To create a more realistic fireplace experience, electric fireplaces also typically have a heater installed to allow the user to be able to feel the heat while also enjoying the flames.

Electric fireplaces commonly use one of two types of heater to produce the heat:

• Infrared heating
• Fan forced heating

Infrared heaters can typically be found on the more expensive models of electric fireplace, and use infrared light from a quartz bulb in order to produce heat.

Electric fireplaces that utilize infrared heaters create little or no noise during operation because there are no moving parts.

For more information about infrared electric fireplaces we have a complete guide to them here.

For electric fireplaces that use fan forced heaters to generate the heat, the amount of noise created can be quite different.

In a fan forced heater a blower forces air over a heating element and hot air is blown out into the room. Our electric fireplace stove uses this type of heating arrangement and it can be found used in many different types of electric fireplace.

Electric fireplaces that utilize fan forced heating can produce a lot more noise compared to electric fireplaces that use infrared heaters.

The video below shows the fan forced heater inside our electric fireplace in operation, and will give you can idea of the amount of noise you can expect from an electric fireplace that uses this form of heating.

In summary:

• The use of rotating mirrors and lights to create the flame effects is common across all types of electric fireplace, but typically doesn’t make too much noise to be noticeable because the mirrors rotate quite slowly.

• Electric fireplaces are commonly found with either an infrared heater or fan heater. Fan forced heaters can make much more noise compared to infrared heaters because of the increased number of moving parts. The speed at which the blowers rotate inside a fan heater creates the increased noise.