How do you design a feature fireplace for a modern residence" Hopefully, you'll start with something simple but work to get the scale and proportion right. That's the hard part - scale and proportion.

Let’s pretend for a moment that you are designing a modern style house and you are in the middle of trying to figure out how your fireplace mantle will look. This exact scenario probably happens every single day somewhere on the planet. I am here to tell you that the following is not what you should be considering:There are a lot of things about this mantel that bothers me – but since I think I’m a nice guy, I am going to preface my comments by saying that the person who put this mantel together is probably a nice and talented person … but this mantel is not for me.So. Much. Going. On!!In addition to asking you to ignore the numbers in that picture (I didn’t create them),  I’m going to ask you to ignore the fact that this isn’t even a fireplace.Simply put, the scale and proportion of this entire fireplace surround and mantel are wrong, and the style is something I really don’t care for. Everything about this fireplace, all the visual clues (except the brick and the surrounding furniture) would lead me to believe that this non-fireplace is humongous. I will confess how I found this image: I went to Google and typed in “Fireplace Mantel DIY” … of course it’s a DIY mantelpiece. You can probably figure o...