“But your home is small.”
If people have said this when you’ve expressed how cold your apartment is, it might’ve frustrated you because sometimes carpets and thick curtains just don’t help enough to keep the chilly winters at bay.
What’s the best way to heat your small apartment?
A small space heater can be just what you need.
Different models can warm up your home in various ways, providing a portable and easy way to beat the cold outside.
Best of all, they don’t have to cost a lot of money.
Read on to discover the most effective small space heaters available on the market right now.
We’ll start with the one that ticks all the right boxes: The Lasko Ceramic Portable Heater.
Best Small Space Heater & Recommendations For 2019
Winner: Lasko Ceramic Portable Heater
At first glance, this small space heater looks good with its stylish black design.
It’s also nice and small, coming in at a height of just nine inches and a width of just seven inches.
It weighs approximately three pounds, which makes it convenient for setting up in tiny rooms in your apartment. It’s also perfect for placing on a counter or desk.
With its 1500-watt ceramic heating element, this best small portable heater is perfect for your home’s heating requirements.
Benefits
- It’s got an adjustable thermostat that has three settings: “high heat”, “low heat”, and “fan.”
- It’s got many safety features. The Lasko heater protects against overheating, which is great if you forget to switch it off when doing other tasks. It also has an exterior that stays cool, which means that if you touch it when it’s very hot it won’t burn you. This is especially valuable if you have pets or kids.
- It doesn’t require any installation or assembly. You can pull it out of the box and start using it right away, simply by plugging it into a wall outlet.
Drawbacks
- This heater is small and convenient, but not suitable for large rooms. It’s worth bearing in mind that sitting in front of it within a distance of at least two or three feet will ensure you feel its warmth. So, it works well in small rooms.
Extra features
- To make it even easier to move the space heater around to different rooms in your apartment, the Lasko heater comes with a carry handle.
Buying advice
This Lasko space heater costs about $30. If you have a small apartment, it will be the perfect way to warm it up.
It will also save heat because you’ll use it to warm you up by sitting closer to it, instead of letting heat in other rooms go to waste. It’s therefore the best heater for small room heating requirements.
Runner Up: Andily Space Heater
This ceramic space heater is a little smaller than the Lasko one, coming in with a width of 4.74 inches and a height of 8.3 inches.
It’s got three temperature modes: high heat (1500 watt), low heat (750 watt), and fan.
It weighs around three pounds, so it’s extremely lightweight.
Benefits
- It has an automatic overheating system that will shut off the heater if parts of it are overheating.
- It also has a tip-over switch. If the heater is knocked into and falls over, such as if a pet or child bumps it, it will stop working, thus making it the safest small space heater that you can find.
- It works without you having to do anything. If you keep it on, the heater will reach a temperature after which it will turn off. But then, when the room cools down, the heater will warm up again.
- It’s suitable for flat surfaces, but this heater can be placed on a carpet.
Drawbacks
- It can be a bit too noisy, especially if you’re in a quiet, small room.
Extra features
- It comes fully assembled with a carrying handle so you can move it around easily.
Buying advice
It costs about $25 but it’s a powerful product that will heat up your small living space and it’s perfect for heating up your feet during the cold winter.
Alternative 1: Comfort Zone Oscillating Space Heater
This is an oscillating ceramic space heater that uses a fan to circulate heat evenly throughout the room.
It’s a thin model that can easily fit into small spaces when stored away, and can easily be carried because it weighs around seven pounds, with a height of 23 inches and a width of eight inches.
It has a low heat setting (800W), a medium heat setting (1000 W), and a high heat setting (1500W).
Benefits
- It’s got a digital thermostat that prevents overheating from occurring.
- It’s got an eight-hour timer that can be programmed in advance so you don’t have to worry about getting cold later.
- It’s an energy-saving, eco-friendly small space heater that adjusts its heat output so that you save money on your electrical bills.
Drawbacks
- The cord is only six inches long, which can be frustrating because it has to be plugged into an outlet. But with its benefits and features, it can be considered the best small electric heater.
Extra features
- The heater has a remote control that can work from across the room, making it easy to warm up your home without a hassle. Smart touches like this can make a good heater become the best small space heater because of the greater convenience they offer you.
- This space heater looks tall and sleek, almost like a speaker.
- It has a tip-over feature for safety, so it’s right up there with the safest small space heater models.
