The fireplace is one of the most prominent focal points in the home. All of your great room furniture is centered on it. The active flame brings a sense of life to your home. It provides warmth on all of the cold Minnesota/Wisconsin winter days. And let’s not forget that it is Santa’s favorite way to deliver all of your presents!

The design of your fireplace is a huge opportunity to make a statement and set the tone for the whole home and make it feel unique. There are so many approaches that you can take.

Fireplace surround options can vary from a traditional natural stone, brick, mosaic tile, large scale porcelain, shiplap or a pure drywall with any color of your choice. You can choose a traditional Princeton mantle, a box shaped mantle, a rustic faux timber mantle, or you can choose to forgo the mantle if you are looking for a sleek aesthetic. At Creative Homes, we have two different fireplace unit options. The first is a traditional square shaped unit with logs as the media. The second option is a 42” wide linear fireplace with a reflective backing option and glass/pebble media options.

This list of fireplace possibilities can definitely feel overwhelming. Luckily, we can make it pretty easy to narrow in on your style! It can be helpful to ask yourself; “How do I want to feel when I am in my home and looking at my Great Room?”. Peaceful, sophisticated, playful, rustic, traditional, natural, simple, unique, timeless, trendy, sleek? Once you have an idea of the feeling you are looking to achieve, it is a good idea to do some research (Pinterest, touring model homes, or the Creative Homes Design Studio open house) about what materials and fireplace designs achieve those feelings for you! You can collect a list of things that spark inspiration for you. From there, you can narrow into the materials and design that best compliment the rest of the features in your home.

We all know that the most common fireplace design is the traditional log fireplace unit with natural stone as the surround. This is common for a reason! It is a timeless look, it incorporates a natural material into your home and it feels very vernacular to the Midwest. Our biggest design tip to make this look pop is to bring the stone all the way to the ceiling. Yes, it is more of an investment. Yes, you very well might put your TV on top of it. Even if you do put your TV on the fireplace, you will still feel the sense of the stone look being realized to its full potential. It has a very cohesive, classy and complete look.

Maybe the traditional fireplace look isn’t for you though and you are interested in a more contemporary feel. In this case, the most impactful element to consider is going with the linear fireplace unit. Even a full stone fireplace with the linear unit can feel very contemporary and classy. The sky is the limit on your options for a fireplace surround though! Check our calendar online for Design Studio open houses where you can browse the whole studio here.