The right fire pit for your garden comes down to three decisions, not one: how much space you have, whether you want to cook on it or simply sit around it, and how much maintenance you are prepared to do. A hexagonal Corten bowl at £495 solves a different problem to an £789.50 plancha-grill fire pit or a £499 gas table, even though all three sit in roughly the same price band. Get the type wrong and it becomes furniture you stop using by October. Get it right and it changes how you use the garden for the rest of the year.
- Want to cook on it most weekends? BonFeu Biza Open, £789.50, 80cm plancha surface
- Want a sculptural feature piece? Adezz Forma, £495, hexagonal Corten bowl
- Want the lowest maintenance option? Happy Cocooning Estate Round 76, £499, gas table
What actually decides the right fire pit for your garden
These narrow the field faster than browsing by price. How big is the space, measured in the clear ground around it, not the patio as a whole; a fire pit needs at least 1 metre of clearance on every side from fences, sheds and overhanging branches. Do you want to cook on it or just sit around it; a plancha-grill fire pit and a decorative bowl are built for different evenings. How much upkeep will you actually do; a raw steel bowl asks more of you in year one than a gas table does in year five.
None of these questions has a right answer in the abstract. They only have a right answer for your garden.
Fire pit bowl, fire table, or one built for cooking: matching type to how you use it
If cooking is the point, not an afterthought, look at a piece built for it. The BonFeu Biza Open at £789.50 pairs an 80cm plancha cooking surface with a wood-burning fire underneath, in Corten or Black steel, and has wood storage built into the base so logs are not stacked on the patio. It is the pick for the household that grills most weekends rather than the one that lights a fire twice a season.
If the fire itself is the feature, a sculptural bowl earns its keep. The Adezz Forma at £495 is a six-sided Corten bowl with a built-in air intake at the base for a cleaner, more efficient burn than an open bowl gets, and it reads as a design object even when unlit. At 26kg it is light enough to reposition without help, which a cast-iron equivalent rarely is, and it carries a 5-year manufacturer guarantee.
If low maintenance matters more than either of those, gas wins. The Happy Cocooning Estate Round 76 at £499 is a 76cm composite-stone table rated at 13.5 kW, on for the evening in seconds and off in seconds, with no ash, no smoke, and no firewood to store. The trade-off: it needs a UK 30 mbar propane regulator and hose, sold separately, and it is a fixed piece of furniture rather than something you carry to a different corner of the lawn.
How much space you actually need
A fire table like the Estate Round 76 has a 76cm footprint, small enough for a paved courtyard or a compact patio that could not accommodate a full-size bowl and its seating circle. The Adezz Forma's 1154 x 1000mm footprint (including its base) wants roughly the same clearance as a large garden table. The BonFeu Biza Open, built for cooking as much as warmth, wants space for people to stand and work around it, not just sit, so treat it as you would an outdoor kitchen zone rather than a fire pit.
Wood, gas or bioethanol: matching fuel to your garden
Wood gives the crackle and the smoke most people picture when they think "fire pit", at the cost of ash to clear and logs to store. Gas lights instantly, needs no fuel storage, and produces no ash, but ties the piece to wherever the regulator and bottle live and adds a genuine running cost per evening. Bioethanol sits between the two: no smoke, no ash, and portable, but the most expensive fuel per hour of the three. We cover the full comparison, including real running-cost numbers, in our gas versus wood-burning fire pit guide; the short version is that the right fuel follows from how often you will actually light it, not which one sounds most appealing in the showroom.
Corten steel and the honest maintenance trade-off
Corten is the material behind both the Adezz Forma and the BonFeu Biza Open, and it deserves an honest account rather than a marketing one. It arrives grey-brown and takes roughly four to five months to develop its full rust-coloured patina, depending on the weather it sees; during that window it can look uneven, which unsettles some buyers who assume something has gone wrong. Nothing has.
The rust layer is the protection, not a defect, and it is why a Corten piece outlasts an ordinary painted-steel one by years. One genuine limitation: Corten is not recommended within 2km of a coastline, where salt air accelerates the weathering past what the protective layer can manage. If your garden backs onto the sea, a coated or stainless finish is the better call.
Fire pit safety and being considerate to neighbours
Keep at least 1 metre clear of fences, sheds, hedges and anything that overhangs, and site the pit so smoke drifts away from your own windows and your neighbours' washing line, not toward them. Check the wind direction before you light, not after. We go into full detail, including what UK law actually says about garden fires and smoke nuisance, in our fire pit safety guide.
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Frequently asked questions
What size fire pit do I need for a small garden?
Start from clearance, not diameter: you need at least 1 metre of clear space on every side, so a 76cm table like the Happy Cocooning Estate Round 76 or a compact bowl under 60cm are the realistic options for a courtyard or small patio.
Do I need planning permission for a fire pit in the UK?
No, a freestanding fire pit does not usually need planning permission, but you are still bound by smoke nuisance rules and should keep it well clear of boundaries and structures.
Is a gas fire pit cheaper to run than a wood-burning one?
It depends on frequency of use rather than fuel price alone; gas has a genuine per-evening running cost via the regulator and bottle, while wood costs less per burn but takes longer to prepare and clear up. See our full fuel comparison for the actual numbers.
Why does my Corten steel fire pit look patchy when it first arrives?
That is the rust patina forming, not a fault. Corten takes roughly four to five months to weather evenly to its full colour, and the process can look uneven partway through.
Whichever type suits your garden, browse the full range in our fire pits collection or, for a deep bowl specifically, our fire pit bowls collection.
