9 Inspiring Brick Fireplace Makeover Ideas for the Winter Season
Picture yourself sitting in your living room, with the cold wind of winter gushing through your face.
You stare at your fireplace and saw how archaic it’s becoming. And now that winter is getting nastier, you realize how fulfilling it would be for a brick fireplace to get the attention it deserves.
These fireplace ideas are a great way to help you update your brick fireplace ready for the winter season. Browse through each picture and see how you can use it for your fireplace makeover. With so many interior design ideas, an attractive brick fireplace can add glory to the overall effects of your home décor. And when you’re done, you’d love not to step out of your home anymore!
Revamping Your Brick Fireplace with These Ideal Designs
- The German Smear Technique
One of the easiest designs to alter, the German Smear Technique turns the basic brick fireplace into a dazzling and cozy centerpiece. German smear, also termed as German Schmear, preserves the texture and color of the bricks and makes the fireplace surround of antique bricks.
German schmear is simply a mortar wash technique done by combining mortar with cement.
- Elegant Washed Brick Fireplace in White
Whitewashing your fireplace bricks softens the look of traditional red bricks. The heavy texture design of the bricks is so beautiful and whitewashing them presents a fabulous appearance. When a brick fireplace is white-washed, you can make white walls on the surrounding for a fresh look.
Find yourself enjoying the coziness of your white brick painted room. Talk about winter home in white!
- The Inexpensive Faux Brick Paneling
Adding a new dimension to your painted white brick fireplace will transform the area over the fireplace mantel and make it amazing. Faux brick paneling makeover is one of the inexpensive design fireplace ideas to see above your farmhouse fireplace mantel. It is the faux fireplace mantel that gives the white brick fireplace an instant upgrade in your cozy room.
- Transforming Aged Gray Brick Fireplace
You’ll like the idea of a transformed aged gray fireplace. Update the color of your brick fireplace with the color of your room walls. And when you choose to upgrade to a painted brick fireplace, it gives an elegant look.
Transforming the aged gray brick fireplaces using an absolute painting technique brings out the natural distinction in brick color, of course still charming out the red color. This would ensure you retain the fireplace character with new home decor.
- The Great Dry Brushed Fireplace Bricks
Dry brushing the exposed brick of your fireplace creates a rustic and aged look to your fireplace surround. This technique involves brushing the ridges and bumps of bricks with very light three different paint colors. The random and irregular paint patches of each color on the bricks overlapping each other gives a natural and brighter turnout and a better feel of decoration. Of course, you can add wood-inspired decor ideas as extras.
The experience with this fireplace design makeover is going to get the best elegance of your room while passing most of your time indoors and making your brick fireplace the best companion. You’ll like the feel of winter warmth with this technique!
- Refreshing Brick Fireplace with Unique Paint Techniques
Providing a refreshing look to your brick fireplace with a budget-friendly paint technique is quick and easy. This will completely change the overall appearance to add warmth and texture, or even contrast to your existing design.
Make your living room wall a dramatic scene by lightly brushing the paint over the brick surface after you have cleaned it properly. Leave it untouched for about two to three hours and make the best of your brick fireplace during the chilling winter season.
- The Elegant Waterfall Decor
Waterfalls have always added to the great glory, may it be in your living room, outdoors or indoors, in a modern house or a farmhouse—the elegance it can add over your fireplace is unimaginable.
Add a stone veneer over your fireplace to have a waterfall adding to its beauty. A stone veneer has very little weight and does not even need mortar. If you want wood, on top of using stone decorations, to the floor or on the mantel, by all means, please do!
- Improving the vintage points
The easiest way to makeover the vintage points of your dark brick fireplace is with paint. Paint your red brick fireplace and mantel wall a greenish-gray shade. To augment depth and contrast to the room, wood trim and beige walls can be a natural choice.
The cool way to change the atmosphere and revive up the vintage points of your brick fireplace is to have a fresh coat of paint before the onset of winters. You’ll love to see the chic turnout!
- Including attention-grabbing tiles
Transform the style of your fireplace altogether by covering it with perfect, beautiful tiles. To uphold the tiles firmly with a smoother, make use of a cement backer board to avoid adding layers of mortar for the tile to get attached. The makeover of tiles is a modern experience to love throughout the year.
Is painting a brick fireplace a good idea?
A painted white fireplace exhibits a beautiful, classic look and natural style for an instantly large, bright interior home decor. But if you want to update to a more chic or playful vibe, you can also go for paints!
Painting your fireplace inspires and makes an inviting and snug atmosphere. You may choose different shades of paint depending on the colors you like. Moreover, painting your fireplace is a type of do-it-yourself project and can be fun. If you are in a farmhouse, it can be an excellent idea to paint some colors on the wood as well, just be sure to get decor ideas especially on the fireplace mantel.
How do you modernize a brick fireplace?
There are several ways and individual tastes to update fireplaces and give them a new and beautiful look.
However, to keep it modern and attractive you would want to undertake several activities continually:
- Give your fireplace a good, clean wash regularly. Especially with white-inspired fireplaces, you'd want to keep the classic look.
- Brush up with paint whenever needed after applying primer and also transform the tired tiles for a perfect look.
- Check the materials and don’t let them get loose. If required, call or see a professional to guide you with more information.
- Fit a light floating beam to your white stone fireplace if you like it.
- Change the traditional mantel design to add a natural style to your white-washed or white-painted fireplace. Place a mirror over the mantel to give a better backdrop.
I still need to build a brick fireplace. What should I do?
If you are still building your brick fireplace, you need to set the design at a later part.
Building a brick fireplace can be a fun DIY for you.
Here’s a quick guide to help you out, but you also need the expertise of brick masonry construction professionals like Alexander and Xavier Masonry to help you out.
What kind of brick do you use for a fireplace?
Normal bricks cannot withstand a continued exposure to high heat. The bricks used for the fireplace need to be resistant to high-heat exposure to sustain longevity.
Fireplace brick usually termed as refractory brick is used for a fireplace. A special mixture of aluminum oxide, silica, and various other materials, termed as “fire clay” is used to produce modern fireplace bricks. The bricks made out of this mixture are hard-baked inside the kin to make it ready to use.
Steps to build a brick fireplace
- Step 1: Mark the dimensions of your brick fireplace and cut the metal material to fit into the painter's tape. The dimensions must be taken with the wall and the floor in place.
- Step 2 – Fix the rustic metal lath properly into the wall and nail it. Mix mortar and layer about one inch thick on the bricks to ensure the fireplace footprint is covered and the mortar between bricks is smooth.
- Step 3 – Continue laying the bricks in layers with the required mortar until you are done building the fireplace.
- Step 4 – Wipe off the excess mortar. Make sure that the metal lath is completely covered on the edges of your newly built fireplace.
- Step 5 – Install the fireplace throat and build up the masonry to the top of the throat, followed by setting the damper. Make a smoke chamber over the damper with the valves freely opened. Build up thick masonry around the chamber combining clay and mortar.
- Step 6 – Open up the chimney. The chimney needs to be around 4 inches thick and to be extended three inches above the roofline. Time for 72 hours to dry the fireplace.
Whether what you have is a modern home, a farmhouse, or a cozy little nook, Alexander and Xavier Masonry in Garland Texas can help you with brick masonry construction and repairs. We ready the foundation for your brick fireplace and give you more information on how you can apply your fireplace ideas. Give us a call!