Adding a fireplace to your existing home or designing your new home with a fireplace in mind can not only add a lot of enjoyment to your living area, it can also increase the value of your home considerably. Although many people are not really familiar with how to design a fireplace, it actually can be a very enjoyable task to undergo.

There are a couple of things that you're going to need to keep in mind whenever you are designing the fireplace. First of all, you should be familiar with any of the local building codes that regulate this type of action. You cannot learn this out of a book because almost every local area is going to have their own regulations for building a fireplace.

You also need to decide where you're going to include the fireplace and what type of fuel you are going to use. For example, if you decide to use gas in order to fuel your fireplace, you may need to have some exterior tanks in place if natural gas is not available in your area.

Another part of how to design a fireplace includes being creative enough to see the fireplace in your room, even before it is in existence. Most people tend to go for something that is a little bit more nostalgic, either a stone fireplace or perhaps a standard mantle with a fireplace insert. These can be extremely easy to design but you may want to take it a little bit further than this. It is possible for you to have a more nostalgic fireplace design and also include something that is a big contemporary.

The one thing that you want to be concerned about in this particular case, however, is that you do not choose something that is so contemporary that it will not keep up with the times.

Look into the possibility of working with an architect that will allow you to be creative in your fireplace design. Although they are going to take care of all of the specifications and making sure that it fits in well with the new building codes, you would be able to have the final say of how your fireplace is going to look.