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The venerable fireplace doesn’t appear in every home the way it once did, but there are still an estimated 17.5 million of them in American homes. Of course, fireplaces still have a place in many people’s hearts from childhood memories of sitting by a fireplace at their own home or the home of a relative. Just as importantly, you can always add a fireplace to your home as part of a renovation. After all, Americans did purchase around 5 million homes just in 2022. Custom fireplaces can truly set your home apart, though. If you’re not sure what styles of custom fireplaces are out there, keep reading for some of your main options.
Traditional Fireplace
Have you ever walked into an older home and found yourself surprised that the fireplace works so well? You might have assumed that a 100-year-old stove just couldn’t hold up for all that time.
There is a decent chance that you’re right. Traditional fireplaces are expressly designed to blend in with a historical style of fireplace design.
Here’s the good news. You can get a traditional fireplace installed in your home today.
These fireplaces can help you achieve a specific look and feel that matches your design interests. If you want your home’s interior to resemble the design of a Tudor-style home, you can get a fireplace that will fit right in with that goal.
Even better, you can avoid burning wood if you’re worried about local fire codes or home safety. You can get a traditional fireplace that works off electricity or gas.
Energy Efficient Fireplace
These days, with inflation running high, energy efficiency is on a lot of minds. Sadly, the inherent beauty of wood-burning fireplaces does not include high efficiency. Wood-burning stoves generally offer the lowest energy efficiency of all fireplaces.
The good news is that you can still get an energy-efficient fireplace for your home. When used as supplemental heat, both electric and gas fireplaces offer relatively good efficiency.
Unfortunately, a head-to-head comparison isn’t terribly practical because of how the fireplaces generate heat. In the case of the electric fireplace, you generally get a 100 percent conversion of electricity to heat. Gas fireplaces typically top out at around 90 percent efficiency.
The catch is that gas fireplaces typically create more heat than electric fireplaces. That can lead to situations where you end up running an electric fireplace more or for longer than you would run a similar gas fireplace.
The good news is that either option will offer a relatively energy-efficient option for generating supplemental heat in your home.
Electric Fireplace
Setting aside the energy efficiency question, electric fireplaces have their charms as a custom fireplace option. Unlike wood-burning fireplaces or many gas fireplaces, you have dramatically more discretion about where you put an electric fireplace.
Electric fireplaces don’t need a vent, so you can potentially put them almost anywhere in the house. You don’t need a chimney or vent, just a viable power source for the fireplace.
As a bonus, these will work in almost every home. A custom option can let you turn your electric fireplace into a conversation piece that occupies pride of place in almost any room.
Gas Fireplace
While gas fireplaces don’t offer the same flexibility as electric fireplaces, they aren’t without their charms. Right at the top, they’re viable options in most homes since natural gas and propane are widely available.
Gas fireplaces also offer you a lot of choices in terms of design options. You can get versions that operate as sleek, standalone pieces or ones that mimic traditional fireplaces.
If you go with a traditional fireplace design, you can even get a custom fireplace mantle to accent the design. You can also get truly custom gas fireplaces that dovetail exactly with a specific interior design approach that you take with your home.
Multi-Side Design
While most homeowners opt for fireplaces that sit against a wall or on a wall, that’s not the only way to go. You can get enclosed gas fireplaces with three or even four sides.
These custom pieces can sit in the center of the room to draw the eye and spark conversations. You can even deploy these multi-sided fireplace designs in more than one room of your home.
For example, you could put a larger four-sided design in your living room and a smaller, three-sided design in a den or a game room.
Suspended Design
While most people think of a fireplace as something that sits at ground level, that doesn’t mean it’s the only way to go. You can take things in a whole new direction with a suspended design.
These designs forgo a traditional base and instead hang from your wall. Granted, this isn’t a wood-burning design, but it is a custom fireplace that will set your home apart from those of your neighbors and friends.
Installation Considerations
Custom fireplaces are somewhat different than other fireplaces when it comes to installation. Custom fireplaces are typically custom-built. This means that you will face a gap in time between finalizing the design and getting the fireplace installed.
While you will typically get a completion estimate, it’s not something that you should expect by the end of the week.
Custom designs may also call for extra renovations in the rooms where they will be installed. You may need new wiring, gas lines, venting, or even a chimney put in place before you can install the actual fireplace.
Custom Fireplaces and You
For those who want a fireplace but aren’t entirely sold on the existing designs they’ve seen, custom fireplaces may offer the solution. You can get custom fireplaces that use wood, gas, or electricity.
You can also get fireplaces that offer a truly custom end product, such as multi-side designs, suspended designs, or designs focused on energy efficiency.
You should make a point of getting completion and installation timeline estimates for your custom fireplace before committing.
Dreifuss Fireplaces offers custom fireplaces for residential and commercial locations in the Philadelphia area. For more information about our custom fireplaces, contact Dreifuss Fireplaces.
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