The Great TV Over Fireplace Debate Continues!

I will never back down.

Photo by Zeke Ruelas

Well, I’m back to yell at you about televisions again. My friend Emily wrote an eloquent and funny rebuttal to my original essay about hating TVs over fireplaces and she made some great points. I think the main point she made was that people should just do whatever makes them happy and what works in the space. I’m generally not a fan of design rules because there are always situations where they will need to be broken. That being said, if we can all agree on a truth (ie it’s better not to have the TV over the fireplace) then we can approach designing our homes the best possible way. My way!

As you may remember, this whole debate came to mind when a Blond-Hunk-With-Rippling-Abs-Dripping-In-Refreshingly-Cold-Water-For-No-Reason-Because-There’s-Literally-No-Pool-Closeby told me he was PURPOSEFULLY building a fireplace so he’d have a place to put the TV. This is the exact Design Calamity I am advocating against. This is the only battle I care about. This debate is my entire personality.

I received a ton of submissions from people asking for TV placement help. And while I would love to include all of them, my mom told me these posts were too long so I selected five that I felt described pretty typical challenges people face when they are figuring out where to put their televisions.

Now, before we begin, let’s make sure we’re aligned on what the rules are:

1. As the designer, I have no responsibility to work with your existing furniture. It’s not my fault that you assumed the only place for your TV was above the fireplace and thus bought furniture that orients the room that way. That’s on you.

2. It’s also not my responsibility if your house wasn’t designed with a TV in mind. What we’re talking about right now is creating an ideal space. The fact that we’re all here talking about interior design means we are talking about something that is ultimately a luxury. Being people that have the privilege to care not only that we HAVE shelter but also care about what it looks like means we’re not talking about the necessities of life. So while it may seem classist to say something like “tear down that wall and build the TV into shelving,” we’re talking about an idealized world where we are aspiring to perfection. Not everyone gets to do that so I may make recommendations that might be out of budget for people (including me) if I think it’s the right thing to do. What I’m trying to prevent is the assumption that TVs are supposed to be over fireplaces so that culture, architecture, and design slowly ends this awful, terrifying practice. In some cases preventing TVs over fireplaces begins in the construction phase of a home, as you’ll see below.

3. This debate is meant to be fun. It’s ultimately a very niche and specific topic that literally DOES NOT MATTER AT ALL. Which is why it’s so fun to argue about! We have so few things we can playfully yell at each other about so I relish an opportunity to debate such frivolous things.

Okay, on to the wonderful readers who sent in photos!

Katy

The story here is that Katy’s husband wanted the TV over the fireplace while she wanted it where it currently sits.

Verdict: Katy is right and her husband is wrong and should buy her something expensive or perhaps rescue an American Staffordshire Terrier that looks just like Satie as a reward.

You guys really did a good job with these submissions and you’ll see below that I, too, was stumped on a few of them. I’d say of the rooms I saw, I was able to figure out where to move the TV in about 75% of them. The rest would have required construction, light to heavy, in order to move the TV off the fireplace wall.

In all honesty, I think Katy’s husband has a point about the TV going over the fireplace for one reason: it’s awkward to walk into the side of a flat screen. For this reason, I think it’s super smart they wall-mounted their TV.

An interesting outcome of my previous essay (and Emily’s response) was hearing that there’s a contingent of people out there who HATE wall-mounted TVs. I don’t really understand this as to me it seems like the best way to get the TV close to the wall, therefore making it protrude less into the room and making it take up way less space. If you’re one of those people, please comment what exactly about a wall-mounted TV makes you mad.

My recommendation here would be that Katy consider surrounding her TV with some wall mounted shelving or consider the lower-profile Frame TV (which sits flat on the wall rather than sticking out).

I do, however, want to give a little caveat to my Frame recommendation. I love the design of that TV but the user interface is pretty annoying. There’s a default channel that’s ALWAYS the first thing you see when you turn it on and it’s nearly impossible to figure out how to change it. For months, I had some obnoxious game show where people were screaming their goddamn heads off while jumping on inflatable wheels and falling into kiddie pools. Now for some reason it’s stuck on Fox News. No thanks, Girlfriend!

