Wilcor Homes Design Tip: Clean Up Your Mantle With A Fireplace Wire Conduit

With an open concept design, the Great Room is often adjacent to the kitchen and dining room, which makes this area the hub or centre of the home. Often, people like to make the fireplace the focal point by placing their TV over the mantle but this can pose an issue to those who like clean and tidy sightlines…WIRES & CABLES!

In working with some clients on a custom design, we came up with a solution…A WIRE CONDUIT.

Read on to learn more.

The Fireplace as an Audio Visual Hub

We live in a place where sitting around a cozy fire is a hot spot for many months of the year and then when things warm up outside, we have hockey playoffs. [Go Oilers, go!] Which means more time inside watching TV.

  • Great Room where families gather
  • Adjacent to the kitchen makes it the heart of the home
  • TV over the mantle is a natural focal point

Challenges For Wiring Your Screens Over A Fireplace

If you decide to mount your TV over the fireplace, you will have cables and wires running to a receiver and then to your TV and power source. You will also need to hang your TV and if you have stone running all the way up the fireplace chase, that means drilling into rock which can make some people nervous. If you have not planned for this in the building phase of your home, you will come across some challenges.

  • Google search for hiding wires by a fireplace gives many pages of DIY hacks such as zip ties, cord clips and plastic tubes which will tidy the clutter but not make it disappear
  • So much nicer to have it built right into the fireplace face or fireplace surround

How To Plan For A Clean Entertainment Space

If you have the luxury of building your home, here are a few things to think about as you design your fireplace area:

  • Size of TV- Make sure it does not dominate the entire space above the mantle. You want some wall or rock framing the TV.
  • Power for the TV- What power does your system need? What outlet height is best for your space?
  • Cable access for HDMI audio and or coaxial cables- Do you need to access these cables?
  • Conduit to house cabling from the screen- This needs to be installed at the time your electrician runs the wires in your home.
  • Think about where the receiver and other devices will be stored- A cabinet next to the fireplace can be fed by the conduit.
  • Another option is to have wiring back through the walls to an AV room in the basement.

The Finished Product

Below shows one way our team at Wilcor Homes finished a fireplace. You can see the wires and conduit above the mantle which then leads to both sides near the bottom of the fireplace. Our stone mason even cut a piece of real rock to cover the hole on the side that will not be utilized by the homeowners.

Let us know what you think of this idea in the comments below or if you have any other concepts for hiding the wires.

Spring Lake Ranch  has a few remaining lots for sale, which you can find here. Custom builds can be done with any builder of your choosing.

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Sarah Corker

Sarah has been designing homes for more than 15 years, specializing in custom homes in Edmonton, Alberta and surrounding areas. She loves collaborating with her clients to build stunning, yet functional homes that will age gracefully as design trends come and go. She loves working with natural materials, such as rock and wood and then coupling them with modern building technology and design.

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