How to transform your living space with an unused fireplace

Rekindle some festive magic in your home by turning that decommissioned fireplace or stove into a focal point

There are plenty of ideas you can use to jazz up a decommissioned fireplace or stove in your living space.

Thanks to the onward march of central heating efficiencies, the familiar presence of chimneys and larger flues are steadily disappearing. In many older homes, thermal upgrades can leave a formerly important fireplace with a handsome surround, tiles and even period features without a real job. Return its former focus with our hacks for decorating this architectural treasure.

BLOCK IT

Before we start, ensure the fireplace is effectively blocked off against heat loss that could whip kWs up and out of the room. As a quick fix, the chimney balloon can be inflated to fit snugly inside the chimney, cutting down on outdoor noise and soot falls, while leaving a small vent to allow the structure to “breathe”.

Santa is well able to move the balloon out of place to get to the room, and his elves will put everything back in place. Don’t worry. DeVielle models are priced from €16. If you have time, you can paint the inside of an un-tiled fireplace any colour you like — black or white rarely fail.

Pure Christmas joy: Textile designer Molly Mahon's fireplace.

Once the chimney is officially decommissioned you don’t need a heat-resistant product. Merrily festoon the non-working fireplace with Christmas joy, including paper, tinsel, garden cuttings and everything you throw at the tree.

See the image here of an unlit fireplace styled by textile designer Molly Mahon at her home Deerhyrst Cottage in Sussex (mollymahon.com). 

Her very old carved stone fireplace takes on the staging point for presents of a traditional tree using sustainable block-printed origami ornaments, dried fruit garlands, fresh flowers and a simple folksy screen, with the sofa nestled close to this gorgeous seasonal imagining. Busy and beautiful, the high mantel thrusts the whole arrangement up to the artwork.

THEATRE

The proscenium arch of the hearth provides a perfect niche for a bit of Christmas theatre. Try a variation on Molly’s theme using real logs and pinecones below, harkening back to the fireplace’s intended use. Choose clean, rounded logs with nice flat-cut ends to stack in the hearth and throat. Paint them up with any poster paints of low VOC emulsion you might have lying around the garage. Pure white logs or cut ends in a variety of festive colours mixed up like boiled sweets work very well.

Add holly or ivy if you like (please buy Irish holly from a registered seller rather than stealing it — it’s under pressure). If you have red tinsel, use it to create “flames”. Push LED string lighting in and around the pile to include flickering or colour light changes. Battery varieties can all but disappear into the crevices of the timber.

Open-frame pieces light this are perfect for backlighting. File picture

CANDLES

Battery candles are so useful and safe. A classic white or cream shade spiked with the odd berry red candle is ideal. Snuggle a group of these together on the base of the fireplace and turn on the elements when you have company. Dim the lights for a lovely light show. 

At Christmas, we can nestle these candles inside cuttings and wreaths laid down flat to hold the arrangement together. Pinterest and Instagram are alight with ideas. Dig out any dried or fake flowers you have and get busy with the kids.

People do favour real candles in the hearth. This can be safely done with a little forward planning. First of all, think about enclosing candles inside lantern housings. Stable lanterns are less likely to go over with footfall on bouncy floorboards. Don’t sit real candles anywhere near decorations. Natural or synthetic — just about everything is flammable.

Bioethanol fire features can be used in a closed-off fireplace. File picture

BIO CHOICE

Bioethanol units can sit in a fireplace and do not necessarily need a working flue to be safe. Use them moderately and never leave a burning flame unsupervised, even sitting on fire-bricks. Again, think about using battery-fed LEDs, in candles and even strings stuffed into jam-jars or lantern housings like fireflies — so much safer for curious pets. Fake candles and lanterns can also spill out onto the hearth. Load up the mantel with shrubs of Christmas gewgaw and poke your strings down into the arrangement or drift strings up and over pictures too.

BOOKS

Books can sit in a clean hearth and be stacked neatly, they are a lovely draw in a non-working fireplace. This time of year, mix up our flowers, faux candles and a pile of Christmas books and comics. Children can select something and sit quietly on the floor by the fireplace for a happy read. You might even include some colouring pencils in a nice old tin and a couple of colouring books to distract them from the iPads and TV. Whatever you do, just build your arrangement from here. Don’t forget those stockings for presents — Santa won’t!

FLOWERS AND PAINT

So, what about the rest of the year? Blousy flower arrangements, fresh or dried, have been favoured for centuries to freshen up a dead fireplace, and it’s the perfect frame for a bit of floral creativity. Just change the piece up regularly to keep it from being too dusty or funereal.

Painting the back of the fire niche white or black creates a perfect spot to highlight a piece of sculpture or even a painting or small piece of rustic furniture. Set a recessed light — again this can be wire-free if you prefer — into the chimney’s throat to pool light over the piece by night. Experiment with a single star painting over the mantel, or a collection of artworks anchored by the fire surround, complemented by ornaments below.

Fill your empty fireplace with cut logs, raw or painted up. Offcuts can also be placed on a backing board to seal the fireplace off when not in use. File picture

LOGS AND SCREENS

A trending choice is small smooth logs packed to fill the fire opening, end out, so save what you did for Christmas. This can be recreated using thin offcuts glued to a backing board that can set into the fire as needed, even with a working fire that’s off duty.

Fire screens come in every genre, shape and sizing imaginable and many contemporary models are highly sculptural. Try backlighting something airy and open that you really love and pay attention to the mantel for the superb shelf it is for grouping photographs, collectables and posies of fresh garden flowers as spring breaks.

Without the draw of real flames, you can safely deploy a massive overmantel mirror. Look for foxed varieties with mesmerising gilded reflections that will take 10 years off your face when you lump by, and use mirror plates to safely secure any heavy, vertically inclined old-dear to the wall.