Additionally, Samsung really pushes you to use their streaming interface. I don’t want my TV to have a perspective on what it wants me to watch. I want it to just stream what I feel like watching. I loved the Apple TV interface but using it with the Frame adds too many layers of navigation and ultimately isn’t worth it. The TV is too smart for its own good so using it can be cumbersome to people like me with Apple brains (meaning I was raised with Apple products and have never used a PC). People who grew up using PCs might be able to use it more expertly but the system’s logic does not work with my brain.

The other thing I don’t like about this TV (Samsung, you should have just sent me these TVs for free so I wouldn’t talk shit about them on the internet, your bad!) is the art mode. Firstly, there’s a very limited number of art pieces included with the TV. You have to buy them if you want better/more. Second, leaving your TV on all day so it looks like art is possibly one of the most disgustingly wasteful things you could do. This is a great TV for influencers like me because we can turn it on for photos but other than shoots, the only time I have the art mode on is when I have guests (and I usually don’t even do it then). We are living in a time where we are constantly thinking of more and more ways to waste while we are literally watching the planet melt. So yeah, it’s cool that it looks like art but it also is a huge waste to leave your TV on all day. Bad!

Finally, and this is super nitpicky, you have to BUY the frame for the Frame TV if you don’t like the default black one it comes with. The frame for my 65” Frame TV was almost $300. On top of the expense of the TV, that feels so stupid. If the point of the TV is the frame, like it’s literally called THE FRAME, then you should be able to choose your own frame color INCLUDED when you buy this expensive TV. All that being said, she does photograph really well:

Photo by Tessa Neustadt

Photo by Sara Tramp

So yeah, a Frame TV might look good in here to get the TV closer to the wall (a gallery wall also would look great around this TV). But Frame TVs are not a perfect solution.

Lacey

This room was pretty simple for me. The family used to have their tube TV built into a cute little cabinet to the left of the fireplace. But the room is already oriented in a way that they could easily move the TV to the wall opposite the sectional. Easy breezy!

See? Wasn’t that easy? They already have the console for it! Lacey also expressed some annoyance at the custom cabinet that formerly housed their TV. I think the best solution here would just be to add doors to it. I think a company like Semihandmade could make some nice doors and transform that from an awkward open cabinet to a chic custom cabinet.

Jamie

Now, this is one of the TV conundrums that will be easy to fix but will likely require some new furniture. Currently, the TV is sitting too high for comfortable viewing.

My recommendation would be to move the TV to the wall opposite the fireplace. I think the ideal layout for this room would be two large scale comfy sofas facing each other on either side of the fireplace. Alternatively, you could just keep the sectional and add one or two large scale swivel chairs where the large arm chair currently sits. I have loved this Pottery Barn version for years and think that could make a great addition to the room.

Savannah

I love this one because it totally stumped me AND I identified so strongly with the design challenges of the home, which looks to be a very similar era as Londo Lodge (built in 1992). Like Londo Lodge, it seems whoever designed this house did so without really thinking about how furniture would be laid out (I’m looking at the open railing and the breakfast bar that awkwardly doesn’t have space for seating). At Londo Lodge, my “living room” literally didn’t have space for living room furniture so I decided to swap my living and dining spaces to put the TV in what was formerly the dining room. The previous owners had their TV in front of a window. You heard that right IN FRONT OF A WINDOW IN THE MIDDLE OF NATURE WHERE THE VIEW IS LITERALLY THE WHOLE POINT OF THE HOUSE.

This brings me to a very important point. You don’t have to have a TV in your living room. If you’re lucky enough to have an extra room (rare, I know but this will be relevant to some people) you can create a cozy TV lounge and not have to look at your TV during the day. If you can do this, do it! I think I mentioned before that I grew up without TV so I’m used to having a formal living room with no TV in it. When we got older and my siblings moved out of the house my parents got a TV and we put it in my sister’s old bedroom, which we transformed into a cozy TV room. It’s very luxurious to have your TV tucked away so that your main living space can be used for classy things like reading books and drinking an entire bottle of wine alone while crying about the past.

