During the winter, our homes become a centre of warmth and comfort. All we want during the cold, dreary days is to come back home, turn the heating on, and curl up on the sofa with a lovely hot cuppa. There’s a lot of ways to warm yourself up, from turning the heating on to wrapping up in a soft blanket. But the best way to feel really cosy, and to really appreciate the haven of your home, is to turn on the electric fireplace.
Electric fireplaces exist to bring all the charm and comfort of a real home hearth, without any of the safety issues and mass maintenance. Most electric fireplaces use a fan system to suck in cold air from the room, warm it using heated coils, and blow the heated air back into the room. This allows you to choose the amount of heat coming from your electric fireplace with inbuilt thermostatic controls. This isn’t just limited to a ‘warm’ and ‘hot’ setting, many electric fires, such as the Arbour Electric Suite, include flame-only settings, so even once you're nice and toasty, you can turn the heat off and still enjoy the atmospheric flames.
With no need for real fuel or fire, electric fireplaces are cleaner, safer, and better for your health. The bodies of electric fireplaces are cool-to-the-touch, you won’t need to spend time cleaning up ashes of burnt wood or coal, and there are no health risks from smoke flowing through your home. But then, these are all benefits of bog standard electric heating. Why choose an electric fireplace over regular heating?
Firstly, efficiency. Electric fireplaces will heat only the room it is placed in, so instead of turning on the heating for the whole house, when you’ll just be spending the evening getting cosy in one room, an electric fireplace is the sure choice. This also helps you decide which electric fireplace is best for you and your home; different styles of electric fireplaces are designed to heat different sized rooms. Mantlepiece electric fireplaces are better suited to larger rooms as they are able to project heat out further and at a faster pace. For smaller rooms, where a grand mantlepiece would quickly make the room uncomfortably hot, small free-standing stoves are just what you need.
Why else would you choose an electric fireplace? Style. While authentic fireplaces come with masses of safety and maintenance drawbacks, no one can deny that they always look fantastic. The glow of the fire creates a beautifully warm atmosphere, and artistically designed fireguards serve as home décor when the fire is not in use. A staple of electric fireplaces is to have a mix of LEDs and mirrors to create a display in order to mimic flames helping to bring that traditional, cosy glow. If you want something a bit quirkier to fit in with your more modern decor, choose an electric fireplace with colour changing flames. Many fireplaces also feature replica fuel as part of their design, such as fake burnt logs or fake coal, to help keep
an authentic atmosphere alive. Other fireplaces are opportunistic with the lack of a requirement for fuel, and so explore creativity in decoration, with fires such as the buying a heater and sleeping warm in winter.
