I had no idea about patio heaters before the pandemic. I mean, I knew they existed, but I really didn’t OPINION around them. During the pandemic, I thought a lot about them – where they were, where they weren’t, if they were working. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and in 2020 and 2021 I had all the will to leave my apartment and hang out in the cold days of New York City. This meant that every trip to a restaurant or bar required careful consideration of the outside heat situation. I kept mental rankings of various kinds. The best outdoor heater I’ve experienced was a little propane guy at a restaurant in Philadelphia that was extremely effective. The worst was one of those towers in a wine bar down the street – the owner had put it under an umbrella in the rain and it caught fire. That glass of pinot grigio came with a very cold and wet charge.
As the pandemic subsided and people returned to the big houses, I assumed that patio heaters would largely disappear, as would toilet paper hoarding and applause for essential workers. But they’ve stuck around, becoming fixtures in restaurants and bars, hotels and people’s homes.
The closures of gathering places and lockdowns that kept people at home prompted a new appreciation for the outdoors. She lit a larger opening to spend more time outside even when the temperature isn’t the perfect 72 degrees Fahrenheit. And many homeowners rethought the utility of their spaces, leading to a surge in pandemic-fueled renovations with new patios and decks they’d love to take advantage of year-round. Your mileage may vary on how effective these devices are—no heater is going to make you sit comfortably outside in Chicago in February, and there’s a lot of variation in quality between products. But the heaters are everywhere and they won’t go away.
For establishments such as restaurants and bars, keeping customers warm outdoors was a key part of survival. For bored people at home, a patio heater became a way to not go crazy. While businesses and consumers aren’t snapping up patio heaters at the rate they were four years ago (or enduring the accompanying price hikes), they’re still buying more of them than before the pandemic.
Adobe, which tracks online sales during holidays and major shopping events like Black Friday and Online Monday, found that patio and outdoor heaters were still a hot seller last year. Spending on items rose earlier in 2024 than in 2023, likely driven by deeper and earlier discounts on appliances. Cyber week sales of outdoor heaters were up 314% over average daily sales in October, compared to 262% for appliances overall. In particular, desktop and portable models were popular. Vivek Pandya, a principal analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, says it’s not just first-time buyers who are picking up patio heaters, it’s repeat buyers.
“If you think about the pandemic, we’re about four years out of that,” he said. “Then you have a cycle where maybe consumers are substituting certain items or are interested in receiving certain items.”
Google Trends suggests that searches for patio heaters typically increase in the fall as people prepare for the colder 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, founder and CEO of Alfresco Heating, which specializes in patio and outdoor heating, saw sales decline after 2020 as consumers shifted their spending toward travel and dining out rather than improving their homes. It thought 2024 would be its third consecutive year of declining gross sales, but a big hit in the fall saved the year. The season was “even pandemic-level strong,” he said, and business remains above pre-pandemic levels.
“Our overall numbers are about halfway between what they peaked in the pandemic and what they were before,” Kahn said.
The pandemic opened up everyone’s world and the ability to extend their insides to their outsides.
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 strong business on the commercial side, but residential interest in heaters also took off — and has stuck. “Residential is where we’re seeing the biggest boom and really our focus right now is homeownership and education for the different types,” she said. “It just really changed the awareness that they exist.”
Greater awareness of the possibilities of the outdoors (and the importance of warmth) has changed Tara L. Paige’s life and career. During the pandemic, she created a Facebook page for black women who love outdoor living spaces. Now it has about 250,000 members. Paige grew up as what she describes as an “outdoor girl” — her dad always had a fire burning outside — but she’s aware that’s not true for everyone.
“The pandemic opened up everyone’s world and the ability to extend their inside to the 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 lifestyle brand, The Patieaux Chick, and is launching her own line of patio furniture. She’s not doing heats, but she has thoughts about them, especially living in a windy part of Texas. “I’m looking for one that’s really strong,” she said. Otherwise, the right wind picks it up and will “bring it all down.”
While people are still buying patio heaters, what is not clear is whether they are buying good those. There are a ton of variations—propane or infrared, portable or permanent—and it’s hard to know if you’re asking too much.
To learn the lay of the land, I reached out to Thom Dunn, a writer for Wirecutter, The New York Times’ product recommendations section that focuses on home heating and cooling. He said there are generally two options for the heaters he focuses on: propane ones, where you can see the actual flames, and infrared ones. The former keep you warm “as much as a fire can keep you warm,” he said, so they do best when you’re huddled around it. The latter feel best when they are directly on you, like the sun’s rays, but they only heat the parts of the body they hit. He prefers the kind with an elongated, vertical glass tube and a flame that shoots down the middle—it’s nice to gather around for parties. “With the fire pipe, it feels more welcoming, to be quiet, let’s sit here,” he said. But maybe a red heat lamp on the wall is good if someone wants to stay outside for a while to have a cigarette or something. “It’s good to get some warmth on you,” he said, “but I won’t hang out.”
They think it’s junk, so they’re buying junk.
Kahn, of Alfresco Heating, told me he doesn’t usually recommend ducted ones. While the aesthetics are nice, they don’t do much heating, in part because the glass acts as an insulator. But the real bane of its existence are the cheap portable heaters people buy online. He jokingly refers to them as “disposable lighters”. Low-quality options often end up breaking after a year or two, meaning consumers are stuck in a cycle of buying bad product after bad product instead of just investing in a good one. “They think it’s junk, so they’re buying junk,” he said.
“Overall, if people want a good experience over a long period of time, then investing in permanent — especially high-end — patio heaters can be a very worthwhile investment,” he said.
Almost everyone I spoke to agreed that many of the heaters that appeared in restaurants during the pandemic — the tall mushroom ones that shoot flames 10 meters into the sky — weren’t great. (Langford described them as “really nasty,” adding, “You get a season out of them.”) If restaurants really wanted to lure customers out and actually keep them comfortable, they would invest in more effective and thoughtful installations.
Patio heating seems to have a bit of a reputation problem. People are clearly looking for options for outdoor warmth, but many are skeptical about how well they work and feel overwhelmed by all kinds. I spoke to one person who has been in the market for a heater for two years and hasn’t settled on one – all the options have left him paralyzed with indecision. But the confusion can also be good for the industry. It gives companies the ability to educate consumers, market to them, and sell them better options than what they are familiar with. Maybe someone with a bad experience will ditch the gear entirely, but maybe they’ll decide it’s worth a trade. And as the saying goes, hope springs eternal – including that one little plug-in heating device can make that dreary February day more bearable. Indoors is open for business once again, but thanks to the patio heaters, the outdoor space is also open for business.
Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.
