Looking to add just the ‘oomph factor’ to your fireplace needs? Trying to revamp and restyle your living room spaces with fireplace built-ins? We have just the right set of varied and implementable ideas to add just the right amount of charisma and style to your living room.
A well-planned and set fireplace doesn’t just give warmth and charisma; it also adds character and personality to your living room. In this article, we will help you discover the ‘vibe and character’ you’re going for and aid you in implementing the same.
The next time your friends come over, just grab a glass of wine and let your fireplace do the talking!
1. The Writer’s Dream
One of the classic and chic ways you can design and develop the theme for your fireplace would be to pick the world of your favorite novels or classics. Choose your pick, the world of Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, the Victorian Classics, or the Shakespearean world of drama. Turn the wand with a ‘swish and a flick’ and add the bookworm energy to your living room.
In addition to setting your dream world in your living room, it helps all you book lovers organize those cluttered sets of books. Not only does the organization add a clean and elegant touch to your room, but it also adds the aroma of intellect.
You can turn this dream into implementation with either wooden, steel, iron, or marble cases, or you can also install customized bookcases for your builtins and have symbols or major lines from and include more than just books, adding stationery items, commemorates from different franchises and framed photographs.
2. The Glorious Touch of Vintage
If you are tired of flashy colors and don’t want to create a spectacle out of your living rooms, then the perfect way to add a touch of elegance and brightness to your fireplaces is to go back to the basics. Bringing back the gold and silver accents might just work wonders for you. The much-needed retro charm you desire can either come from low vintage styles and retro patterns or from going completely antique and vintage.
People use the vintage touch not only to add that luster and vibe to the room but also to re-live their memories. Many of the antiques that you can choose to add to the vintage effect can be your own family heirlooms, generational workmanship, or extremely valuable old memories. This will aid you in keeping in touch with your history, family and create a sense of belonging.
One of the most sustainable attributes of vintage classics in your fireplace built-ins are their durability and workmanship, as when new types of furniture and objects you add might lose their appeal or depreciate in value, these antiques will continue to live on. Hence in addition to their invaluable existence, they also are one of the most practical buying decisions.
3. Mirror Effect – The Art of Symmetry
There exists a certain familiarity and comfort with symmetry, isn’t it? The human brain often finds and searches for a sense of focus to bring everything together, to more or less search for symmetry and alignment. It can provide a sense of balance and creates a visual effect that is soothing to the eyes and provides comfort.
If you’re looking for that sense of balance or symmetry in your living room, then adding a touch of mirror effect to and around your fireplace could be a great go-to move. You can start by aligning the surroundings around the built-ins, including maybe adding a big symmetrical painting or design that goes with your theme. For objects within the built-ins, you can add daily familiar objects that can add to that sense of familiarity, like mirrors, flowers, identical vases, etc. You can easily pick your hues for the themes either neutral or black would go great with the idea of familiarity, and soothing colors can add more comfort and go easy on the eyes, hence a great combination with the symmetry.
4. The Traditional Touch
If you’re not feeling too crazy about trying something unconventional or revamping your fireplaces, you can go ahead and relive the traditional touch and enforce them through your fireplace and natural toned surroundings.
Many people prefer a natural, earthy touch to their fireplace when they think of a traditional touch. It’s not only soothing to the eyes but also provides a familiar, intense as well as homely feeling. This gives them a sense of calmness and rooted feelings.
You can keep the touch minimal with wooden, brown hues and cozy tones around the fireplace and keep low base builts ins where the addition of glass artworks, plants, mirrors, wooden art pieces, as well as some small lantern-like lamps can go well with the vibe you’re going for.
5. The Magic of Wood and Farmhouse Style
If you’re going for a fantasy feel keeping in touch with your love for neutral and soothing tones, then go for high vaulted ceilings, wooden structures around a stone mantel, and soothing mood lights.
This would provide a sense of heart and comfort again, which is an additional touch to its already rustic, mysterious, and warm vibes. You can go for mid-toned or dark wood fireplaces, which can set well with the farmhouse style.
To adorn the surroundings, you need to be aware that the mantle and fireplace are the key focus. Hence a thin or simple mantle will go well with rustic surroundings. This could be enhanced by floating shelves, worn-out brick feel, wooden artworks, and big lantern-like wooden structures. If the low-key nature of this style isn’t your vibe, then you can opt for a dark wood fireplace mantel followed by dark wooden structures(timber) and big houseplants, or you can go with dark black antique-looking structures like horses, war shields, etc.
6. Revival of The Neoclassical Fireplace Built-Ins
If your budget is open and big and your love for classical art, literature, and neoclassical history is even bigger, then this style is the perfect match for your dream theme.
These designs and themes revolve around elegance and sophistication, which add the exact fashionable flair you’re looking for. To start off, make sure your surrounding has aesthetic color palettes and very faded neutrals hence adding the touch of a classical backdrop. You can pair these with preferably a marble-based fireplace or a simple beige and white fireplace. The mantles and the built-ins can be followed with either books, frames, crystal-looking art pieces, or quirky art pieces or paintings. To add a tinge of charm and spark, you can follow these with well-symmetrical placed mirrors of unique designs.
If you’re not going for a contemporary theme but want a traditionally neoclassical look, you can add dark and light-themed hues, followed by a touch of gold-themed art pieces that look antique or rusty. You can also follow these with Regency or Georgian-styled art pieces and small rugs. To add a more aesthetic touch, you can add small yet classical statue pieces.
