Carol's CasaBe it ever so humble … home sweet home

Many of the houses in the world have liv­ing rooms in which the focal point is the fire­place. The man­tel­piece of the fire­place gives you an occa­sion and a spot for more dec­o­ra­tion for your home. You can choose to leave the man­tel­piece empty or add dif­fer­ent items on it as well as above it to cre­ate a cer­tain type of dec­o­ra­tive effect to go with the rest of the room. In order to get the best arrange­ment with and around the fire­place you can use dif­fer­ent items like pho­tos, pic­tures or stat­ues, man­tel sconces, vases or other dec­o­ra­tions, can­dles and flow­ers. If in the past fire­place man­tels were meant for heat­ing and cook­ing and other domes­tic activ­i­ties, in the present they set the atmos­phere and the theme, if you want, of a room. Very often peo­ple turn to man­tel sconces to add to the effect cre­ated through the other dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments on the mantel.

There are dif­fer­ent ways of arrang­ing the man­tel area; you can think of sym­met­ri­cal, asym­met­ri­cal or radial arrange­ments of the lit­tle pho­tographs, lit­tle mir­rors and man­tel sconces on the wall above the fire­place. You may want to place a big mir­ror or paint­ing on the wall above the fire­place; you should place this cen­trally and then attach two man­tel sconces on the sides of it at the same height. When you use man­tel sconces, can­dle sconces, track light­ing or spot light­ing, make sure that you do not dimin­ish the qual­ity of the focal point because of inap­pro­pri­ate arrange­ment of the lights. If your room has high ceil­ing then you need to increase the height of man­tel sconces. Even if you do not want to use a mir­ror or paint­ing as focal point above the fire­place, you can still use two man­tel sconces to frame a space.

When you decide to apply man­tel sconces in the fire­place area you can either do it your­self or ask spe­cial­ists � elec­tri­cians or inte­rior designers, for advice or help. Any­way, to find the right man­tel sconces for your room, you can visit spe­cial­ized stores or e-stores, to see the vari­ety of man­tel sconces avail­able, to com­pare designs and prices and then decide on the model that meets your needs and pref­er­ences. The wide vari­ety of man­tel sconces you will find in stores might make it dif­fi­cult to choose but, on the other hand, the ben­e­fit of this mul­ti­tude of designs and styles offers every buyer a chance to find the suit­able man­tel sconces. Sconces in gen­eral and man­tel sconces, in par­tic­u­lar, come in a vari­ety of styles, shapes, col­ors and mate­ri­als. You can choose from the coun­try, clas­si­cal, tra­di­tional, mod­ern and fan­tasy styles whichever suits your theme, style or taste.