I can’t really see where the TV would go in here without a major renovation. If this were my forever home, I’d either stick the TV in another room or figure out how to build it into the cabinetry around the fireplace. I can’t tell from the photos but it looks like the TV could potentially fit into one of the nooks that flank the TV. But I wouldn’t want to look at that so I’d replace the open shelving with cabinets that close so when you’re not watching TV you don’t have to look at it.

This is a GREAT space with so much natural light. But I think if Savannah is serious about getting that TV somewhere that ISN’T over the TV she’s gonna have to spend some money on drywall work and custom cabinetry. Maybe a good project to keep on the horizon as this is a lovely, airy space!

David

Last but not least, WHAT IN HIGH HELL IS GOING ON? Like this person sent ME an email asking ME advice when their house is literally prettier than mine? I AM NOT WORTHY! I love this room and you guys have done an incredible job designing it! The Frame TV over the fireplace is definitely not offensive but I do think I would move the TV to the wall across from the fireplace.

For seating, I’d reconfigure this wonderful loungey sectional into two sofas facing each other. I know I already gave that recommendation to someone else but I love sofas facing each other in front of a fireplace. Someday it is my dream to have two sofas facing each other in front of a fireplace. I actually have already designed the Londo Lodge great room (part of an addition I want to build when I am rich and fancy) to have two sofas facing each other.

This solve feels pretty obvious to me. Another thing reorienting the sofas would do is opening the space up to the pathway behind where the sofa currently sits. Right now the living room feels closed off because the sofa is blocking the fireplace. I can’t really tell from the photos but it looks like you might be able to reconfigure the existing sectional pieces into what you need. If that’s the case, however, I think you still need a few bigger, cushier chairs to round out the conversation circle.

Jeremy

I loved this one because it stumped me way more than all the others. This house looks like a similar era of the 1929 Craftsman Bungalow I was raised in. Those old houses have so many cool and weird features: built-in ironing boards, phone nooks, and doors everywhere! So they weren’t necessarily built with modern technology in mind.

Obsessed with the dog. GIVE ME THE DOG. So cute! (I freak out over any dog that bears even a slight resemblance to Satie). The only place I can think to put the TV in here is a space that breaks another one of my main pet peeves: The TV being the first thing you see when you walk into a home. See below:

Another issue with putting the TV across from the front door is where would you put seating? Jeremy mentioned he was considering creating two separate seating areas, which might be the best solution because of the long shape of the room. I might create a more formal seating area next to the fireplace and put a larger, loungier seating space where the smaller sofa currently sits. There are so many doors in this room that it looks like there are only two spaces where a large TV would fit. It may surprise you that I actually love a huge TV. My dream (sorry, I have many dreams!) is to someday own the 75” or 85” version of my Frame TV (Hi, Samsung, give me one so I will stop being mean to you, K?).

Of all the rooms, however this one feels like the TV should probably go over the fireplace. If it were my house, I’d probably just suck it up and put the TV opposite the entry door. Where it currently sits, it dominates the fireplace vignette and the plastic sheen of the large TV screen takes away from the warmth of the brick.

So, there you have it! Proof that you almost always SHOULD NOT put your TV above the fireplace. But also proof that you have to do what’s right for your house, your desires, and your budget. This is clearly not how I would approach designing for actual clients (without measurements, no 3D renderings, etc) but I hope it gets your brain thinking about some creative solutions to your design conundrums.

Which brings me to my final thought. This isn’t really about TVs over fireplaces. It’s about examining ALL the creative solutions to a design problem before assuming the conventional/popular idea is the right one. As I’ve said in the past, many hideous and disgusting things have been widely accepted design conventions in the past (shiny mahogany cabinets, anyone?). So just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s right. And often, it means the exact opposite.

I COMMAND YOU TO CONTINUE THIS NEVER-ENDING WAR IN THE COMMENTS!