Standard Fireplace Mantel Height — How High Should A Fireplace Mantel Be?

A fireplace mantelis the top of the fireplace. It’s the part where you put your decorative items and firewood. The height of a fireplace mantel is a question that many homeowners ask themselves when they are looking to buy one. A high mantel can make your room look more elegant and sophisticated, but it can also be dangerous if you have kids or pets around. So, what should you do? A fireplace mantel should be high enough so that it doesn’t get in your way but low enough so that it doesn’t fall on anyone!

Standard Fireplace Mantel Height

The short response is that the normal chimney shelf stature is 54 inches. Nonetheless, because it’s the standard doesn’t mean that it’s the right height for your chimney. A few variables go into deciding the best height for your chimney shelf.

Room Size

When picking your chimney shelf, the main thing to consider is the size of the room. Then, you want to think about scale and extent. The bigger the room is, the more significant your chimney shelf can be. The more modest the room is, the lower the shelf should be.

For instance, a room under 120 square feet will look best when the shelf is around four feet off the ground. Enormous rooms 180 square feet or bigger look better when the shelf is around six feet from the floor.

Ceiling Height

The normal roof height is nine feet. This compares with the normal shelf height of 54 to 56 inches. The highest point of the shelf should be 4.5 feet from the floor. It’s critical to take note that the highest point of the shelf is the mark of estimation. You need to keep up with the stature over the shelf. If you place the lower part of the shelf at the 4.5-foot mark, then a shelf with face tallness of six inches will hoist the highest point of the shelf to five feet.

This little six-inch shift can lose the room’s extent and cause the chimney shelf to feel gracelessly high. Regardless of what your roof height is, there should be around three feet between the highest point of the shelf and the roof. This will give you adequate space to organize your style on the shelf or hang a little TV or fine art on the divider. Furthermore, a space more modest than this will make an optical illusion where the roof gets pulled down, making it lower than it is.

Mantel Depth

The shelf’s depth determines where it stands out from the wall. The depth of the shelf will impact its position in the chimney. At the very least, your shelf should not be shallower than three inches. Any more modest than this, and it won’t be worth having at all. A shallower depth can be closer to the chimney.

A more profound chimney requires you to move the shelf higher up on the divider. While picking the depth of your chimney shelf, think about the trail through the room, its format, and general size. You don’t need an excessively profound shelf broadening excessively far, making people stumble upon it. Rooms with little or no space to move around require a more shallow shelf, while rooms with more space to move around need a deeper shelf.

When you know how deep of a shelf you need, you can compute the shelf’s height. Follow this helpful guide for working out your shelf depth to height proportion.

1. 2 inches deep = 11 inches minimum height
2. 4 inches deep = 13 inches minimum height
3. 6 inches deep = 15 inches minimum height
4. 8 inches deep = 17 inches minimum height
5. 10 inches deep = 19 inches minimum height

Mantel Face Height

The substance of the shelf is its front edge. All in all, it’s how thick the shelf is. For the most part, chimney shelves have a face height of three to seven inches. The height of your shelf will depend on the size of the room and your roof stature.

More modest rooms with lower roof statures will look best with a more modest face height. Enormous rooms or those with additional tall roofs can uphold a higher shelf stature. Getting this estimation right is tied in with estimating your room and understanding how to scale your shelves to suit the space.

Mantel Construction

A normally failed to remember powerful element is the development of the shelf. The development of your shelf will direct how high you ought to mount the shelf. A case shelf is made of wood boards and is empty in the center. The slim wood boards are great at scattering heat so the shelf can be mounted nearer to the chimney.

On the off chance that your log shelf is five to seven inches thick, you’ll have to mount it higher. Assuming your shelf is made from another material, like stone, glass, or metal, then you’ll have to consider its capacity to endure heat and scatter that heat. Materials that are flammable or disseminate heat gradually should be mounted higher to help with safeguarding them.

Your Personal Preference

You want to do what satisfies you, and at long last, your house is only that, yours. These estimations and configurations run to the side. While planning your chimney, remember to think about your inclinations and tastes. If you love shelves that are produced using thick logs with a crude edge, then feel free to involve one for your shelves.

Assuming you have a widescreen TV and need a few extra inches on the divider, mount your shelf marginally lower to accommodate it. As long as you don’t make a security risk or disregard construction standards, you are allowed to do what you need in your home.

Fireplace Design

Whenever you have done your estimations, you want to consider the style of your chimney. That will impact the style and arrangement of your chimney mantel. Contemporary chimneys are huge wood boxes or shafts that sit about a foot over the highest point of the chimney.

The foreordained tallness of the chimney shelf is replaced with a more modern design. They have a spotless plan that has the wood set into the divider. Current chimney shelves will often have a marginally higher position to make more space around them to hold the smooth, open inclination that cutting-edge plan styles embrace.

TV Mounting Over The Fireplace Mantel

Assuming that you intend to drape a TV over your chimney shelf, you want to think about this while picking your shelf height. There should be sufficient room for the TV to hold tight to the divider. Also, ponder the future and assume you at any point wanted to redesign your TV to a bigger one. You don’t believe that your shelf should prevent you from overhauling.

Ordinarily, the lower part of the TV ought to be somewhere in the range of four and twelve inches over the shelf. The region over your chimney can without much of a stretch reach north of 100 degrees when you have a decent fire thundering. Higher is better with regards to warm. This can harm the delicate inner parts of a TV.

However, higher isn’t generally better for review comfort. Lower rooms where the couch is closer to the fireplace will benefit from the TV being put lower on the divider. Assuming you want to adjust the brightness and review the sound, take a stab at calculating the TV’s brightness. This can make it more agreeable to see the TV while permitting you to put it marginally higher to shield it from the brightness.

National Fire Protection Association Mantel Guidelines

It’s easy to get focused on the plan style and forget that there is a security perspective to your chimney. Your shelf needs to follow nearby construction regulations and fire security guidelines. The National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) suggests that your shelf be something like 12 inches away from the highest point of the firebox.

The justification behind this is to get the shelf away from the hotness and flares. Since most shelves are made of burnable materials, like wood, they can get hot and combust into blazes without actually coming into contact with the flares.

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