When it comes to decorating ideas for your home, there are often very few limits on outcomes to enhance your living spaces. A home DIY makeover not only changes the appearance of your living spaces but can also breathe new energy into your home. However, if you have a fireplace that doesn’t have a mantel, decorating becomes a little more challenging, even if it’s just for special occasions.
Especially if you have a fireplace surrounded by living room décor, one of the best ways is to overcome mantel décor as a fixture. Below are a few ways that MagikFlame suggests mantel decorating can be done without a mantel.
Fireplaces are often the room’s focal point, bringing the whole room together with a few decorative ideas. Below are a few ways to decorate a fireplace without a mantel that brings a centerpiece together. You’ll be proud to show off on a home tour, even if you have no interior design experience.
Blank Canvas
You’re working with a blank canvas when you have a fireplace without a mantel. A painter starts with a blank canvas, and a blogger begins with a blank page. A DIY project that someone eventually sells on Etsy has several possible outcomes before the creator eventually decides which direction to take.
While a blank canvas has near limitless potential, it can also be overwhelming as there’s nothing to start with except your own ideas, which have not yet formed in your mind. When starting a new project with a blank canvas, people’s main question is where to start.
Introduce Structure
The first step to decorating a fireplace that doesn’t have a mantel is to create a sense of structure. For authors, they give themselves structure by creating an outline that guides them from the beginning to the end of their story. If homeowners don’t first establish a sense of design when decorating a fireplace without a mantel, they can throw off the visual balance of the area, or it looks too cluttered.
An easy way to create structure is to have a decorative piece you can use to create an outline of a mantel. Below are a few styling ideas to decorate for Christmas, the autumn holidays, and the summer months.
Christmas
When decorating for Christmas or a different winter holiday celebrated simultaneously, the first and most important step is to clear the space and create a blank canvas. While it might be easier to switch out pieces one at a time, this draws out the decorative process as you’re wondering exactly where something should go when that space is already occupied. A Christmas garland is an excellent way to break up space and create a sense of structure. It not only creates a festive feel to the living room but also defines the area.
Candles are another great way to enhance the fireplace décor. At the same time, there’s a concern that melting candles and finding the appropriate distance from the heat source is key, even with a MagikFlame electric fireplace. If the candles start melting two feet away from the heat source, try placing the candles further from the heat on either side of the fireplace opening until they stabilize.
For optimal safety and to make sure the candles don’t melt each other or create their own drafts, make sure they are at least three inches from each other. Appropriately done, nothing invokes a cozy scene more than a fire in the fireplace with unlit candles at a safe distance in front.
Halloween
This is a time when we watch scary movies, search for thrills in haunted houses, and purposely bring fake bats into our living spaces. Halloween design ideas take over our homes until we switch out the theme for either Thanksgiving or the autumn season. An easy place to start decorating is starting with a faux mantel line, which works even if you have a faux fireplace. This mantle line can be anything from a string of bats or a garland made from mini gourds and pumpkins.
A garland that creates structure doesn’t have to be made from objects such as gourds or pumpkins; a color scheme can be just as festive. While the primary colors for Halloween are orange and black, you don’t have to stay with those colors. The complementary color for orange is blue, which isn’t usually a color associated with bats, witches, and pumpkins.
Other colors that pair well with orange are white, brown, purple, and green. If you want to have a Halloween theme with elements of nature, then the colors of green, brown, and orange are the best choices.
Leaves are another great way to decorate a stone fireplace or a faux fireplace. Autumn leaves naturally turn orange and brown when then they change colors. They also become a brilliant red or even a bright yellow. In some instances, they become a dark reddish-purple.
While adding leaves to your outdoor decorations adds to the atmosphere, bringing leaves indoors is another great way to decorate a fireplace, especially a faux fireplace. Too many leaves overcrowd the area, getting people’s attention away from the main focal point, while too few leaves make it feel as though something is missing.
