Wallpaper And Paint Fireplace Makeover

*This post was made possible by the generous support of Fancy Walls and features gifted product. All opinions are my own.

One of the things John and I were most excited about when we bought our new home was the wood-burning fireplace. It’s situated in the front formal living room of the house, and has a brick surround that matches the exterior of our ranch. The traditional wood moulding around the fireplace is so elegant and reminds me of the house I grew up in and loved. It’s a really special feature for us, so you can imagine our disappointment when we found out that it’s inoperable.

We hired a chimney sweeper to come clean inside the fireplace shortly after we moved in, and were told within about 20 minutes of his arrival that the fireplace wasn’t going to work in its current state. I don’t really know the specifics since it’s all pretty technical, but there’s a major fire risk because of the way the bricks are laid inside the chimney, and it would take a substantial amount of money to fix it in order to have a real wood-burning fire. The good news is that we could opt to spend a lot less money by putting gas logs in the fireplace, but that’s still about a $7,000 project that we can’t afford right now. So, we filled the fireplace with some decorative birch wood, and have accepted the fact that it will be a while before we’ll be enjoying those lovely ambient flames in our living room.

Of course, a little thing like a “condemned” tag on our existing chimney isn’t going to stop me from decorating our still-lovely fireplace. I spent the better part of a year brainstorming ideas, and came up with all sorts of options. Re-hiring our countertop fabricator to install a quartz surround that matches our kitchen, painting the brick, retiling the hearth…The list goes on and on. In the end, though, I decided to keep things simple and I opted for paint and peel-and-stick wallpaper to jazz up our “for looks” fireplace.

You can see above that I started by painting the wall a dark green color (“Homburg Gray” from Sherwin-Williams). I actually did this quite a while ago, but I’m still very much in love with the rich color and all the personality/dimension that it added to this room. With the wall finished, I turned my attention to the fireplace. I eventually got it in my head that we could get the look of a stone surround by using faux marble peel-and-stick wallpaper from my favorite online wallpaper resource, Fancy Walls. Since the fireplace doesn’t actually work, I knew the wallpaper would be safe for the long haul, and if we do ever decide to get the fireplace working, it will be a cinch to peel off the wallpaper to start fresh with a more fire-safe option.

You may have noticed a handful of photos above that I tried two different faux marble wallpaper samples for this project, but I ultimately decided on this particular pattern from Fancy Walls. I liked the warm-toned veins running through the other sample, but the cool colors in this marble-look pattern really seemed to sing beside our dark green walls. One thing I noticed, though, when the samples were up on the fireplace was that the marble pattern felt a little lost beside the cream-painted moulding on the fireplace. So, after placing my order for the wallpaper and while I waited for that to arrive, I took an afternoon to paint the entire outer edges of the fireplace surround and mantle the same dark green color as the wall. I love how this color-drenched effect modernizes our ultra-traditional fireplace, and I imagined that it would also act as a nice frame for our new marble wallpaper after I put it up.

It took no more than 30 minutes for me to peel and stick the new marble-look wallpaper to our wooden fireplace surround after it arrived, and I absolutely love the final results. First of all, I think the marble pattern looks so believable, especially from far away, but close-up, too. The cool tones in the new wallpaper also help make the fireplace look a little more cohesive with the white/gray-painted walls we have on either side of the living room, and alongside our gray sectional sofa. If you scroll back up to the “before” photo of our fireplace at the start of this post when the walls were painted a light/bright pistachio green and the fireplace was a plain cream color, you’ll probably notice that the fireplace just blended right in. Now, though, I think the fireplace is a true focal point of the space.

What do you think? Would you try a faux marble paper on your fireplace to get the look of stone without the expense of real marble? I realize that this only really works on a decorative fireplace, but I know so many folks who are in the same position as we are, and if I can help inspire just one of those people with this project, I’ll feel like it was a job well done. I also think that the faux marble surround has convinced me that I’ll spring for the real deal when it comes time to fix our fireplace once and for all, so this project has been hugely helpful in terms of the big picture plan for our living room design. I love the way it turned out and hope you do, too! Shop the wallpaper I used on the Fancy Walls website this way, and if you want even more inspiration, click back here to watch me use the same pattern to create a faux marble plinth side table from scratch.