Which of us haven’t been in the situation that we’re on the hunt for our perfect home and fall in love with what we think at the time is the best contender, based on a fireplace?

Fireplace — or a hearth location — is generally an afterthought, and once we begin to design a layout, many of us quickly realize that our fireplace is a corner unit and it poses a bigger design challenge than we first anticipated.

Traditionally, the fireplace was the heart of the home. We’ve become so comfortable with the seemingly innate notion that the fireplace must be the primary focal point in a space. We move mountains to design spaces based on its central location, even if its location — like a corner unit — is not the best placement in a room in terms of a well-designed layout.

We arrange our furniture to face it. We mount our flat screens above it. We choose contrasting paint colours to create an even stronger emphasis. All this additional work to end up with an often uncomfortable and poorly designed space based on the feature we first fell in love with! We often feel that we are stuck with the corner unit and short of picking up a hardhat and sledgehammer, we end up succumbing to the poor layout.

Fear not! I have a few design tricks to help combat the harsh angles of that pesky corner fireplace and create a well-designed and functional space.

1. Primary vs. secondary focal point: The first step is purely psychological. We’ve become so accustomed to the fireplace being the primary focal point in a space that it’s difficult to demote it to the secondary position. It’s okay! Free yourselves from that mindset. A room can, in fact, have two focal points and the fireplace does not have to be the primary!
2. Recreate your primary focal point: Rather than mounting your TV above the mantle, thus creating an emphasized focal point, reposition the TV to an alternate wall and ground it visually with a weightier item below, such as a credenza. This will help draw your eye away from the fireplace to a visually heavier vignette in the room.
3. Furniture placement: Now that we’ve moved the TV from above the fireplace, the furniture is naturally repositioned to face the TV, drawing attention to the newly created primary focal point.
4. Reconsider the shapes of furniture in your space and asymmetrical furniture layout: People tend to be most comfortable with linear lines on furniture pieces, especially when buying furniture for angled spaces, like those that coincide with corner fireplaces. Consider furniture with softer lines, a circular or oval coffee table, and end tables for example. By doing so, we soften the feeling to the room, drawing emphasis away from the harsh lines and angles. Circular or irregularly-shaped rugs are also a great way to combat attention given to angles. An additional way is creating an asymmetrical layout to draw the eye away from focusing on a point that a symmetrical layout emphasizes.
5. Choice of paint colour: Like I mentioned in the introduction, people tend to naturally design a room with the fireplace as a focal point and paint colours are often chosen to emphasize the feature. When looking to pull attention away from the fireplace, consider painting it out in the same colour as the surrounding walls so that the fireplace blends into the background. For example, if you’re dealing with a more substantial stone mantle that can’t be painted, consider painting the surrounding walls a colour to match the stone.
6. Create a secondary focal point with your fireplace: It’s imperative to make every design decision in a space appear intentional. Even if we are, in this case, using techniques to draw the eye away from a corner fireplace and totally disregarding it, it actually draws attention to it rather than away from it. Because of its size and scale in the space, it will still be a focal point in the room, albeit, a secondary one. In order to make it seem like an intentional design decision, consider cresting a small seating area in front of or to the side of the fireplace. It will give the feature enough of a presence that it looks well designed and was intended to be in the room, without it overshadowing the space altogether.

See the video below for how Shai DeLuca-Tamasi used his steps to transform this living space:

Courtesy Shai DeLuca-Tamasi
www.shaideluca.com
@ShaiDeLuca