Ask most people where fire pits belong and they will say somewhere cold. Long winters, short summers, a fire to stretch the season. We counted every fire feature in the YardShare archive to check, and the archive says the opposite.
We reviewed all 2,472 published yards on YardShare and counted the ones whose owners tagged a fire pit or an outdoor fireplace, the same feature tags behind our fire pit ideas and outdoor fireplace ideas pages. Then we looked at where those yards are, by climate zone and by state. The pattern is not the one we expected.
The headline numbers
- Yards analyzed: 2,472 published yards, the full archive, no sampling
- Yards with a fire feature: 146, or 5.9% of the archive
- Fire pits: 110 yards. Outdoor fireplaces: 49 yards. 13 yards have both
- Warmest pattern: zone 9 yards have a fire feature 9.7% of the time, roughly double zones 6 to 8
- Leading state: California, 35 fire yards, 11.2% of its yards in the archive
Finding 1: warm zones build more fire features, not fewer
To compare climates fairly, each yard's zone comes from its ZIP code using the 2023 USDA hardiness map, the same lookup behind our Learn zone pages. That covers 1,802 of the 2,472 yards, including 102 of the 146 fire yards. The rest are mostly yards outside the US or yards with no usable ZIP code, and they are left out of the zone table rather than guessed.
| 2023 USDA zone | Yards | With a fire feature | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zone 4 | 17 | 1 | 5.9% |
| Zone 5 | 129 | 6 | 4.7% |
| Zone 6 | 363 | 17 | 4.7% |
| Zone 7 | 328 | 14 | 4.3% |
| Zone 8 | 361 | 13 | 3.6% |
| Zone 9 | 393 | 38 | 9.7% |
| Zone 10 | 190 | 13 | 6.8% |
Zone 9 covers most of California's valleys and coast, plus parts of Florida, Texas, and Arizona. Winters there are mild, and that is exactly the point: a fire feature in zone 9 is not survival equipment. It is evening equipment. Owners there get long outdoor seasons, and a fire pit or fireplace turns cool evenings into the best part of them, most of the year. In colder zones the outdoor season is shorter, patios sit under snow for months, and fewer owners build a feature they can only use in a narrow window.
Finding 2: California is the center of gravity
| State | Yards | With a fire feature | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | 313 | 35 | 11.2% |
| North Carolina | 70 | 7 | 10.0% |
| New York | 71 | 7 | 9.9% |
| Florida | 158 | 5 | 3.2% |
| Texas | 146 | 4 | 2.7% |
California leads on both count and rate, which fits the zone story: most California yards in the archive sit in zones 9 and 10. Florida is the interesting exception. It is warm and large in the archive, but its fire rate is low, a reminder that this is about outdoor-living habits, not just temperature. Where evenings stay hot and humid, a fire is a harder sell.
Finding 3: fire is part of a built gathering zone
Fire features rarely sit alone in a lawn. Of the 146 fire yards, 59 also have stone work, 58 have hardscape, and 54 each have walkways and landscape lighting. The pattern reads like a recipe: a hard surface to gather on, stone to build with, light to see by, and a fire in the middle. If you are planning one, plan the ring around it too.
Real yards doing it
Our Fairfield Home & Garden in Delaware pairs its fire feature with a country cottage garden, across 34 photos and one of the longest owner write-ups in the archive.
Barb's Backyard in Florida is the zone 9 pattern in one yard: 63 photos of a barren new-build backyard turned into a planted outdoor room with fire at the center.
Upscale Poolscape in Arizona, zone 10, puts fire next to water, the classic desert-evening pairing. Two more worth a look: Fire Ring Garden in Ohio, a zone 5 yard built around its fire ring, and Outdoor kitchen, Pergola & Paver Patio in Illinois, where the owner writes, in the yard's own photo notes, about relaxing in the outdoor living area and making a fire.
How we counted, and the honest limits
Counts come from the full published archive on November 9, 2026: 2,472 yards. A yard counts as a fire yard when its owner selected the fire pit or outdoor fireplace feature tag, the same tags that build the browse pages linked above. Zones come from each yard's ZIP code on the 2023 USDA map basis, one consistent basis throughout. Owners also pick their own zone tags on their yards, and those often run about a zone colder than the ZIP map, so we did not mix the two. Photo depth varies: 80 of the 146 fire yards have photos, 1,414 photos in all, and owner write-ups are short on many yards, which is why this story leans on counts and photos rather than long quotes. This is a snapshot of what real people built and shared on one site, not a survey of all homeowners, and we would rather say that plainly than dress it up.
Want to browse the pool yourself? Start with fire pit ideas from real yards or outdoor fireplace ideas, and check your own zone with the ZIP lookup on our hardiness zones hub.