How to Transform a Room With a Fireplace

If you want to transform a room’s ambiance and aesthetic, a fireplace is a great feature to install. You must be sure to carefully incorporate your fireplace into your home’s décor, however. Pay attention to these fireplace details, and you’ll really change the look and feel of the room while ensuring that your fireplace fits your aesthetic.

Choose the Right Type of Fireplace

Make sure you choose the right type of fireplace. The fireplace should match the décor in the rest of your home, including the atmosphere of other rooms. If there’s not some continuity, the fireplace and room that it’s in will ultimately feel disjointed from the rest of your house.

What kind of fireplace is right for your home will depend on what’s already in the rest of your house. A traditional fireplace has a few components that should go with the general aesthetic of the rest of your house. These include:

• The hearth, which extends out beyond the fireplace itself
• The mantel, which is a decorative piece that goes on top
• The chimney, which protects nearby combustible materials from heat

A fireplace’s chimney may or may not be visible from indoors, depending on the fireplace’s design. If it is visible inside your home, its composition is important for aesthetic purposes as well as practical ones.

Hearth and chimney components need to be made from a fireproof material because they absorb heat. Even among non-combustible materials, though, you have several design options. Bricks can create a lofty feel, while stones are a bit more rustic. Tile is available in many colors if you want something that matches the walls. Choose whichever color or material you already have in other rooms.

Create an Accent Wall

To further highlight the area where the fireplace is, you can turn the wall where the fireplace is located into an accent wall.

An accent wall is simply a wall that looks different than the other walls in a room. While you can create an accent wall by having the wall be a different material than the rest of the walls, you don’t have to go to this extent. An easy way to create an accent wall is to paint the wall a distinct color.

With your fireplace against an accent wall, this part of the room will become a natural focal point that draws people’s eyes. The accent wall will essentially serve as a backdrop for the main feature of the room — its new fireplace.

Hang a Large Piece of Artwork

Above the fireplace’s mantel is the ideal place to hang a large piece of artwork because people will naturally look here. In particular, this area is well-suited for horizontally oriented images because the space is usually wider than it is tall. Sunset pictures, family photos with a horizontal orientation, and landscape paintings are just a few ideas of what works especially well here.

To determine how wide your artwork should be, measure the width of your fireplace and multiply that figure by 0.57. For example, a piece of artwork that measures about 55 inches wide would look good above a fireplace that was 8 feet (or 96 inches) wide.

Moreover, the artwork over a fireplace can be incorporated into an assemblage that goes together. You can hang complementary pieces to the left and right of the fireplace along the accent wall.

Place Small Objects on the Mantel

A mantel can hold many different decorations. For instance, people put everything from books and clocks to vases and candlesticks on their fireplaces’ mantels. In many cases, a combination of different items can create an elegant look.

If you have a major piece of artwork above your fireplace, you don’t want to put large or tall objects on the mantel because they could cover part of the artwork. A few smaller items can be showcased on the mantel nicely, though.

If you want a fireplace in one of your home’s rooms, contact Alpine Fireplaces.