The advent of home theater rooms is apparently helping the traditional, romantic fireplace to stage a comeback in the living room after being banished to a corner for decades as the TV came to dictate the room’s layout.
Buyers of custom-homes can’t get enough of their old-school charm and increasingly ornate and large fireplaces are popping up everywhere from the living room to the dining room, and even the kitchen. One North Shore home apparently has five of them and remote-controlled gas fireplaces are cropping up in the bedrooms of the well-heeled.
That’s according to Jeff Samuels of North Shore builder Samuel Homes. Flat-screen TVs with their sleekly minimalist lines are also being marketed as high art to hang on the wall as a design statement. In some homes that don’t have home theater systems, Samuel says, TVs are finding their way out of the boxy cabinet and onto the living room wall – above the fireplace.