The Patio Expert Pages

A typical fireplace contains a 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 be taken into account that aside from the hearth and mantel, fireplace surrounds are also valuable design features. As a matter of fact, if surrounds are properly decorated with design oriented fire resistant materials, chances are, your surrounds would become the focal decorative feature of your fireplace.

Traditional fireplace surrounds are made from hand carved wood. However, in these modern times, contemporary non-porous and fire resistant materials are put in place of wood such as bricks, tiles, marbles and limestone. These pieces are more preferred by many homeowners because they are safer to use, and they are also highly ornamental. Nonetheless, they are inexpensive as their natural appeal need no further design works to highlight their features, unlike wood which needs to be hand carved in order to look appealing.

In order to update the aesthetics of your fireplace, you could simply start your project with your fireplace surrounds. There are various design ideas that you could do to make use of any of the aforementioned materials. If you want a rustic looking fireplace, consider using limestone for your surrounds as this natural stone product complements earth tone furniture pieces that could induce a country vibe in your space. To match your European living space, donning your surrounds with marbles can accentuate the European appeal of your living area; marble surrounds have an elegant flare in them that complements well with darker tones.

If you have a traditional fireplace that holds both the surrounds and mantel, which is more commonly referred to as fireplace mantel surrounds, the materials that works well with it are bricks. There fired color of bricks will leave a classic look on your fireplace, and could also become your inspiration for the overall interior design of your living space. Likewise, the alternating courses of the headers and stretchers often produced when bricks are stacked together mimics the grandiosity of well known structures around the world such as Germany's Chile house or the Thornbury Castle in England; hence, when you use these on your surrounds it is as if you have your own famous landmark inside your home. However, if you want to skip on classical designs and would like to have a contemporary vibe inside your living space, just paint your brick surrounds with a dark tone that would complement the color scheme of your living room.

Similar to bricks, tiles are also perfect materials to achieve softer looking fireplace mantel surrounds. 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 lack the patience and creativity to put tiles together, you can have your tile surrounds digitally customized for you; this technique uses digital manipulation over the tile to create certain images or murals, but this could cost you an arm and a leg so better be prepared with your money if you want to have this type of tile surrounds. Tiles have a wide range of design possibilities, all you have to do is to be creative and imaginative enough in order to translate these possibilities onto your own surrounds.

Meanwhile, if you're living in the city and would like to have your own fire feature that requires little design updates, the faux electric fireplace would work well for you. 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 furnishings are also equipped with mantel and surrounds which you accentuate with glass panels. 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.