Home Style Decorating

In the olden days, the fire place is the focal point of every living room. The fire place serves many purposes like for lighting, for providing warmth and sometimes, for cooking the food. But as the times have changed, so is the treatment of fire places. What was once considered a very important piece became optional and for decorative purposes only. A fire place, used or unused, can still be a focal point and still is a dominant feature of a room and it still deserves special attention.

In dressing up a fire place to be the focal point of the room, you have to pay extra attention to the mantel and the space above it. The furnishings and accessories of the room should compliment each other and be in harmony with the over all look of the room.

Traditionally, a large painting or a work of art usually hangs above the mantel. In doing this, one should consider the scale or the space above the mantel for it might be as high as 15 feet. Another thing that you can place above the mantel is a large television screen. If you opt to to this, make sure that the TV screen will appear to be built in with the wall and blends well with the rest of the room.

If you can not find a large enough work of art, consider putting up a collection of smaller works. make sure that all the works remains constant like same frame and mat, same color group and theme. This collection can be fabrics, small mirrors, plates and platters, decorative fans and many more. just let your imagination go to work. Before putting up the whole collection, be sure to make a plan as to where each piece will be placed. You can lay out the pieces on the floor above the fire place and arrange them to your taste. Once you are finished, create a template of it using newspapers on the wall so that you can visualize the effect and look and it will be easy to rearrange the pieces. If you are contented with the placement of the pieces, them you can now hang the actual works.

The mantel accessories should blend in with the other decorations. You can put candles, vases, figurines and others.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.