Guide To Buying Fireplace Surrounds & Mantels

Fireplace Surrounds and Mantels are the decorative fasciae that fit to the wall and surround the actual fire. They come in an extensive range of styles, sizes and materials and make an attractive focal point in your room. Although they briefly fell out of favour with people removing them from period properties, they are now very much in vogue and many people are re-installing these fireplaces using Victorian inspired wooden surrounds and cast iron inserts. Although it is not just in period properties that people are fitting fireplace mantels. Many modern homes now feature more contemporary styled fireplaces made from limestone or marble along with gas or electric fires.

How to Choose the Right Size Fire Surround

This is partly down to personal choice, some want a large, imposing surround where others might prefer a smaller surround but whatever your preference the size will be dictated by certain factors. The main thing to take into consideration when working out the size of fire surround for your room is the width of the chimney breast. If your chimney breast is 48” (1220mm) wide then you don’t want to choose a fire surround that has a mantel width that is 54” (1370mm) wide.

What Material Fire Surround Should You Choose?

This is really down to personal preference. Wooden fire surrounds come in a wide variety of colours and finishes, from oak to pine to dark mahogany you can even get them in white or unfinished and paint them yourself.

Our Limestone comes in two types:

Portuguese - a stunning natural stone that has a honed (matt) finish, is an off white in colour and has a grey veining running through it.

Agean Limestone - comes from Turkey, is much whiter than Portuguese limestone and doesn’t have any veining in it.

We supply two types of marble fire surround:

Firstly there’s the natural Carrara marble that comes from the Lunigiana region of Italy near Tuscany. The stone is a blue-grey in colour with a darker vein running through it similar to limestone, this stone comes in a honed (matt) finish.

The other type is micro marble, an engineered stone made of crushed marble and resin. The mix is compacted together and polished to a shiny and very hard wearing finish.

Micro marble comes in a variety of colours:

• Marfil which is a creamy colour
• Manila which is a slightly off-white with a swirl pattern in it
• Pearl Stone which as the name suggests has a slight pearl effect and colour to it.

We also offer a range of black granite Fireplaces, which are great for a more dramatic and contemporary look. As you can see, when it comes to choosing your fireplace materials there’s a great choice.

It is worth noting though that if you intend to use the surround with a solid fuel or real fire you should use a natural material which rules out the MDF wooden surround and micro marble fireplaces. However, it is OK to use natural/solid wood with a real fire.

Which Style is Right For You?

Well, as you can imagine this really is down to personal choice but whatever look you’re trying to achieve we’ll have the right fire surround for you. Whether you’re after a stone surround with a Tudor arch like the Chatsworth Limestone Fireplace or a modern looking fire surround like the Pureglow Whitton, you’ll find the ideal fire surround in our fire surround section.

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