America is obsessed with patio heaters

I had no idea about patio heaters before the pandemic. I mean, I knew they existed, but I hadn't really thought about them. During the pandemic, I thought about them too much — where they were, where they weren't, whether they worked. Where there's a will, there's a way, and in 2020 and 2021 I had All The Will to leave my apartment and socialize on cold New York City days. That meant any trip to a restaurant or bar entailed careful consideration of the outdoor heat situation. I kept mental rankings of the various types. The best outdoor heater I experienced was a little propane guy at a restaurant in Philadelphia that was sneakily effective. The worst was one of those tower ones at a wine bar down the street — the owner had put it under an umbrella in the rain, and it caught on fire. That glass of pinot grigio came at a very cold, wet expense.

As the pandemic subsided and people returned to the great indoors, I assumed patio heaters would largely disappear, like toilet-paper hoarding and clapping for essential workers. But they've stuck around, becoming fixtures at restaurants and bars and hotels and people's homes.

Shutdowns of gathering places and lockdowns that kept people at home fostered a new appreciation for the outdoors. It sparked a greater openness to spending more time outside even when the temperature isn't a perfect 72 degrees Fahrenheit. And a lot of homeowners rethought the utility of their spaces, which led to a pandemic-driven surge in renovations featuring new patios and decks they'd very much like to take advantage of year-round. Your mileage may vary on how effective these devices are — no heater is going to get you sitting outside comfortably in Chicago in February, and there's a lot of variation in quality across products. But heaters are ubiquitous, and they're not going away.

For establishments such as restaurants and bars, keeping patrons warm outdoors was a key part of survival. For people bored at home, a patio heater became a way to keep themselves from going stir-crazy. While businesses and consumers aren't scooping up patio heaters at the rate they were four years ago (or enduring the accompanying price gouging), they're still buying them more than they were before the pandemic.

Adobe, which tracks online sales during holidays and major shopping events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, found patio and outdoor heaters were still a hot seller last year. Spending on the items ramped up earlier in 2024 than it did in 2023, likely driven by deeper and earlier discounts on appliances. Cyber Week sales of outdoor heaters were up by 314% over daily average sales in October, compared with 262% for appliances overall. Tabletop and portable models in particular were popular. Vivek Pandya, a lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, says it's not just first-time buyers scooping patio heaters up — it's repeat purchasers.

"If we think about the pandemic, we're about four years outside of that," he said. "You then have a cycle where maybe consumers are replacing certain items or interested in getting certain items."

Google Trends suggests that searches for patio heaters usually pick up in the fall as people prepare for the cold months ahead. While search interest is well below where it was in the fall of 2020, it remains elevated from where it was before the pandemic.

Eric Kahn, the founder and director of Alfresco Heating, which specializes in patio and outdoor heating, saw sales fall after 2020 as consumers shifted their spending toward traveling and dining out rather than beefing up their homes. He thought 2024 would be his third consecutive year of a decline in gross sales, but a big bump in the fall salvaged his year. The season was "even pandemic-level strong," he said, and business remains above the pre-pandemic level.

"Our overall numbers are about halfway between what they peaked out at the pandemic and what they were before that," Kahn said.

Leah Langford, a marketing manager at Bromic Heating, told me the company saw a "huge boom" in sales of its outdoor heaters during the pandemic. It's always done solid business on the commercial side, but residential interest in heaters took off, too — and it's stuck. "Residential is where we're seeing the biggest boom, and really our focus right now is homeowners and educating on the different types," she said. "It just really shifted the awareness that they exist."

The greater awareness of the possibilities of outdoor spaces (and the importance of heating) has shifted Tara L. Paige's life and career. During the pandemic, she created a Facebook page for Black women who love outdoor living spaces. It now has nearly 250,000 members. Paige grew up as what she described as an "outside girl" — her dad always had a fire burning outside — but she's aware that's not true for everyone.

"The pandemic opened up everybody's world and to being able to extend their inside to their outside. And now it's like, OK, patio heaters are essential, fire pits are essential," she said. "People started sitting outside and feeling like, man, this is freedom, this feels good. And just because it's cold outside, I don't have to stop."

Paige created an outdoor-living lifestyle brand, The Patieaux Chick, and is launching her own line of patio furniture. She's not doing heaters, but she's got thoughts on them, especially living in a windy part of Texas. "I'm looking for one that's really sturdy," she said. Otherwise, the right wind gets it, and "it'll knock the whole thing over."

While people are still buying patio heaters, what's not clear is whether they're buying good ones. There's a ton of variation — propane or infrared, portable or permanent — and it's tough to know whether you're getting bang for your buck.

To learn the lay of the land, I reached out to Thom Dunn, a writer for Wirecutter, The New York Times' product-recommendation section, who focuses on home heating and cooling. He said there are generally two options for heaters he focuses on: the propane ones, where you sort of see actual flames, and the red radiant ones. The former keep you warm "as much as a fire could keep you warm," he said, so they do better when you're huddled around it. The latter feel better when they're directly on you, like the rays of the sun, but they warm only the parts of your body they hit. He prefers the kind with an elongated, vertical glass tube and flame that shoots up the middle — it's nice to gather around for parties. "With the fire tube, it feels more welcoming, to be like, cool, let's sit out here," he said. But maybe a red heat lamp on the wall is fine if someone wants to stand outside for a bit to smoke a cigarette or something. "That's fine to get a little warmth on you," he said, "but I'm not going to stay outside."

Kahn, from Alfresco Heating, told me he doesn't usually recommend the tube ones. While the aesthetic is nice, they don't do much heat-wise, in part because the glass acts as an insulator. But the real bane of his existence is the cheap portable heaters people buy online. He jokingly refers to them as "disposable lighters." The low-quality options often end up breaking after a year or two, meaning consumers get stuck in a cycle of buying bad product after bad product instead of just investing in one decent one. "They think they're junk, so they're buying junk," he said.

"Overall, if people are wanting a good experience for a long period of time, then investing in permanent — particularly overhead — patio heaters can be a very worthwhile investment," he said.

Almost everyone I talked to acknowledged that a lot of the heaters that popped up at restaurants in the pandemic — the tall mushroom-topped ones that shoot flames 10 feet into the sky — were not great. (Langford described them as "really shitty," adding, "You get one season out of them.") If restaurants really wanted to lure customers outside and actually keep them cozy, they'd invest in more effective, thoughtful installations.

Patio heating does seem to have a bit of a reputational problem. People clearly are in search of options for outdoor warmth, but many are skeptical about how well they work and feel overwhelmed by all the types. I talked to one person who's been in the market for a heater for two years and hasn't landed on one — all the options have left her paralyzed with indecision. But the confusion could be beneficial to the industry, too. It gives companies the ability to educate consumers, market to them, and sell them nicer options than the ones they're acquainted with. Perhaps someone with a bad experience will swear off the devices altogether, but maybe they'll decide it's worth it to trade up. And as the saying goes, hope springs eternal — including that a little heating device you plug in might make that grim February day more bearable. Indoors is open for business once again, but thanks to patio heaters, the outdoors is staying open for business, too.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.