone else. If a spec sheet does not publish mW/cm² at a distance, treat the class as unpublished.

Three coverage classes

Mask: face (sometimes neck) only. Convenient, small coverage, usually used close to the skin. Compare published irradiance at the mask’s intended wear distance.

Panel: a body region you can step toward. Distance is under your control, which means the same panel is a different dose at 6 inches versus 24 inches. Look for a table of mW/cm² versus distance, not a single heroic watt number.

Bed or mat: you lie on or under emitters. Coverage is large; distance is often fixed by the frame. A full-body form factor is not automatically a higher dose than a close panel. Compare irradiance at the actual skin distance.

What this page will not do

No disease lists. No skin-condition menus. No “anti-aging protocol.” No claim that a home panel is the same as clinician-applied photobiomodulation in a trial.

Journal-cited notes on what papers measured — including that a neck-pain laser review is not a studio bed — live on the Therapies red-light page. Read that before you treat a purchase as care.

Published evidence lives on Therapies

Journal-cited notes are not repeated here. Open the matching Therapies page for what trials actually measured.

• Red light evidence notes

Class examples

Official public URLs. Not a recommendation order. No invented tracking tags.

Other home classes

• 120V infrared vs 240V sauna
• Ice barrel vs chilled plunge
• Garage contrast layout