Electric heaters are both practical and versatile, and as such are a great item to have in your home. You don’t have to go too far back in history when the only option for families to keep themselves warm was to burn wood they had placed in the fireplace. Because the fireplace was normally located in the main room of the house, other rooms were not heated meaning there was ultimately an uneven distribution of the heat created. Not only this, but the fuel, or the wood in this instance, quickly burned itself out.

Luckily, today families do not need to fret about such things as finding wood to burn, inhaling (often toxic) smoke and fumes, or, God forbid, their houses burning down. There is a plethora of heating methods for the home and probably the most versatile of them all is the humble electric heater. The trouble for many today though, is how do they know what type of electric heater to buy for their home?

When it comes to electric space heaters, there are quite a few different ones on the market today – ceramic heaters, oil-based heaters, coil heaters, and more recently, the halogen heaters. Ceramic space heaters utilize ceramic heating elements to generate their heat and are probably the safest and most economical of all the electrical heaters on the market. Oil-based heaters use special oil that is securely enclosed in the heater to generate its heat, while coil heaters, which are probably still the most common type around, use coils through which electric current is passed to generate their heat. Halogen heaters utilize, as the name implies, halogen bulbs for their heat generation.

A typical heat range for any type of electrical heater would be in the region of 1400 watts, and this is more than enough to heat the typically-sized room or office. Most heaters on the market today also come with a range of safety wood heaters features including overheat protection and safeguards against electric shock. Additionally, many heaters offer electrical discharge protection which can help prevent accidental fire.

In light of the above, then, what is the best type of heater to buy? Well, ceramic heaters are generally considered safer than the coil heaters and as well as this the ceramic plates are quite big which means once they heat up, they are very good at retaining their heat. They can, therefore, be set at lower temperature ranges and are ideal for slightly larger areas.

Oil-filled radiators are similar to ceramic heaters in the respect of maintaining their heat for longer periods. They are efficient in the sense that they do not have to be switched on constantly and when they do, a relatively short burst of power is enough to keep them heated for hours. They are quiet to run, and very easy to keep clean as there are no working parts as such.

Coil heaters utilize metal coils through which electrical current is passed and it is this electric current that heats up the coils. Heat is generated by the air coming in contact with the coils. The coils are usually behind protective screens, but this type of heater is still accident prone and more dangerous to use than other types of heater.

The new kid on the block insofar as heaters are concerned is the halogen heater. The heating process is very similar to that of a halogen light bulb insomuch as that these heaters actually use the light to stream out heat waves. These heaters heat up very quickly and offer a constant stream of heat.