Broken Arrow Outdoor Living for the Holidays: Extending Your Season Into Winter

Broken Arrow’s outdoor living season doesn’t end in September. With the right design and heating strategy, your patio, fireplace, and outdoor living space can be genuinely enjoyable well into December — and on mild winter days, even into January and February. Here’s how to maximize your outdoor space through the holiday season and beyond.

Oklahoma Winters Are More Outdoor-Friendly Than You Think

Broken Arrow winters are genuinely mild by most standards. Average December high temperatures are in the mid-40s to low 50s. January brings the coldest stretches, but daytime highs often reach the 40s or even 50s on clear days. February starts the transition back toward spring-like conditions. This is not Minnesota winter — it’s far more compatible with outdoor living than most people give it credit for, particularly with a fire feature to take the chill off.

The outdoor living season in Broken Arrow, when extended with fire and heat:

• Spring (March–May): ideal conditions
• Summer (June–August): evenings under cover with shade and fans
• Fall (September–November): the best outdoor season in Oklahoma
• Holiday season (December): fully usable with fire and heaters
• Winter (January–February): mild days and evenings with fire; extreme cold events are short in duration

Fire: The Essential Winter Feature

Nothing extends the outdoor living season like fire. An outdoor fireplace or gas fire pit transforms a cold evening from a reason to stay inside into a reason to go outside. The radiant heat from a wood-burning fireplace or gas fire pit warms the surrounding seating area meaningfully, making temperatures in the 30s and low 40s comfortable for people dressed appropriately.

Outdoor Fireplace for Winter Entertaining

A masonry outdoor fireplace is the most dramatic and effective heating source for an outdoor patio. A well-built wood-burning fireplace produces substantial radiant heat from the firebox opening — enough to keep guests in a seating area of 10–15 feet comfortable on mild winter evenings. The visual and atmospheric impact of a real fire in a masonry surround during the holiday season is hard to overstate.

Gas fireplaces offer the same warmth with push-button convenience — particularly appealing during the holidays when you want to focus on guests, not fire management.

Gas Fire Pit for Intimate Winter Gathering

A gas fire pit with a seating wall or surrounding chairs provides 360-degree warmth and a natural gathering point for a smaller group. The intimacy of a fire pit is well-suited to holiday evenings with family — smaller than a party, more personal than a formal dinner, perfectly at home around a fire with warm drinks.

Supplemental Heating: Outdoor Patio Heaters

On nights that are cooler than fire alone can manage, or for covered patio areas where overhead heating is more practical than a ground-level fire feature, outdoor patio heaters fill the gap.

Infrared Overhead Heaters

Electric infrared heaters mounted to the underside of a covered patio structure are the most effective supplemental heating option for covered outdoor spaces. Infrared heaters work by warming surfaces and people directly rather than heating the air — which is inherently lost in an outdoor environment. A 1,500–2,500 watt infrared heater effectively warms a seating area of 8–12 feet beneath it.

If you have a covered patio structure, we can design mounting points and weatherproof electrical circuits for infrared heaters during the initial construction — making it easy to add heaters immediately or at any future point.

Freestanding Propane Patio Heaters

Mushroom-style propane patio heaters are widely available and don’t require electrical connections — they run on standard propane tanks. Less elegant than overhead infrared, but effective for uncovered spaces or areas without existing electrical infrastructure. They’re portable, making them useful for covering different areas of a larger patio depending on where guests are gathering.

Lighting for Holiday Outdoor Entertaining

Holiday season means shorter days — outdoor entertaining often starts in full daylight and transitions to dark earlier than during other seasons. Good outdoor lighting is what makes this transition seamless rather than causing everyone to retreat inside as soon as the sun sets.

String Lights

String lights are the single most transformative outdoor lighting addition for holiday entertaining. Warm white (2700K) string lights overhead create an instantly festive atmosphere that photographs beautifully and feels genuinely special. Run them from the pergola or patio cover to surrounding posts or fence posts, or drape them through a tree canopy adjacent to the patio.

Permanent Outdoor Lighting

Under-cover recessed lighting on dimmers, step lights integrated into seating walls or patio steps, and uplights on trees or plantings create a layered lighting environment that serves the holiday season beautifully without requiring temporary setup every year.

Fire as Light Source

Don’t underestimate the light output of a well-built outdoor fire. A fireplace or fire pit creates warm, dynamic light that extends outward 10–15 feet — enough to illuminate a surrounding seating area meaningfully. Combining fire with overhead string lights or recessed lighting creates the layered atmosphere that makes outdoor holiday gatherings memorable.

Seasonal Decor and the Outdoor Living Space

A covered patio with a fireplace provides natural anchoring points for holiday decor — greenery garlands draped across the mantel, lanterns on the hearth, a wreath on the pergola post, string lights overhead. The built structure of a quality outdoor living space makes holiday decor more intentional and impactful than decorating a bare patio with no architectural framework to work with.

Build the Space Now, Enjoy It This Season

If you’ve been thinking about an outdoor fireplace or covered patio, the fall and early winter are excellent times to get the construction done — outdoor living contractors often have more schedule availability than during the spring and summer rush, and completing the project in fall means you have it for the holiday season and the full spring season that follows.

Call VistaScapes & Design at 918-779-1317 to discuss your outdoor living project. We build throughout Broken Arrow and the Tulsa metro year-round.