Solving a Challenging Corner Fireplace

Let me show you how I designed this space into something that felt traditional, felt cozy, felt a little bit artsy, and help to balance out this big behemoth of a fireplace with this super tall mantle. Let’s dive right into it!

Let’s look, first, at the colour scheme for the room. This client really loves more of a traditional palette; she loved the blues, some of the greens, maybe even a little pop of red in this space. Of course, we have this grey stack stone to compete with on the fireplace. There were a couple of different wood tones in here, a more reddish wood on the floor and more of a walnut on the trim and on the mantle. The walls, they didn’t want to repaint, so this is Creamy by Benjamin Moore; it’s a really nice cream colour. They didn’t want to have to repaint because it goes all the way through the house, so we wanted to make sure we worked well with that colour and it was going to still look really super beautiful.

Next, let’s take a look at the layout they chose. We always send over, when we can, a couple of different layout options. In this case, this was the layout the clients really gravitated towards. When we have a corner fireplace, it often will break the room into two zones so we aren’t building a room around an awkward placed fireplace. Instead, we are allowing ourselves to create separate focal points in the room. We created the seating area here, off to the side, and then a separate little seating/conversation zone by the windows to create a really nice moment for playing cards, or reading a book, or sharing a glass of wine and conversation. You’ll notice they don’t have a TV in this space, and they don’t want a TV in this space, so it needed to be great for conversation, it needed to be great for reading, it needed to be great for napping, things like that.

As we go in here, you can see the beauty of this space and how well it’s laid out. When you walk into the home, this is what you see. There’s a little entry, and then you’re right in here into the living room. We wanted to draw the eye in, and we wanted to draw the eye up a little bit towards that back room. I gave them a few different colour choices here, and this, I think, is the one we ended up going with, with the green on the curtains and then the cream on the sofas, and bringing in some of these wood tones and things like that, so going with that.

Let me show you some of the other colour schemes here. This was adding in a little pop of red into the pillows, and then going into more of the blue sofas with the green, and then adding the cream in here, as well. The client thought she would love the blue sofas, but when she saw the designs come together, she really fell in love with this version of it, so we decided to go with that, popping the blue into these gorgeous lamps we have on order, which I am so excited to come in (they are so pretty!). In time, they’re going to be doing this over a period of time, so we bought a couple of sofas right now, we’re using their existing coffee table, they’re going to buy a buffet for this back wall. The husband does really great photography, so I thought this was a great spot for a large piece of landscape photography to bring in some of those blues, and those greens, and repeat that throughout the space.

But of these three options, what do you guys think? Which one would you choose?

This is the one that client went with here. We’ve got this option here, we’ve got this option here, we’ve got this option here. Which one would you guys choose? I’d love to know, but hopefully, for those of you struggling with corner fireplaces, I know around here that was a really big thing builders did, and it is a really challenging thing, because it’s not cheap, it’s not easy, it’s very expensive to move those fireplaces, so we have to work with them. By breaking up your room like this, it can really help you to work around those corner fireplaces, and I hope this video gave you some ideas on how to do that.