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Oct 18, 2024

32 Fireplace Ideas To Cozy Up Your Space

Make your home a haven from the cold with these cozy fireplace ideas. James Ransom; Styling: Alya Hameedi The right fireplace design can transform a room. Whether stone, marble, or brick, a welcoming

Make your home a haven from the cold with these cozy fireplace ideas.

James Ransom; Styling: Alya Hameedi

The right fireplace design can transform a room. Whether stone, marble, or brick, a welcoming hearth not only anchors a space but is also practical: it's hard to match the coziness a fireplace adds to a home, especially during the cooler months. But no matter the time of year, the ambiance of a fireplace—whether it's in a living room, bedroom, or on a porch—creates a gathering space for family and guests that Southerners cherish. Get ready to add texture, dimension, and warmth to your home with these fireplace ideas to inspire your renovation, build, or redesign.

If you love the clean, new look of a bright white paint but don't want to lose the character of a brick fireplace, you can have the best of both worlds. This fireplace features a white wood frame around the classic red brick to make a charming yet modern look.

Brie Williams

While fresh paint and new finishes can help a home from feeling stuck in the past, sometimes it's important to keep a few elements. When updating her 1890-built North Carolina home, interiors expert Molly Williams opted to lean into the home's history in the dining room with aged accents—including the fireplace just repainted black.

ANTONIS ACHILLEOS; STYLING: MATTHEW GLEASON

This cozy room is wrapped in white oak wood paneling. To distinguish the fireplace, architect Brandon Ingram used the same materials in different directions with trim work to really make it stand out.

Fireplaces don't have to be completely centered. This fireplace made the wall wide to allow for firewood storage space, making the wall look longer and adding a unique visual element.

Wrapping your surround with a unique tile is a fun way to add an unexpected detail to a traditional element of a home. In the 2022 Idea House, designer Charlotte Lucas was inspired by delft tiles often found in historic homes and selected blue-and-white scenes from Renaissance Tile & Bath.

Marble brings a luxurious touch to any room and mixes well with many colors and textures, so adding this stone to your fireplace is a wonderful way to add tasteful glitz to your home.

LAUREY W. GLENN; Styling: Page Mullins

Fireplaces don't have to be neutral. This fireplace is painted a striking shade of Hale Navy (HC-154) by Benjamin Moore to complement the room and add a focal point.

Laurey Glenn

A slightly modern, chunkier fireplace can feel right at home amidst classic Southern architecture—even in the lowcountry. This surround in the 2024 Idea House is crafted of limestone from Alabama Stone and has a slightly purple-gray hue that ties into the furnishings.

ANTONIS ACHILLEOS; STYLING: MATTHEW GLEASON

Take a note from materials used on your home's facade and carry them inside to create a cohesive look like the Tennessee limestone used here which also complements the room's color palette.

Don't use your fireplace often? Cover it with a decorative screen. This fireplace features a whitewashed rattan screen that beautifully matches the color palette of the room to add some dimension and visual interest.

James Ransom; Styling: Alya Hameedi

True to her antiques-loving form, designer Ashley Hanley incorporated an assortment of treasured blue-and-white ceramic vessels into her family room, placing the smaller jar atop the mantel and positioning the two larger urns on either side of the fireplace.

Laurey W. Glenn; Stylist: Matthew Gleason

If your home has a stacked fieldstone fireplace, use that to your advantage and decorate around it. This fireplace placed decor that emphasizes length around the piece to call attention to the high ceilings and open space.

If you want to add an element of visual contrast in your room, the fireplace can be a great place to start. This room features a dark colored fireplace that contrasts with the light colored walls, creating a visually interesting and geometric aspect to the room.

Creating dimension is a textbook way to make a room look larger and more visually appealing. This room features a fireplace with multiple depths and dimensions that makes the room feel fluid and comfortable.

HECTOR MANUEL SANCHEZ; STYLING: CHRISTINA WRESSELL

Rather than starting from scratch when rebuilding their home, this family saved the original hearth bricks and mantel and reinstalled them into the renovated space. Using old materials is a great way to add character into a new build.

The classic running brick pattern is always a safe choice, but you can elevate your fireplace in a tasteful way by choosing a different pattern to lay your bricks. This fireplace has a basketweave look that adds a unique and visually appealing element to the space.

You don't have to throw in your firewood willy-nilly. This room placed the firewood in an orderly fashion to act almost as another element of decoration to the space.

Alison Gootee

Rather than painting the everything to match the rest of the room, let your brick chimney stand proud. When renovating her home, designer Caroline Brackett removed layers of stucco to find this beautiful brick original to the home.

Cody Ulrich

To place more emphasis on your fireplace, add a frame around the perimeter. This Texas farmhouse added a gorgeous white stone frame to the fireplace that acts as a mantel for decorations and adds dimension to the space.

There's nothing like a stone fireplace to create an element of warmth and dimension in the living room.

The color white creates a bright, polished effect to any part of your home, and the fireplace is no exception. This room features a brick fireplace painted white to make for a cohesive and clean look.

It's not just the outside that matters—don't forget about the inside of the fireplace too. This fireplace uses a beige herringbone tile pattern to add an aspect of design that elevates the room.

This fireplace features a frame covered in seashells to pay homage to the beach and create a unique, eye-catching focal point in the room.

Brick is one of the few materials that looks great when it has that more unfinished, weathered look. This fireplace used weathered bricks to create a vintage, cozy look to the living room.

If you're looking for a fireplace that fits seamlessly into your room, consider a minimalist look. Here, a small fireplace built into the wall adds to the room's ambiance without distracting from the overall space.

You can't start a fire without wood, and this fireplace captures that woodsy element by making the exterior an antique inspired wood aesthetic.

If your fireplace is a focal point in your home, making sure it is properly accented is important. This room features a brick fireplace with wood trim that match that complements the brick, making for a polished and purposeful look.

If you don't necessarily use your fireplace for its intended purpose, especially in the warmer months, don't let that space go to waste. This fireplace has plants placed inside of it to add a fun, natural element to the space.

If you're not interesting in having your fireplace as a focal point in your room, using an intentional color palette is a great way to achieve this. In this room, the fireplace's stone is a similar color to the wood wall behind it, creating a sleek and blending look.

Storing your firewood is typically for convenience and not style, but who says you can't have both? This fireplace was raised to allow for wood storage underneath while maintaining a purposeful and clean look.

Creating contrast is a wonderful way to make your space pop, and the fireplace is a great place to do this. This room features a bright white fireplace with a bold black mantle to make an interesting focal point in the space.

Here, the hearth is painted in Sherwin-Williams' Secret Garden (SW-6181) to create a nature-inspired focal point that complemented the room's existing neutral palette.