Look! TV Mounted Above Fireplace

There are lots of places to place a flat screen when you're willing to look to your walls for support. Jonathan Craddock and his wife decided the empty spot above their fireplace was the best place for their 37" Philips Ambilight LCD and we have to agree that it was a good decision.

Before they could mount their TV though, they had to gut their living room and install a fireplace. After the jump some shots of their space during and after construction along with info on their wireless media server and streaming Xbox.

"There's a line at the beginning of the TV Series Frasier where he tries to explain his flat to his father, 'It's a style of decorating -- it's called eclectic.'," Jonathan tells us. "The theory behind it is, if you have really fine pieces of furniture, it doesn't matter if they match, they will go together.

My wife Wendy and I both loved the show and his apartment, and whilst we'll probably never afford anything like it, that quote pretty much encapsulates our feelings on interior design. (That, and a taste for California modern minimalism!)"

Wendy and Jonathan ended up gutting their mid-terraced house in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. "I'd just removed a wooden trim that used to frame the 'arch' between the living room and dining area. Opened it up about 4 inches all round. The old gas fire is visible to the right. This is where we built the false chimney breast for the new TV and fire. The old sofas, huddled in the middle of the room for protection, eventually got sold. Someone came and collected them using a farm cattle transporter."

"The flame effect's not real. We wanted to avoid too much heat directly below the TV, so we chose an electric fire that blows heat downwards. The fire sends flame coloured light up through white pebbles and somehow animates it."

"The hi-fi set up is probably considered the basic end of the hi-fi market. It's a Cambridge Audio DVD player, which doubles as a pretty decent CD player, a Marantz amplifier, and below is an Xbox Mediacentre connected via a wireless bridge. An old PC in the loft serves as a file server; I just VNC into it if ever I need to. Otherwise, I just dump movies and MP3s to its discs."

Photos: Jonathan Craddock

Comments (9)

Any word on how flat-screen TVs do above a hot fireplace? Does it compromise their lifespan or electronics?

People who are serious about home theater will discourage mounting the TV above the fireplace, not because of heat issues but because the verticle angle of view is too high. Ideally, the TV should be placed so that the center of the screen is at eye-level, and the top of the screen should fall somewhere between 15-35 degrees from the horizontal plane.

Yes, there has actually been studies looking into this stuff and the results were used to come up with various THX and other cinema certifications. I guess it doesn't matter to the casual viewer but you will be doing a disservice by mounting a high-quality TV at a suboptimum viewing angle.

The above comment is correct. Besides it possibly being uncomfortable to have to look up to watch the TV, the viewing angle on LCD flat screen TV's is limited. It's an issue as you move off to the side of the TV and when viewing the TV from above or below. The optimal viewing angle varies from TV to TV, but the quality of the image definitely deteriorates as you move off-axis. Most LCD TV specifications include a spec for the viewing angle.

Newer high-quality LCD screens have much better viewing angles, so that reduces the side-view problem.

Before mounting my LCD above my mantel-less gas fireplace, I did some heat tests to make sure that the heat above the fireplace didn't exceed the operating temperatures specified by the manufacturer.

In my small apartment, placing the TV above the fireplace made a HUGE difference in furniture arrangement & use of space. Best change I've made since moving in.

Looks great. Doesn't seem like it would be too high. Perhaps a little higher than optimum but I wouldn't mind it, and it's much better than some heights I've seen.

I'm mounting my television a little higher than eye level just so I can put my head back on my couch and relax.

That doesn't make any sense.. putting it higher and sitting on the couch would increase the angle from the top of the television..

The Craddock's fireplace is short and blows the heat downward. I would have mounted their TV lower, perhaps 6-8" above the fireplace and it would make the viewing experience much better without disrupting the layout.

I'm curious how everyone else that hung their tv above the fireplace handled the cabling. I've hung mine avoe my fireplace and have had holes in my walls for months to pull the cables through, but not sure I have all the cables I should consider having (hdmi, cable box, so on and so forth). Plus I need to wait to purchase a cabinet to store all the equipment and see the height to determine where the hole in the wall should be for the cables to come through. Anyone have any opinions on this? Also, I am not familiar if there are any products that help make the cabling look nicer coming out of the walls. I'm not a "home theater" person and trying to figure this stuff out is confusing.