The Best Affordable Garage Heater To Stay Warm This Winter, According To Reviews

In this day and age, most homeowners and renters are looking for creative ways to utilize the space they already have when it's not affordable to consider moving to a larger home. There are plenty of tricks and hacks to maximize storage space, convert guest bedrooms into functional home offices, and add patios outdoors to have extra places to spend your time, but one oft-overlooked section of the home is the garage. If you're reading this while it's cold outside, you might balk at the idea of walking into your garage, as these spaces usually have less insulation and more airflow, making them more susceptible to the outdoor temperature. However, with a simple garage heater, you can keep your garage comfortable through the winter months. 

Garage heaters are a category of unit heaters, which refers to any unit that is created to heat an open space that isn't insulated the way most buildings are. Garage heaters are exactly what they sound like: A large heating system built specifically for garage areas so you can work in your garage at any time of year. Whether you've converted the area into a pottery studio or a place to simply change your own oil once in a while, it's vital to have a garage-specific heater for when it's chilly outside. 

Home Depot has a handful of highly rated garage heaters that range in price from $59.99 to $3,281. Which one you'll want will depend on the amount of space you need to heat. Using a selection method of looking at products with a 4-star rating or higher after at least 20 customer reviews, and considering items that will heat an entire garage effectively, we decided that the best garage heater is the Dimplex Portable Construction Heater. The Dimplex model retails for $99.99 on Home Depot's website and comes with a handle installed to the top so you can easily move it between spaces if necessary. 

Home Depot customers raved about this product in the online reviews, saying that it's small but effective at heating their garages. "We use our (moderately well insulated, detached) double car garage as a home gym," one buyer reported, adding that it "heats well during the winter." Another reviewer said, "This is a very good heater. It is small, yes, but powerful. It is keeping my garage nice and toasty even on the coldest of days." Multiple reviewers noted that after a handful of uses, their heaters stopped working; it's important to remember that the product has a one year warranty for faulty parts, so you should make sure that the heater lasts for multiple uses before the year is up. 

Many of the garage heaters from Home Depot require electrical wiring that will be able to handle a high level of wattage. The Dimplex model states clearly that it needs a NEMA 6-30R receptacle in order to function, so it's important to know if you have the wiring in your garage to support this. You can also use a voltmeter or former heater to see what's possible. It's likely that your garage area could already have high-voltage receptacles, but if not, you should consider the cost and benefits of hiring an electrician to prepare your space for a garage heater. 

If you're unable to make your garage ready for a high voltage device, for whatever reason, there are still options that will provide heat and cover part of your garage so you can comfortably work in it. Some of the Home Depot models with lower voltage, like the NewAir 120v Portable Garage Heater for $59.99, would be a great way to heat part of your garage without blowing out your electric wiring. You could also opt for a simple space heater to use when you're working in your garage, but note that it will be far less effective when there's open air flow, like when the garage door is open. The average two-car garage is 360 square feet, so just be sure that whatever space heater you buy has the capacity to heat the size of your garage. This space heater on Amazon, which is $101 and has over 10,000 five-star reviews, is a great option.