7. Rocking and Rolling with The Outdoors
Having an outdoor fireplace or an open doors fireplace can be a challenge to style, so imbibing and embracing nature or going with traditional classic approaches can be a great go-to.
When thinking about developing themes for your fireplaces, you can develop a stone or brick mantle piece and fireplace to give the touch of nature and or go with a bluestone fireplace. To add to the rusty exterior look it provides, you can add minimalistic surrounding artworks for your built-ins where pieces of large logs, lanterns, or lamps, wooden or stone artworks that are elegant and plain so as not to attract attention but blend in and add character. A simplistic and blended-in vibe is the one that will add the most elegance and charm.
8. The Monochromatic Classic
You can never go wrong with some classic monochrome patterns and themes, can you? Even though they are misinterpreted as boring or too plain, when used with color palettes, they can easily turn into elegant and powerful backgrounds.
To start off, deciding between dark or neutral monochromes aid a lot in deciding the vibe you’re going for. You can opt for a dark blue, black, or olive-based dark green as dark monochrome spaces combined with lighter shades of the same. These can be paired with frames, lights as well as vases of lighter monochrome tones.
9. The Ultimate Mix and Match
If you’re feeling experimental yet with a need for comfort this time around with your fireplaces and built-ins, the ultimate mix and match is your answer. Developing contrasts and different dimensions will imbibe a sense of uniqueness and add a quirk to your living room.
Start off with a mix-and-match with the color palettes, not in the sense that they seem asymmetrical but feel like a flush of intricately designed colors. Use the art of color matching to enhance your choices, like, green inside the shelves, whereas the mantle is white, and the artifacts and structures in the built-in shelves are neutral.
It would also be interesting to follow these with a mix and match of textures that contrast each other but don’t stand out and can blend in. For example, marble vases with glass structures and porcelain jars were paired with old and new books. These will add a touch of differentiating characteristics to the room, yet not be so varied as to stand out.
10. The Art of Asymmetry
It is almost weird that while our hearts search for symmetry and comfort, asymmetry and abstract ideas surprise and excite us. Using standout materials and an assortment of interior pieces, we can reinforce this art of surprise and flush of energy. Asymmetrical designs are hence the element of surprise and an object of fiery first impressions.
The art of symmetry is extremely simple, which occurs in contrast to the feelings it evokes. A collection of differently shaped photographs and paintings combined with different-sized vases, wooden glass included, could provide a sense of uniqueness. Also, make sure that the patterns on the fireplaces and shelves are different from each other as well as of different sizes.
11. The Crisp White Elegance
White, one of the most basic yet soothing colors, can be played with so well that their contrasts and hues can create a striking yet beautiful appearance. Beige, off-white, cream, eggshell, champagne an elegant combination of any of these together could provide a sense of elegance and luxury.
While going for this minimalistic view of the fireplace, focus more on the use of textures combined with these colors, materials like marble, porcelain, glass, and mosaic can you take you places when going for this chic look. Combining them with books, silver-based artifacts, and abstract portraits, as well as statue pieces, would be a great addition.
12. The Rise of Victorian Style
When the fireplace is the only focal point, adding a fresh touch of art itself is the right way to go. Victorian styles add a sense of luxury, elegance, and artistic vibe to the living room.
To start off, there isn’t a standard Victorian fireplace style; hence, combining it with some traditional as well as modern interiors is a good idea. Adding fireplaces from black iron, tiles with plant life, and striking golden borders depict the authentic nature of the era, and combining them with touches of regency as well as Georgian would be to add wooden mantlepieces and artworks. To understand the palettes used with these fireplaces, a sense of faded and beige color spectrums would imbibe the Victorian era and work well with the vibe.
13. The Nordic Way
These are great additions to any room and hence add a tinge of modern designs with striking fireplaces. The striking part about these modern fireplace ideas is that they look effortless and minimalistic while giving an edge.
Using minimalist designs, simple contrasts with mirrored glass, and a random assortment of art pieces for the built-ins work well together with wooden floors and bright floating shelves. Adding mixed wooden architecture, greenery, and a Scandinavian-inspired gallery will set you up for easygoing and inspiring conversations around your living rooms.
14. The Festival Bling
If setting a particular theme throughout 365 days bores you, finding festival-based themes and working from scratch or building up during the holiday times can be a great idea for you!
Hence a set of white marble-based fireplaces with everchanging Christmas, St Patrick’s Day, or Thanksgiving artifacts and colors would go well with your ever-evolving holiday spirits. But that does mean shopping a lot and starting from scratch a lot of times. To minimize that, the best ideas would be to keep neutral themes and simple stripped or small patterns that can take over the festival spirit with the everchanging artifacts.
Final Thoughts
Through the journey of some subtle, some dramatic, and some intense or period themes, we hope you’ve found the absolute ‘one’ for you! After this easy part of the process comes the tough one, the implementation.
This rough part of the process will not surely be a carefree and easy journey, so the major things to keep in mind are ‘capabilities,’ materials, process, and backup plans. Make sure you’re aware that when you plan and set up the fireplace in your mind, it will not turn out exactly the way you want (probably) hence get ready to be flexible and available to make the best use of what you can find and get creative with materials and have patience with the process.
As of now, its time to put a full stop to the lists and advice and get set and ready to work!