Pumpkins are an iconic part of the mid-autumn holiday, and they don’t even have to be real. When decorating with pumpkins, the size of the pumpkins determines how close or how far to the built-in fireplace they should be. Since the fireplace opening itself is the focal point, if your pumpkins are bigger, they should be further away from the fireplace opening.
If they are smaller or a stack of smaller or mini pumpkins, they can be closer to the fireplace opening. If you do carve your pumpkins, a few ways to make them last longer are to:
- Rehydrate the pumpkin daily
- Keep it in the fridge overnight
- Don’t use real candles to illuminate the pumpkin’s interior
Signs are another great way to decorate for this holiday. These signs can warn readers of impending doom, impart funny visual or textual puns, or even contain a poem appropriate for the theme. The easiest way to provide the proper signage to decorate the best fireplace mantel is to purchase one. However, simply buying a sign isn’t as fun as making your own.
If you’re handy and have the proper tools, you can carve a sign into your preferred shape. Once you do that, you can paint it to protect against outdoor weather conditions and provide color. Once the sign has a base coat of paint, you can paint words or carve out words in your sign.
Pinecones are a great decorative piece for not only Christmas but also the autumn months as well. For Halloween, you can create pinecone ghosts, pinecone witches, pinecone bats, or even pinecone pumpkins. Start by gently cleaning your pinecone to remove the debris before setting it out to dry. Once your pinecone is dry, either paint your pinecone or attach decorative items to your pinecone.
It’s best to wait for the paint to dry to add any decorative items to the pinecones to ensure that they stick properly. Decorative items you can add to your pinecone are sticks, felt hair, felt hats, googly eyes, yarn, and more.
Minimalist
Of course, you don’t have to have a lot of items to decorate your fireplace; you can even go the minimalist route. One such minimalist idea is to have a TV above the fireplace, at a height where it’s most comfortable to watch. You can relax in a chair or on the couch and watch television while enjoying a fire if you have a working fireplace.
If you wish to alter the appearance of your fireplace, you can surround it with shiplap. Shiplap is a wooden board used in exterior siding for barns, sheds, and other outbuildings, but it’s also used indoors for ceilings and accent walls. If you follow national fire codes and building codes, you can safely install them around your fireplace.
The National Fire Code states that all combustible material must be a minimum of 6 inches from a fireplace opening. It also says that you must add an extra inch of clearance for every 1/8 inches of material that protrudes from the opening.
Scandinavian
The Scandinavian design is simple, understated, and easy to replicate. The design is a simple rectangle design that people can alter to suit their style. They can either leave some extra brick exposed, cover the area outside the fireplace in tile, or create a faux mantel.
Adding some topiary to your fireplace is also a great design idea. Topiary adds some color to your fireplace exterior, which you can easily add without putting holes in the exterior of your fireplace. If you have your favorite scented flowers or plants, you can add them above your fireplace so you can enjoy your favorite scent and greenery.
Summertime
Unless you live in a climate where the temperature is cold year-round, there are months when you won’t have to use your fireplace at all. Since you’re not using your fireplace in the summer anyway, you don’t have to worry about decorative items catching fire if you place them too close to the fireplace opening.
Summer is also a great time to add a bookcase on either side of your fireplace. It keeps your books nearby, and you can use the shelves for collectibles that you don’t want to place above or around the fireplace opening. When you place shelves next to your fireplace, be sure that the shelves do not touch the side of the fireplace to make sure the shelves aren’t overheated if you do choose to use the fireplace.
Decorating your home is an excellent DIY endeavor, and not having a fireplace mantel is simply a fun challenge to take on. Whether you use candlesticks, greenery, or have some other décor ideas for your chic fireplace, you make your home your own. There are many designs to choose from, whether it’s a brick fireplace or you prefer Century Modern.
If you purchased an electric DIY fireplace from MagikFlame, read over the MagikFlame outstanding electric fireplace buying guide as a tutorial to learn how to use your décor ideas safely. If you follow fire codes and keep things away from fire, you should have no problem with your DIY fireplace decoration, even if you don’t have a fireplace mantel.
