Best Burn Firewood analyzed 2.97 million home sales across 98 U.S. metros to rank the coziest cities in America using a weighted 4-metric composite model.
NEW BERLIN, WI, UNITED STATES, June 3, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — A new data study ranking the coziest cities in America has identified Bellingham, Washington as the top-scoring metro in the country. The study, titled “Coziest Cities in America 2026,” was conducted by Best Burn Firewood, a kiln-dried firewood producer and national wholesale supplier based in New Berlin, Wisconsin, analyzing 98 U.S. metropolitan areas on a composite cozy score built from four weighted metrics: fireplace prevalence, climate, coffee shop density, and regional demand for firewood.
Bellingham, Washington ranked #1 with a composite score of 8.05 out of 10. Portland, OR ranked #2 (7.54), followed by Eugene, OR (6.87), Salem, OR (6.74), and Seattle, WA (6.39). Five of the top nine ranked cities are located in the Pacific Northwest.
The study was built on 2,972,767 real home sales from Redfin MLS data across 10 years, using fireplace listing rates as a proxy for regional demand for home heating. Fireplace prevalence received the highest weight at 35%, followed by climate at 30% (average cloudy days and rain days per NOAA 1991-2020 Climate Normals), coffee shop density at 20% (shops per 100,000 residents, sourced from WalletHub 2025 and Clever Real Estate), and Google Trends regional search interest for “fireplace” at 15%.
All 217 metros in the initial dataset were screened against two climate filters: a minimum of 100 cloudy days per year and a mean January temperature below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Metros failing either threshold were excluded, leaving 98 qualified cities. All scores were normalized to a 0-10 scale using min-max scaling across the qualified set.
Sioux Falls, SD recorded the highest raw fireplace rate in the study at 39.4%. Anchorage, AK ranked #7 despite lower coffee shop density, driven by 239 cloudy days per year and a 17.4% fireplace rate. Pittsburgh, PA ranked #6 as the highest-scoring non-Pacific city, with 203 cloudy days and a fireplace rate of 21.1%.
“We supply firewood to over 100 Kwik Trip retail locations across Southeast Wisconsin and to wood-fired restaurants throughout the region,” said Tyler Mainka, who co-founded Best Burn Firewood with his twin brother Brady. “This study came out of a genuine question we ask ourselves every season: which parts of the country actually need and use firewood the most? The answer turned out to be more interesting than we expected.”
The full ranked list of 15 cities, interactive map, methodology, and dataset are available at https://bestburnfirewood.com/studies/coziest-cities-in-america/. The raw dataset has been published on data.world and archived with a permanent DOI through Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20431525).
About Best Burn Firewood
Best Burn Firewood is a kiln-dried firewood manufacturer based in New Berlin, Wisconsin. Firewood is kiln-dried at 265 degrees Fahrenheit for 24 to 32 hours to below 15% moisture content. The company holds USDA and WDATCP heat treatment certification (HT# 2019086) and distributes to residential customers, retail chains, campgrounds, and wood-fired restaurants across the Midwest and nationally.
Tyler Mainka
Best Burn Firewood
tyler@bestburnfirewood.com
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