What Is a Fireplace Mantel?

What Is a Fireplace Mantel?

Originally designed in medieval times, the fireplace mantel acted as a hood that would catch smoke. However, the fireplace mantel has evolved over time to incorporate the decorative frame that surrounds a fireplace. As such, mantels provide a decorating highlight to any room with a fireplace, designs which may or may not extend all the way to the ceiling. Sometimes known as a mantelpiece or chimney-piece, the fireplace mantel has traditionally been an artistic element of a room while also providing practical elements such as protecting the surrounding area from fire damage.

Mantels are available in a wide range of designs and styles. From Renaissance styles that include elaborate wood-carved extremes to modern styles that feature clean lines and contemporary materials, your mantel can reflect your own design choices, whatever they may be. Because rooms were traditionally heated with an open, wood-burning fireplace whereas rooms today are heated with mechanized contained heating systems, such as a gas-burning fireplace, the styles and applications of mantels have certainly changed. However, even though your mantel may serve a different function today compared to several hundred years ago, it continues to provide a focal point to many different living spaces.

Today's fireplace mantels are often extensions of the architectural or design features of your home. Nevertheless, mantel manufacturers can build a mantelpiece that reflects essentially any design period in history. You may choose to have a customized mantel, or a standard design, but always remember that mantel for your fireplaces can enhance the appearance, ambiance, or overall style of your home.

Without question, mantels have become an interior design focus. While offering a unique opportunity to elaborate on the style of a space, fireplace mantels are also important for expressing your personality. Fireplace mantels can be constructed from marble, limestone, granite, and various woods depending on your preference. You may even use your mantel to express your artistic freedom as it is becoming more commonplace to have a sculptor or artisan design a one-of-a-kind fireplace mantel for your home.

In addition, mantels often feature more subtle design elements such as capitals, moulding, brackets, fruits, or vegetation for decoration. It may be clichéd, but it is definitely not an overstatement to say that the sky is the limit when it comes to fireplace mantel design choices. You can easily choose a mantel that draws from Classic, Renaissance, Italian, French, American, or Victorian genres or you can choose a fireplace design that is entirely unique to your own sense of style. You can even mix design genres.

So while a mantel may seem like a simple fireplace surrounding where you display pictures and knickknacks, the truth is that a mantel is the centerpiece of style in your living room, bedroom, or family room. Indeed, your fireplace mantel can not only reflect your personal design choices but also the function and architecture of the room it inhabits.

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