Before the pandemic, I had no idea about patio heaters. I mean, I knew they existed, but that wasn’t really the case thought about them. During the pandemic, I thought too much about them: where they were, where they weren’t, whether they were working. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and in 2020 and 2021 I had every will to leave my apartment and socialize on cold days in New York City. That meant that every trip to a restaurant or bar involved careful consideration of the heat situation outside. I kept mental rankings of the different types. The best outdoor heater I experienced was a little propane guy at a restaurant in Philadelphia that was secretly 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 at a very cold, wet price.
As the pandemic subsided and people returned to large indoor spaces, I assumed patio heaters would largely disappear, along with toilet paper hoarding and clapping for essential workers. But they have stuck around and have become a staple in restaurants, bars, hotels and people’s homes.
The closure of gathering places and lockdowns that kept people at home created a new appreciation for the outdoors. It led to a greater openness to spending more time outside, even when the temperature isn’t a perfect 72 degrees Fahrenheit. And many homeowners started rethinking the usefulness of their spaces, leading to a pandemic-fueled wave of renovations that include new patios and decks they’ll want to take advantage of year-round. Your mileage may vary depending on how effective these devices are; no heater will keep you comfortable outside in Chicago in February, and there is a lot of variation in quality among the products. But heaters are ubiquitous and are not going away.
For establishments like restaurants and bars, keeping customers warm outside was an important part of survival. For people who were bored at home, a patio heater became a way to keep them from going crazy. Although businesses and consumers are no longer marketing patio heaters as they were four years ago (or enduring the associated price increases), they are still buying more of them than before the pandemic.
Adobe, which tracks online sales during holidays and major shopping events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, found last year that patio and outdoor heaters were still a popular seller. Spending on these items increased in 2024 rather than in 2023, likely due to deeper and earlier discounts on devices. Cyber Week sales of outdoor heaters rose 314% over daily average sales in October, compared to 262% for appliances overall. Tabletop and portable models were especially popular. Vivek Pandya, principal analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, says it’s not just first-time buyers bringing patio heaters to the market, but repeat buyers as well.
“When we think about the pandemic, we’re about four years out of that,” he said. “You then have a cycle where consumers may be replacing certain items or interested in obtaining certain items.”
Google Trends suggests that searches for patio heaters tend to increase in the fall as people prepare for the cold months ahead. While search interest is well below fall 2020 levels, it still remains elevated compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Eric Kahn, the founder and director of Alfresco Heating, which specializes in patio and outdoor heating, saw sales decline after 2020 as consumers shifted their spending to traveling and dining out instead of renovating their homes. He thought 2024 would be the third straight year of gross sales declines, but a big bump in the fall saved his year. The season was “strong even at pandemic levels,” he said, and business remains above pre-pandemic levels.
“Our overall numbers are about halfway between what they were during the pandemic and what they were before,” Kahn said.
The pandemic opened up everyone’s world and allowed the world to expand from the inside out.
Leah Langford, marketing manager at Bromic Heating, told me the company saw a “huge boom” in sales of its outdoor heaters during the pandemic. On a commercial level, the company has always done good business, but household interest in heating also took off – and it has stuck. “Housing is where we’re seeing the biggest boom, and our focus now is really on homeowners and educating the different types,” she said. “It really changed the awareness that they exist.”
Greater awareness of the possibilities of outdoor spaces (and the importance of heating) has changed Tara L. Paige’s life and career. During the pandemic, she created a Facebook page for Black women who love outdoor spaces. It now has almost 250,000 members. Paige grew up as what she described as an “outside girl” – her father always had a fire burning outside – but she is aware that this is not true for everyone.
“The pandemic has opened up everyone’s world and created the opportunity to expand their insides outward. And now it’s like, okay, patio heaters are essential, fire pits are essential,” she said. “People would sit outside and think, 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 doesn’t do heaters, but she has thoughts about it, especially since she lives in a windy part of Texas. “I look for one that’s really sturdy,” she said. Otherwise the right wind will catch it, and “it will overthrow the whole thing.”
Although people still buy patio heaters, it is not clear whether they do so Good those. There’s a lot of variety – propane or infrared, portable or permanent – and it’s hard to know if you’re getting your money’s worth.
To find out how the country works, I contacted Thom Dunn, a writer for Wirecutter, the New York Times product recommendations section, which focuses on heating and cooling homes. He said there are generally two options for heaters he focuses on: the propane ones, where you see real flames, and the red radiant ones. The former keep you warm “as much as a fire can keep you warm,” he said, so they do better when you sit around them. The latter feel better when they are aimed directly at you, like the sun’s rays, but they only heat the parts of your body they touch. He prefers the kind with an elongated, vertical glass tube and a flame shooting through the center; it’s fun to get together for parties. “With the fire tube it feels more welcoming, to be cool, let’s sit here,” he said. But maybe a red heat lamp on the wall is fine if someone wants to stand outside for a moment and smoke a cigarette or something. “It’s all right to get some warmth from you,” he said, “but I’m not staying outside.”
They think it’s junk, so they buy junk.
Kahn, of Alfresco Heating, told me he usually doesn’t recommend the ducts. While the aesthetics are nice, they don’t do much in terms of warmth, partly because the glass acts as an insulator. But the real bane of its existence is the cheap portable heaters that people buy online. He jokingly calls them “disposable lighters.” The low-quality options often break after a year or two, meaning consumers get stuck in a cycle of buying one bad product after another instead of just investing in one good product. “They think it’s junk, so they buy junk,” he said.
“If people want a good experience for a longer period of time, investing in permanent patio heaters, especially overhead, can be a very worthwhile investment,” he says.
Nearly everyone I spoke to acknowledged that many of the heaters that have popped up in restaurants during the pandemic — the tall, mushroom-covered ones that shoot flames ten feet into the air — weren’t great. (Langford described them as “really worthless,” adding, “You get one season of enjoyment out of them.”) If restaurants really wanted to draw customers out and keep them really cozy, they would invest in more effective, more thoughtful installations.
Patio heating seems to have a bit of a reputation problem. People are clearly looking for outdoor heating options, but many are skeptical about how well they work and feel overwhelmed by all types of heat. I spoke to someone who has been looking for a heater for two years and still hasn’t found one; all options have left her paralyzed with indecision. But the confusion could also be good for the industry. It gives companies the opportunity to educate consumers, market to them and sell them nicer options than the ones they are familiar with. Maybe someone with a bad experience will swear off the devices altogether, but maybe they’ll decide it’s worth a trade-in. And as the saying goes, hope gives life, including that a little heating device you plug in can make that grim February day more bearable. It is open again inside, but thanks to patio heaters, it also remains open outside.
Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider and writes about business and economics.