Fireplace ideas for a country cottage style might include paneling, rustic mantels, and wrought iron accessories. You know how important it is to strike just the right note with any interior design element. A fireplace mantel is one of the more powerful of these elements. After all, fireplaces have been the focal point of rooms for hundreds of years.

Rustic mantels are especially welcoming. Perhaps this is because the style they evoke is generally functional and comfortable rather than formal. Think of the raised brick hearth so typical of old New England houses, or frontier homes. These fireplaces were used for both cooking and heating. This translates to home and hospitality.

Specific style choices in rustic mantels range from the rich red tones of a mesquite mantel in the desert southwest to the rough dark oak of a Connecticut farmhouse kitchen to the log mantel of an old Tennessee or Ohio mountain house. None of these styles are anything but welcoming. A rustic style usually blends the outdoors and in the indoors very effectively. Natural textures and design elements are common.

Design Motifs for Rustic Mantels

Most of us use fireplaces only three months of the year. The rest of the time, your fireplace may be a design element gone to waste. The wonderful thing about fireplaces, after all, is how flexible they are. Because the eye is drawn to them even subconsciously, they're a great place to display fresh, dried, or silk flower arrangements, candle groupings, and decorative items. Fireplace mantels are ideal showcases if you're a collector--whether of antique bottles, small sculptures, or perhaps hand-painted porcelain. Let your imagination go!