The best of space heaters

The best type of space heaters

The best type of space heaters depends on your goals.

If you want to get a quick, personal, spot heating solution for short periods of time, than a small radiant heater is the best option.

If you want a heater for your outdoor activities, or for some garage uses, or for some hard-to-heat places, than portable propane or natural gas heaters or kerosene heaters (take into account basic safety considerations) can be the best space heaters.

If you want to heat an entire room with a very comfortable and high quality heating (though in a somewhat slow pace), an oil-filled space heater is probably the best solution.

If you want a very silent heater, a convection space heater (say, a oil-filled heater) is surely the best option.

If you want to heat a significant part of the house (and not only a room or people in a room) than a wall vented gas heater or a wall furnace can be the best solution…

The best space heater brands and manufacturers

The top manufacturer or brand of a specific type of heater isn’t usually the best in other types of heaters. Lasko, for instance, is a leader in ceramic heaters, but not in other types of space heaters. DeLonghi is a leader in oil-filled heaters, but not in ceramic heaters. Rinnai is a leader in wall-vented gas space heaters, but not in electric heaters. And so on…

Anyway, here is a small list of top manufacturers and brands: Top Space Heater Manufacturers and Brands.

And also a set of customer reviews on the several types of space heaters (provided by Amazon.com customers): Customer Reviews

The cheapest space heaters

There are many inexpensive electric, natural gas, propane or kerosene space heaters.

Ceramic heaters and fan radiant heaters, for instance, are typically very inexpensive. They are a good source of supplemental and occasional heating, and many models are sold at prices ranging from $20 to $50.

But you should ask yourself if the cheapest units respond to your goals. That’s not just a question of quality and of cheap becoming expensive. The most inexpensive space heaters can have a good performance for the specific goals to which they are designed, but may not respond to what you need.

If you want to heat an entire room, with a comfortable temperature, you will need more than a cheap fan ceramic heater. You may need an oil-filled space heater, that will cost you two or three times the price of an infrared ceramic heater. But if you need or want to heat your guest room quickly, you may not want an oil-filled heater, but perhaps an electric panel heater.

And if you want a heater to heat your entire living room, and the adjacent spaces, you will need more than a common space heater. And that may cost you $1,000 or $2,000, depending on the exact type of heater (see Wall Gas vented heater/furnace).

The best heating solutions with space heaters

If you are building a new home or intend to renovate your existing home in your near future plans, the best heating solution in cold or even moderate climates begins with very high levels of insulation and air sealing. That allows lower needs, smaller heating systems, higher energy savings and opens the way to more uses of space heaters.

If you have a central heating system, and want to get lower energy bills, you may buy a zoning control panel and thermostats and dampers (for furnaces and other air-furnace systems) or valves (for hot-water systems) and install a system to get separated heating zones (see: Zone Heating and Cooling). Or, alternatively, you may use space heaters to supplement your central heating system: in that case, you don’t have to buy the dampers, valves, etc., but just to lower the temperature of your heating system to a convenient minimum, and use space heaters to get higher and more comfortable temperatures in selected areas of the house.

If your home is properly air-sealed and insulated you may use space heaters instead of central systems, in moderate climates… In colder climates, you may use a powerful wall vented gas-heater to heat the core of the home, and supplement it by space heaters – a strategy that also requires small or relatively small buildings with very high levels of insulation and air sealing all over their envelope.

The most environmentally-friendly space heaters

Space heaters can be an environmentally-friendly solution. They can provide energy savings and energy-efficiency. They can lower your heating bills, by strategies like those mentioned above. Central heating systems are expensive to install and can involve high running costs, making some solutions based on space heaters environmentally-friendly.

But be aware. Reality can also be very different from what it seems. Space heaters have high running costs for extended uses, and electricity (and electric space heaters) isn’t the clean source of energy that many people think it is (only a small fraction of it comes from renewable sources; most of it comes from power plants running on coal and other fossil-fuels)…

In other words: the most energy-efficient space heaters (some ceramic heaters, some oil-filled heaters…) or even electric panel heaters and other more energy-demanding heaters can be a good environmental solution; but only for short or infrequent periods of use (for some few days during the year, in mild climates), or as a source of supplemental heating in strategies involving energy-savings… For more extensive uses, or for larger needs, take a look at some gas space heating solutions, based on wall vented gas heaters/furnaces (or if possible, consider passive heating techniques, based on proper landscape and exposure of the building to the sun, proper layout of the rooms and proper size of the glazing surface, etc).

The best resources on heaters

Here is a small list of good resources on space heaters:

General Information on small heaters:

Madison Gas and Electric: Space Heaters
Energy Savers.gov Portable Small Heaters or
The right space heater Missouri Department Division of Energy
Energy efficient space heaters

Safety Guides: Honeywell Safety Matters and Masterdist

Video on Small Heaters: CBSNews Video

Storage heating in USA: Steffes.com

Associations and Organizations: Electric Storage Association, UL (Underwriters Laboratory), Intertek, National Electrical Manufacturer's Association (NEMA), Canadian Standards Association

Calculator: Sust-it Heater Energy CalculatorIf you know a good resource on heaters that should be listed here, please let us know by email (see Home Page footer).