How much does it cost to run an electric fireplace per hour?
With the heater on full, virtually every electric fireplace draws about 1,500 watts — 1.5 kilowatt-hours per hour — so multiply 1.5 by the per-kWh rate on your power bill and that's your ceiling cost. With the heat off and just the flame effect running, the draw drops to roughly what a couple of light bulbs use.
Why they're all about 1,500 watts
Electric fireplaces are built to plug into a standard household circuit, which caps the heater around 1,500 watts — about 5,000 BTU, enough supplemental warmth for roughly 400 square feet. That's true of the Dimplex IgniteXL Bold 50 in our showroom, and it's true of nearly everything else on the market, whatever the box art implies. The practical upside is that your worst-case hourly cost is easy to pin down, because the appliance can't draw more than that. And it rarely draws it for long — the thermostat cycles the element on and off, so an evening of "running the fireplace" is usually well under an evening of full draw.
The honest comparison
Hour for hour, an electric fireplace costs the same to run as any other 1,500-watt appliance — a hair dryer, a plug-in space heater. As ambiance, that makes it the cheapest flame in the house, especially in flame-only mode. As a primary heater, electric resistance is an expensive way to make BTUs, and 5,000 of them won't carry a great room through a mountain January. We sell the Dimplex on what it genuinely is — the most convincing electric flame on the market, perfect for a bedroom, a den, or anywhere gas can't reasonably go — not as a heating plan.
One thing it will never do
When the power goes out, an electric fireplace is a black rectangle. WNC learned that the hard way during Helene's multi-day outages — the homes that stayed warm had a working wood or gas hearth. If outage heat is part of why you want a fireplace, let's talk gas or wood instead. If it's purely about mood and a warm glow in one room, electric is hard to beat for the money. Call (828) 545-0525 or come see all three burning at the Asheville showroom.
How we can help
Related questions
- Will an electric fireplace noticeably raise my electric bill?
- Does running an electric fireplace on flame-only mode without heat cost much?
- How much does an electric fireplace cost?
- Are electric fireplaces worth buying, or a waste of money?
- What's the cheapest type of fireplace to run?
- How much does a gas fireplace cost installed?
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