Real Estate, Finance and Home Articles of Interest

A traditional gas or wood burning fireplace is composed of hearth, mantel and surrounds. More often than not, homeowners tend to accentuate the hearth and mantel believing that surrounds are not as equally important as these two when it comes to decorative capabilities. However, it must also be considered that fireplace surrounds have the same design capacity as the hearth and mantel. If properly constructed with fire resistant materials, chances are, your surrounds could turn as the major decorative feature of your fireplace.

Fireplace surrounds of traditional wood and gas burning fireplace were usually constructed from hand carved wood. However, modern materials that are non-porous and fire resistant are now used as alternatives such as bricks, tiles, marbles and limestone. Many homeowners regard these materials as more safer to use than wood and they are also highly ornamental. Nonetheless, they are way cheaper than wood materials because their natural aesthetics need no further intricacies to highlight their appeal, unlike wood which is laborious to make as it requires detailed hand-carvings which could take longer time to finish.

If you want to update the appearance of your fireplace, you can simply start doing so by changing your fireplace surrounds. There's a whole range of design ideas that you can do with the use of the abovementioned natural stone products. To have a rustic looking fireplace, utilizing limestone surrounds can do the trick for you; such natural stone goes well with furnishings that are earth in tone, and if the design is appropriately applied you can definitely gain a space that is rustically country in appeal. If your house is European inspired, you could further highlight this feature by using marble surrounds that are truly sophisticated especially if they are of darker tones.

If you have fireplace mantel surrounds, which is the combination of surrounds and mantel, the best materials to use to update its look are bricks. As bricks usually have a fired color in them, incorporating them as your mantel surrounds could surely induce a classic look on your fireplace, which in turn could become the jumpstart point for your overall interior design. Similarly, the alternating courses of headers and stretchers that are often achieved by stacking bricks on top of each other are resonant of the beautiful and popular brick structures like the Chile house in Germany and the Thorbury Castle in England; so, if you use brick surrounds it would be like having your own famous brick landmark inside the comfort of your home. If you're not into classical design though and would like to have a contemporary brick surrounds instead, what you can do is to paint the bricks with a darker hue that is of the same color family as your living room walls.

To give your fireplace mantel surrounds a softer feature, the best materials to use are tiles. By combining mosaic glass tiles or pebble tiles into an image or pattern, you could surely make your surrounds appear more representative of your personality. If you have enough funds laid out for your fireplace design though, you can opt for digital tile surrounds wherein printing techniques and digital manipulation would be used on the tiles to create a customized image or murals. To simply put it, the design possibilities for tiles are limitless, you only have to think out of the box in order to incorporate them on your surrounds.

Meanwhile, if you're living in an urban area which won't permit you to use traditional gas or wood burning fireplace, a quick fix for this issue is the faux electric fireplace. What's really good about this fireplace is that it is easily detachable, which allows you to transfer it from one place to another. Some electric fireplace fixtures are adorned with mantel and surrounds which you could also replace and redecorate like a traditional fireplace. Definitely, with the design options you have for your surrounds and your fireplace in general, you have all the reasons to love your fireplace even more.

Changing the materials you use for your fireplace surrounds or fireplace mantle surrounds could significantly transform your fireplace as the focal decorative feature of your home. Natural stone products like bricks, marbles, tiles and limestone could do wonders for the aesthetics of traditional wood or gas burning fireplace. If you use a faux electric fireplace, the best thing to do to update its look is by changing its surrounds with glass panel which could improve the appearance of simulated fire.