Buying advice
This space heater costs around $70, which is substantially more expensive than previously-mentioned space heaters, but if its perks appeal to you, then it’s worth getting.
Alternative 2: Dr. Infrared Portable Space Heater
This infrared space heater looks like a sound system, with its black and wooden design.
It’s an energy-saving heater that weighs 24 pounds, with a height of 11 inches and a width of 16 inches.
Benefits
- It makes use of a heating system that can give you up to 60 percent more heat than other small space heaters. This is because it has a blower that can warm up a 3.5 m/s room by 250 degrees Fahrenheit, whereas other heaters will only reach 155 degrees Fahrenheit at 2.2 m/s.
- The Dr. Infrared heater warms up the objects in your room instead of the air, which means that it won’t dry out your indoor air like other heaters.
Drawbacks
- Although this model comes with a remote, you have to use the remote and power button in order to start the heater. But, you can’t turn it off with just the remote, which can make this model feel a bit less user-friendly.
Extra features
- It has a 72-inch long cord so you can reach lots of places in your apartment.
- There are lots of different settings you can use that really make the heater versatile. There are three settings: auto, low (1000w) and high (1500w). The auto mode enables you to set a temperature you want, anything between 50 and 86 degrees Fahrenheit. Then it selects between the two settings depending on the temperature in the room. Or, you can manually set the heater.
Buying advice
The Dr. Infrared Portable Space Heater costs $109.99, and it’s best for you if you have a larger room that you want to warm up effectively.
With so many perks to its name, as well as its appearance, it’s one of the best small portable heater models.
Alternative 3 - Best Space Heater For Small Room: Honeywell Slim Ceramic Tower Heater
This small space heater looks like a stylish speaker, with its all-black design and smooth curves.
It has a height of 23 inches and a width of 8.7 inches, and only weighs 4.5 pounds.
It’s long and sleek so it’ll fit in a small apartment without looking like a heater at all.
It will blend into your surroundings easily, which is a nice perk for small apartments.
Benefits
- This ceramic heater is really easy to use with digital controls for two heat settings – low (750w) and high (1500w).
- You can program the thermostat for when you’ll need heat.
- It has many safety features, such as a shut-down feature if you move it when it’s on, which makes it one of the safest small space heater models to buy.
Drawbacks
- One of the drawbacks of this space heater is that, despite it’s nice perks, it doesn’t have a remote control. However, it’s one of the best space heater for small room models on the market.
Extra features
- The Honeywell Slim Ceramic Tower Heater has an oscillator that helps to distribute heat effectively around the room. However, you can also focus it on one spot.
Buying advice
You can get a brand new Honeywell Slim Ceramic Tower for about $70.
Space Heaters: Infrared vs. Ceramic vs. Fan
As you can see from the buying guide above, there are three main types of space heaters: infrared, ceramic, and fan.
Let’s take a look at their differences.
| Infrared Space Heater | Ceramic Space Heater | Fan Space Heater | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How they work | These work by heating up whatever’s in front of them, such as a wall or person, thanks to their infrared rays that move in a straight line. | These focus on warming up the air inside the room and circulating it with their heating system. | These models work by making use of a fan to circulate air over a heating element. |
| Benefits | Since they target specific areas in a room, infrared heaters are the most energy-efficient space heater. They use 100 percent of the heat that they produce so that nothing goes to waste. | Since they focus on heating up indoor air, they are more efficient when it comes to heating up larger areas in the home. | Since they focus on heating up indoor air, they are more efficient when it comes to heating up larger areas in the home. |
| Best for its: | Effort to save you heat and money on your electric bill! | Safety features. They come with a lower risk of burns because their exterior casing stays cool to the touch, thus making ceramic space heaters safe around pets and kids. | Lower risk of overheating. This is because fan heaters produce heat and quickly move it away from the heater and into the air. |
Can you leave a space heater on all night?
While you might think that using a space heater to warm up your bedroom at night is a good idea, if you fall asleep it can be dangerous because it’s a fire hazard. This is why you should ensure that you don’t put it next to any flammable materials.
That said, there are some instances in which keeping a space heater on at night could be safe. This is why it’s important to choose a model that has good safety features.
The most important ones include the following:
- An automatic shut-off feature. This is a feature that makes the heater stop working once it reaches a temperature that’s too high, so even if you fall asleep while it’s on, it won’t be a fire hazard.
