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A typical fireplace contains a hearth, mantel, and surrounds. More often than not, homeowners tend to accentuate the hearth and mantel believing that surrounds are not as equally important as these two when it comes to decorative capabilities. However, it must be taken into account that aside from the hearth and mantel, fireplace surrounds are also valuable design features. In fact, if your surrounds are updated with highly ornamental fire resistant materials, it is more likely that this part of the fireplace will become the main decorative feature of your fire fixture.

Fireplace surrounds of traditional wood and gas burning fireplace were usually constructed from hand carved wood. Currently though, more contemporary non-porous and fire resistant natural stone products like bricks, tiles, marbles and limestone serves as alternatives for wood surrounds. Many homeowners regard these materials as more safer to use than wood and they are also highly ornamental. Likewise, they are inexpensive alternatives to wood surrounds as these natural stones demands less design labor, unlike their wood counterparts that needs hand carved detailing which is to laborious to make.

To update the look of your fireplace, the best thing to do is to start with your fireplace surrounds. There's a whole range of design ideas that you can do with the use of the abovementioned natural stone products. To have a rustic looking fireplace, utilizing limestone surrounds can do the trick for you; such natural stone goes well with furnishings that are earth in tone, and if the design is appropriately applied you can definitely gain a space that is rustically country in appeal. To match your European living space, donning your surrounds with marbles can accentuate the European appeal of your living area; marble surrounds have an elegant flare in them that complements well with darker tones.

If you have a fireplace that combines the surrounds and mantel in one, which is preferably referred to as fireplace mantel surrounds, updating its looks could be done with the use of bricks. There fired color of bricks will leave a classic look on your fireplace, and could also become your inspiration for the overall interior design of your living space. Likewise, the alternating courses of the headers and stretchers often produced when bricks are stacked together mimics the grandiosity of well known structures around the world such as Germany's Chile house or the Thornbury Castle in England; hence, when you use these on your surrounds it is as if you have your own famous landmark inside your home. However, if you're not into classical design, you can also paint the bricks with your chosen hue to make it appear more upbeat; just try to make sure that it complements the color scheme of your home's interiors.

Similar to bricks, tiles are also perfect materials to achieve softer looking fireplace mantel surrounds. What you can do to make your surrounds more distinct is to combine mosaic glass tiles or pebble tiles into a specific image or patterns. If you don't have the patience to do this thing though, you can simply go for digital tile surrounds that make use of printing techniques and digital manipulations to create images or murals; however, this is a bit pricey so be sure that you have enough funds if you want to have digital tile surrounds. The design possibilities of tiles are endless, all you have to do is to be imaginative about what design you want to incorporate on your surrounds.

Meanwhile, if you're living in an urban area which won't permit you to use traditional gas or wood burning fireplace, a quick fix for this issue is the faux electric fireplace. The good thing about this fireplace type is that it does not necessarily have to be permanently positioned in one place; as it is portable, you can place it anywhere according to your own preference. Some electric fireplace fixtures also come with mantel and surrounds that you can redecorate just like traditional wood or gas burning fireplace. Generally, with the design capabilities of your surrounds, dong some changes on its materials and finish can go a long way to make your fireplace all the more visually interesting.