日本の家屋は冬の寒さよりも夏の蒸暑さを回避するように設計されていたので断熱性、気密性に乏しかった。よってヨーロッパと異なり、日本では囲炉裏、こたつ、火鉢などを使った局所暖房が多かった。囲炉裏は暖房、炊事、採光の機能を同時に果たした。囲炉裏の燃料は薪が中心だったが、それが不足する地域では藁、籾殻、流木などが使われたり、泥炭や木炭が用いられる地域もあった。都市部では住宅が狭く、燃料調達が困難だった為、囲炉裏は用いられずコタツや火鉢（燃料は木炭や炭団）が使用された。
Since houses in Japan were designed to evade the heat and humidity in summer rather than the coldness in winter, they were poor at adiathermancy and airtightness. Thus unlike Europe, in Japan there are a lot of partial heaters such as irori fireplace, kotatsu table heater and brazier. Irori played a role of a heater, an oven and a light altogether. The fuel of irori was mainly bundles of wood, and in some places where such things were scarce, people used straws, chaffs, and driftwoods, or even peat and charcoal. In urban area, the houses were narrow and it was hard to obtain sufficient amount of fuel, so kotatsu and brazier were used instead (fuel was charcoal and cut ash) instead of irori.