- A tip-over protection feature. This is also important to look for when purchasing a small space heater for your apartment. It basically means that if the heater gets bumped into, it will stop working. Since the best small space heaters for small apartments are lightweight, this is an important and common feature to keep them safe and prevent fires.
It’s also important to realize that sometimes, despite your best efforts, something can still go wrong and your space heater could cause a fire.
That’s why it’s probably best never to leave any space heater (or other appliance, as a matter of fact) running throughout the night.
And, if you want to avoid getting dry indoor air that can lead to a stuffy nose and irritated throat, you probably want to avoid using a space heater all night long as it can have a drying effect.
What space heater gives off the most heat?
To answer the question of what space heater will give off the most heat, we need to look at the three types of space heaters. These are radiant, convection, and combination heaters.
- Radiant space heaters heat people and objects in the room, instead of the air. An example is infrared space heaters.
- Convection space heaters heat up the air inside the room instead of people or objects. They are considered to be the most efficient, as The Spruce reports. Ceramic space heaters are convection heaters.
- Combination heaters are, as their name suggests, a combination of radiant and convection heaters. They use a fan to circulate the heat throughout a room, so fan space heaters are an example.
Convection heaters seem to be the type of space heater that gives off the most heat.
They do this by providing sustained heat in a room, and even larger areas, over a long time, whereas radiant heaters warm up smaller spaces.
An example of a convection small space heater that’s the best heater for a small room is the Lasko Ceramic heater.
Do space heaters save money?
Space heaters can save you money because the best ones, such as those featured in this article’s buying guide, tend to be less expensive than regular heaters.
In addition, since a space heater doesn’t warm up a large home like central heating would, you end up using just as much heat as you need to stay warm. You will save money by not warming up rooms of the home where you’re not currently residing.
The best small space heaters have been found to be less expensive for you to use if you want to heat one room or supplement inadequate heating in a room of the house, as Energy reports.
By choosing an eco-friendly space heater, such as the Comfort Zone Oscillating Space Heater, you can also save on your electric bill.
Is it cheaper to run a space heater or central heat?
Space heaters are growing in popularity largely due to how they help people save money and they’re definitely cheaper than investing in a central heating system for your home.
There’s no doubt that space heaters can save money when compared to central heating – purely because they’re only used to warm up one room at a time, as mentioned earlier. This means that you use the heat that you need to be warm, instead of lots of heat that goes to waste.
But just how much money can they save you when compared to a central heating system?
Let’s compare it to other types of heat. A heat pump, running at 15,000 watts for an hour will cost you $1.50. A space heater, that only has 1,500 watts, will cost you $0.15 for the same amount of time, as Oasis Energy reports.
What about a gas furnace?
This usually comes to $0.12 cents per kilowatt-hour, but the catch is that gas furnaces are expensive to buy – and much more expensive than a space heater.
You’re looking at a price of around $3,000 to $5,000 for a gas furnace that’s energy-efficient, as Stack Heating reports.
It’s worth noting that if you’re using a gas furnace to heat your entire home, this will cost 43 percent less when compared to using electric space heaters to heat the same area, according to the Energy Department (via Minnesota Chamber Of Commerce Energy Smart)
In addition, you can also save more money by bearing in mind that your home needs to be properly insulated to encourage greater warmth.
If you have air leaks or drafty doors, you will be losing out on heat and paying more money, even if you’re using an energy-efficient space heater.
Which is more efficient space heater or central heat?
Your home’s central heating is usually one part of a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system. It can be used to heat your entire apartment or just one room, and these systems are usually powered by a furnace.
The best small space heater is more portable, which is appealing, especially in a small apartment.
However, there’s no clear “yes” or “no” answer to the above question.
It really depends on your heating needs. A space heater that you can carry around your home is more efficient than a central heating system if you’re only using it to warm up one or two rooms in your home.
If you want to warm up your entire apartment with the same system, then a central heating system will work much more efficiently, as Star Energy Partners explains.
That said, a central heating system might be OTT for a small living space.
Conclusion
Choosing the best small space heater can be very beneficial to you. It can save you money on your electric bill, it can warm up your small apartment, and it can also give you a portable option.
By learning more about space heaters and knowing which ones are the best on the market, you can find a space heater for your specific needs. And, it definitely helps to choose one that has a few extra perks to warm you up during the cold months!
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