How long should a massage be? Four lengths, and the honest difference between them.

Four lengths sit on the table here — 30, 60, 90 and 120 minutes — at the same pressure, with the same hands. The clock only changes how much of you gets covered. A therapist with 30 minutes has to decide where to spend them before the first stroke lands; with 120, nobody has to decide anything.

So ask yourself the plain question: how much of you is asking for attention? One shoulder that has been complaining since Tuesday is a half hour. A whole back stiffened by a winter at a desk is an hour. Want the legs and feet done properly as well? Now you're at 90.

Most first visits land on the hour, and the menu says as much against that line. It's the default, not a compromise: a full pass with nothing rushed, and short enough that if you turn out not to enjoy being worked on, you haven't bought two hours of it.

• 30 minutes — one region, properly. Back, neck and shoulders, usually.
• 60 minutes — a full pass over the body at a normal pace. The default.
• 90 minutes — the same ground, slower, with legs and feet given a real share.
• 120 minutes — head to feet, plus time to go back to whatever wanted more.
• Deep tissue — 60, 90 or 120 only. That column has no half-hour row.

For a therapist, the four lengths are four different problems. Thirty minutes is triage: pick a region, work it, stop. An hour is a question of pace, because everything fits so long as nothing lingers. The extra half hour at 90 goes straight onto whatever the hour had to hurry. Two hours has no problem to solve at all.

Two things before the table. One sore spot can swallow time out of all proportion, so a 90 spent almost entirely on a locked shoulder is a perfectly good use of it — just say so at the start. Deep work shifts the maths too, since slower hands cover less ground a minute. Which is why the deep tissue column starts at 60.

The table below is about coverage — what fits inside the time, not what it will do for you. No length can promise you an outcome.

The 120 is the longest line on this menu and the one people read wrong. It looks like indulgence — twice as much of a good thing. In practice it's the one length where nobody has to edit: at every shorter one, somebody is deciding what not to reach.

You feel that from the table. There's no point in the middle where the pace quietly picks up because the clock is showing. Your feet, usually the first casualty of an hour, get their turn. Two hours is also the top of the deep tissue column.

A 30 is $50 and a 90 is $100. So the ninety costs what two separate half hours cost, and it hands you an extra half hour of work in one unbroken run. The rest of the numbers live on the price page.

• Anyone who has had a 90 and wanted more — the only step up left.
• Bodies where everything is tight — a general problem needs general time.
• Firm work plus full coverage — slower hands need more minutes for the same ground.
• Anyone treating it as the evening — two hours reshapes the day around it.

Length changes a session more than anything else, and it's the thing most people decide last, on the phone, with somebody waiting. Do it the other way round. Work out how much of you needs attention and how much of the afternoon you can give up; technique is a conversation for once you're face down.

Two words on the window can confuse a booking. Swedish is up there and in the studio's own welcome note, but it's not a separate line on the price list — you ask for it when you book your hour. Foot reflexology works the same way: the line you book is called Foot Massage. Deep tissue is the real exception, with its own column and lengths from 60 minutes, and the pressure comparison takes it apart.

Crystal Massage is in Wichita, Kansas, open seven days, and the later you start the more the length matters — the hours page works out which ones still fit an evening. There's no online booking here, so call (316) 246-3999 to hold a 90 or a 120, and lead with the length. For two guests it's 60 or 90, and the foot-and-body line puts two kinds of session into one appointment.

A first visit raises questions that have nothing to do with duration, and what happens in the room covers those. Once you've found a length that works, the next thing to settle is spacing: how often to come back. And if you're still choosing a studio, start with the citywide page.