The place for fire

Shoparound: There is nothing like a fireplace to make a home warm and cheery and nowhere like Belle Cheminée on Dublin's Capel Street to stoke the flames of your imagination with fireplace designs.

For the last 20 years, Belle Cheminée has stocked antique and reproduction fireplaces in its city centre showrooms as well as offering a fireplace alteration, restoration and custom-made service. It has over 100 different fireplace styles from Victorian, Tudor, French and Georgian to contemporary on show. Wood-surround mantelpieces cost a couple of hundred euro and pretty cast-iron fireplaces from €950. A set of matching Louis XVI speckled marble fireplaces sell for €55,000.

One of the most popular designs in the shop's contemporary range is the Bolection, a simple limestone mantelpiece with a linear simplicity that lends itself to a contemporary setting, according to Margaret O'Reilly from Belle Cheminée.

Along similar lines is the Cambridge, which is also good for less formal settings and retails for around 4,500. For people looking for a more traditional look, the Victorian-style Irish Corbet fireplace in a honed marble finish, also known as the "Protestant fireplace", is the preferred option and is priced at around 4,850.

This style of fireplace would have been found in grand houses in Dún Laoghaire or Rathgar, according to O'Reilly. White marble would have been used in the good rooms to the front of the house and cheaper black marble was more common in the back rooms, she explains.

Going upmarket there is a wide choice of Adam-style, Tudor and stunning Bossi-style mantelpieces, with intricate marble inlay, which cost in the region of €80,000.

When building, the earlier you begin thinking about your fireplace the better, according to O'Reilly, who says that many builders leave very small spaces, which limits options for homeowners. The standard in new homes is a 16 or 18inch space, but she advises people to try and get their builder to leave a 1m space.

Belle Cheminée also stocks a large selection of marble fountains, statues, urns and animals as well as a good range of inexpensive reproduction antique gold mirrors starting at 350.

Belle Cheminée, 106 Capel Street, Dublin 1, 01-8724122