The catalog

Patio heaters, sorted by what they actually do

Six form factors, two fuels, and one decision that matters more than either: whether your patio has a roof over it. Start there and the rest narrows fast.

Last reviewed September 1, 2026

New to this? Start with every type explained — it is the page that makes the rest of this section make sense in about four minutes.

Every buying guide in this category opens by listing heater types. That is the wrong first move, because the type is downstream of a question you can answer in one second: is there anything above your patio?

If there is open sky above you, warmed air rises and leaves, and you need volume of heat to keep replacing it. That is what a propane tower is for — 46,000 to 48,000 BTU/h, cylinder underneath, reflector on top. Nothing electric that plugs into a wall comes close to that output, and the reason is not brand quality but physics and wiring: a standard U.S. outlet tops out at about 1,440 W of continuous load, which is roughly 4,900 BTU/h. Ten times less.

If there is a roof, a pergola, a porch ceiling or a gazebo above you, the arithmetic inverts. Warmed air is trapped rather than lost, so you need far less of it — and infrared radiant heat, which warms objects and people directly rather than heating air, works properly for the first time because nothing carries it away. An overhead-mounted 1,500 W infrared unit under a roof will make a seating area comfortable when a 48,000 BTU tower on an open patio next door is losing most of its output to the sky.

There is also a safety reason the roof question comes first. Propane heaters are open-combustion appliances that consume oxygen and produce flue gas. They are outdoor products, and every manual says so. A roof with open sides is usually fine; a roof with three walls is not. The safety and clearances page has the manufacturer figures rather than our opinion.

Every propane heater in this category is sold on its rated input — 48,000 BTU/h, in enormous type. That figure is real, and it is the amount of fuel energy the burner consumes per hour. It is not the amount of warmth that reaches you.

How much reaches you depends on the shape of the thing. A mushroom reflector is designed to push heat down and out; a pyramid's glass column sends a large share straight up; an open fire bowl is essentially a chimney with a nice view. Two 48,000 BTU appliances can deliver very different amounts of comfort to the same four chairs, and no manufacturer publishes the fraction.

Which is why the useful number is not the rated input but the area it has to cover, and that is arithmetic anyone can do. Our BTU calculator shows the working: area, times a published rule, times an enclosure factor, times an exposure factor. It will not tell you which brand is better. It will tell you within about a minute whether the heater you are looking at is the right size, which is the mistake that actually costs people money.

Propane is cheaper per unit of heat than electricity in most of the United States, and electric heaters are cheaper to run per evening, and both of those statements are true at the same time. The reason is that they are not the same size. A 48,000 BTU propane tower costs roughly ten times as much per hour as a 1,500 W electric unit because it is putting out roughly ten times as much heat.

The comparison only becomes meaningful once you have decided how much heat you need, which is why the sizing section sits next to the cost pages rather than somewhere else. Get the size right and the fuel question mostly answers itself.

• Not sure which type you need? Every type explained covers all six in one page.
• Know you want propane? The propane roundup has the picks, the runtimes and the cylinder arithmetic.
• Have a roof over your patio? Start at electric or infrared instead.
• Torn between the two? Electric vs propane settles it on five axes rather than two.
• Just want the shortlist? The best patio heaters is the flagship roundup, with a stated skip-this.