65 Fireplace Ideas to Give Your Room That Special Spark in 2024

We love the space-doubling qualities of mirrors for small rooms. Why not bring the strategy to your fireplace? Studio Dorion covered this chimney breast in a Brooklyn home with mirrored panels, a look that transforms the antique fireplace into something edgy and fresh.

Sure you can paint your entire mantel, but why not view it as a creative canvas? Here, in an exuberant Aspen home with interiors by Patrick Mele, the fireplace features a whimsical classical design.

Even if you’re the type to color way outside the lines as far as interiors are concerned, it’s smart to leave some blank space. In the case of this polychromatic New York home, designer Katie Ridder painted both the ceiling and fireplace in a crisp white, a move that keeps the maximalist look light.

Transform your chimney breast into a work of art via artful tiles or panels. In her New York showroom, designer Laura Gonzalez specified one that has the quality of an organic bas-relief artwork.

You can hang a mirror over your fireplace or—if you’re as dramatic as Paris-based designer Sarah Dray—you can use a reflective surface to completely swallow your fireplace. This look’s taking “fireplace surround” quite literally.

Muted can be mighty chic, as designer David Lucido proves in this soft-spoken Los Angeles home. By matching the fireplace to the cream-colored walls and choosing warming, tan hues for the floor and ceiling, you feel like you’re sandwiched inside the world’s most glamorous s’more.

This Ibiza home has a delightfully asymmetrical fireplace to fit the room’s idiosyncratic shape. Casa Munoz embraced these eccentricities by incorporating equally akimbo accessories. Nobody’s perfect, but this room comes pretty close, imho.

Now here’s a look that brings the drama! In the remodel of a generic farmhouse, architect Frederick Tang gravitated towards striking contrast. So, working with his firm’s director of interiors, Barbara Reyes, he clad the entire fireplace in oblong black tiles. “At first the clients weren’t sure about redesigning the fireplace,” says Reyes, “but when they saw the possibility of what it could be they were super excited.”

It’s always snuggle time in this cozy Long Island bedroom. Here, the peaked ceiling gives the feeling of being tucked into a rustic lodge while the low-slung inset fireplace brings the heat. Top it off with a painting by Lucy Dodd and you’ve got the sleeping space of your dreams.

We can’t all live in a home as grand as this (it used to belong to newspaper tycoon Joseph Pulitzer) but we can certainly admire its wedding cake levels of decoration. Designer Jean Liu, the owner of this unbelievable pied-à-terre, leaned into the aesthetic of the original marble mantel a vintage bust and a pair of antique candlesticks.

Bold Breccia Arrabida marble? Check. Bold raspberry paint job? Check. This idea, courtesy Alton Bechara, leans into a maximalist mantel—and then some. “I told them that I really like pink,” the homeowner says. Dreams do come true!

White is a color for all seasons, but it can be especially cozy in the wintertime. Photographer William Waldron leaned into winter whites in his Hudson Valley farmhouse by painting his stone fireplace in the bright hue. With the rustic timber ceiling overhead and the roaring flames, we couldn’t picture anything more inviting.

Want to enhance your fireplace without breaking the bank? Try painting the surround in an intriguing color. Here, designer Schuyler Samperton shows us how it’s done in a bohemian beach house. In this case, the fireplace got a rich coat of Farrow & Ball’s Studio Green.

For a look as groovy as it is graceful, consider a cone fireplace, à la this corner in designer Carol Egan’s midcentury-modern dream house. Because it’s freestanding, this fireplace (which is original to the house) allowed Egan to create a bold gallery wall directly behind it.

This dining area, in the Brooklyn home of ELLE DECOR’s very own executive editor, Ingrid Abramovitch, proves the power of “reduce, reuse, recycle.” The period-perfect marble mantel was actually a salvage score.

Contemporary and cozy needn’t be mutually exclusive, as designer Augusta Hoffman expertly proves. In the primary bedroom of her own New York apartment, the sculptural black marble fireplace stands out against a caramel-colored wallcovering—textures and hues that match the adjacent 1940s Loro Piana–upholstered chairs.