Adding Grace and Charm with Fireplace Mantels

Fireplace mantels and fireplace mantel shelves are excellent opportunities for adding architectural elements to your home. Fireplace mantel often serves as focal points in a room.

Decorative mantel earned its important role in interior architecture. A fireplace mantel is a decorative frame that surrounds the fireplace and facing on the top and two sides. The term “mantel” refers to the entire decorative surround of the fireplace, not just the shelf part. The facing is the protective frame that surrounds a fireplace opening and is usually marble, brick, tile, or slate. Fireplace mantels evolved from a simple open hearth in the middle of the floor to the wide variety of surrounds we know today.

Fireplace mantels add considerable grace and charm to the room. Historically, the quality of a mantel indicated the homeowner’s status. The form of the fireplace mantel was a showcase for the architect’s personal style and skillful craftsmanship. Nowadays fireplace mantels remain as the social an aesthetic focus of any room it appears. Replacing an old mantel or embellishing a bland surround not only transforms the appearance of your fireplace, but it is also changing the architecture of the entire room.

If you have a working fireplace you can improve its appearance with the addition of fireplace mantel. You can choose wood, stone, or marble mantel, this architectural element will greatly enhance the room and the way you feel sitting next to a warm fire. The refinement will smile back at you as you gaze into the glow of the fire and at the beauty of the surrounding fireplace mantel.

Every room needs a focal point, and a striking fireplace mantel draws your eye into the room. Select a fireplace mantel in the decorating style you most love in furniture. Usually, a fireplace mantel is well located in the center of a wall with solid walls on either side so there will be plenty of room for a furniture grouping.

If you would want to wait before purchasing a fireplace mantel and have just an opening, consider installing a fireplace mantel shelf above the opening for displaying decorative objects. You can use beautiful wood corbels to support a mantel shelf. Most mantel shelves are between 51 and 63 inches above the floor.

The height of the shelf based on the size of the fireplace opening and whether the fireplace hearth is raised or is flush to the floor. For best appearance, the sides of the mantel should be aligned with or extend just beyond the sides of a flush fireplace hearth width.

Sprucing up an old fireplace might involve as little as changing of paint color of the existing fireplace mantel or as much as remodeling the entire fireplace wall.

Of course, budgets vary, but there are a lot of materials and design possibilities with which to work, for both do-it-yourselfers and professional projects. If you’ve updated the rest of your home and your old fireplace mantel looks a little neglected and out of touch, paint the mantel to match the surrounding decor. If the results are not satisfying, try slightly more invasive approach, update the mantel’s trimwork, add decorative wood carvings or replace it altogether …

Stone, tile and smooth solid surfaces used today for fireplace mantels creation, but marble fireplace mantels along with carved wood mantels are the most popular in traditional-style homes. Wonderful selection of fireplace mantels is available on our website. From simple and classical craftsman-style wooden fireplace mantels to elaborately carved solid hard maple fireplace mantels, or choose from our solid marble fireplace mantels collection.

The classic decorative mantel was a product of the Italian Renaissance. The basic structure of the Renaissance fireplace mantels is still used today. A traditional fireplace mantel includes four main components: the field. the pilasters or columns, the mantel shelf, and the decorative molding. Some fireplace mantel includes an overmantel – a decorative treatment applied to the wall above the fireplace mantel shelf, often intended to receive display shelves, framed art or mirror.

The field is the frame of the fireplace mantel, made up of two vertical side boards and horizontal frieze board. It is a foundation of the fireplace mantels to which the other parts of the mantel are attached.

Standing at each side of the fireplace mantel opening, a pilasters or wood columns add a sense of structure to the mantels and visually carries mantelshelf above. In the classical fireplace mantels order, carved pilasters or columns usually mounted at the top of plinth blocks or bases and crowned with capitals or blocks.

Traditional fireplace mantel shelf is a solid piece of wood or marble with a milled front edge ore decorative molding added. The shelf can be supported by molding, blocks above pilasters or columns, brackets, or any kind of decorative projection centered along the fireplace mantel frieze. Carved wood molding finishes the fireplace mantel. As with a built-up crown, a combination of relatively simple trim pieces can add up to a deceptively complex mantel treatment.

Carved wood crown, frieze, and pierced molding are used to add rich details to fireplace mantels while cleverly hiding gaps and joints. In addition to carved wood trim wooden fireplace mantels often adorned with other meticulously crafted wood products: inlaid wood carvings, rosettes, and small carvings

Today you can enjoy our classically inspired fireplace mantels designs that stood the test of time. Graceful curves and elaborate carvings of shell motives, country flowers, rinceau scrolls, floral baskets and swags, deep relief fluting, bellflower drops on our carved wood fireplace mantels speaks gently of understated elegance and undeniable refinement. Any of our fireplace mantels create a dramatic look worthy of the finest homes.