Electric fireplaces are a flexible type of fireplace that can be placed in many locations around a home, but can also be found integrated into a number of pieces of furniture such as TV stands and mantels.
An electric fireplace can therefore be designed into the décor of a home, but can you paint an electric fireplace to help it fit in?
An electric fireplace unit itself cannot be painted. The furniture an electric fireplace is built into, such as TV stands and mantels, may be paintable depending on the materials used.
Not all electric fireplaces can be painted. We’ve explained which types of electric fireplace you may be able to paint and which ones you can’t. We also show you what type of fireplace we have and whether it can be painted as an example.
Can You Paint An Electric Fireplace?
We have an electric fireplace stove and we bought it in black because it works well with the modern look that we’re going for with our home, and also because it fits in with the black surround and mantel of the open fireplace in our living room.
We also have an open fireplace in our kitchen and we’re looking paint the surround white.
If we wanted to also change the color of our electric fireplace to match the color of the fireplace surround would we be able to paint our electric fireplace?
It would be difficult to paint an electric fireplace unit.
This is because electric fireplaces work differently to other types of fireplace and aren’t designed to be painted.
Depending on the type and model of electric fireplace it may be constructed out of metal and or/plastic. Our electric fireplace stove has a metal body with plastic parts throughout such as for the legs and control covers.
There’s no real fire in an electric fireplace and the flame effects are produced artificially, while the heat is generated by a space heater.
In a real wood burning stove the heat is transferred through the body of the stove and out into the room. Continuous use can cause the paint on a wood burning stove to flake or lose color, and so they are designed to be paintable to help keep them looking nice.
We have a stove that we get re-painted every couple of years to keep it looking like new, and have a small range of colors to choose from.
We’re therefore able to paint our real wood burning stove, but in comparison we’re unable to paint our electric fireplace stove because it isn’t built in a way that can allow it to be re-painted.
As the flames and heat are produced artificially, the body of an electric fireplace doesn’t get hot and so isn’t designed to be painted like a real stove.
This applies to the majority of other types of electric fireplace. Electric fireplace units themselves typically can’t be painted but in certain types of electric fireplace you’re able to paint the furniture that the fireplace is housed in.
We’ve explained what an electric fireplace is in more detail here along with the different types of electric fireplace you can buy, but essentially the forms of electric fireplace that can potentially be painted include:
- Electric fireplace mantels
- Electric fireplace TV stands
- Electric fireplace inserts with surround.
Electric Fireplace Mantels
Electric fireplace mantels are essentially an electric fireplace housed in a fireplace surround.
They are designed to look like a traditional open fireplace, and the great thing about electric fireplace mantels is that you can bring the open fireplace experience into any room in your home.
Electric fireplace mantels can be placed up against a wall in your home to create the look and feel of a traditional open fireplace.
The electric fireplace unit itself can’t be painted but many people remove the fireplace (or mask it) and paint the surround a different color.
This video shows how you can paint the wood surround of an electric fireplace mantel:
For more information on electric fireplace mantels see our complete buyers guide.
Electric Fireplace TV Stands
Electric fireplace TV stands are TV stands with an electric fireplace built into them.
These types of electric fireplace allow you to enjoy the look of flames while watching something, and help to reduce the amount of floor space taken up by integrating an electric fireplace and TV stand together.
Like with electric fireplace mantels, you won’t be able to paint the actual electric fireplace inside a TV stand but you can potentially paint the TV stand itself depending on the materials used to construct it.
See our guide to the best electric fireplace TV stands for more in-depth information about them.
Electric Fireplace Inserts
Electric fireplace inserts are designed to go into your existing open fireplace and covert it from another form of fireplace, such as wood burning, into electric.
An electric fireplace insert is designed to cover the entire opening of an open fireplace. If the unit is too small then a surround can be used to bridge the gap between the electric fireplace insert and the edge of the fireplace opening.
You won’t be able to paint the actual electric fireplace insert but you can potentially paint the surround for the open fireplace.
We recently renovated our kitchen and removed the old gas insert from the open fireplace. We’re currently looking to find the best electric fireplace insert for our kitchen fireplace, but we’ve taken off the surround and are thinking off painting it white to match the new white color of our kitchen walls.
Fireplace surrounds aren’t typically too hard to remove (we show you how to remove a fireplace surround here) as they can usually be found to be hollow.
We’ll simply need to sand this surround down and paint it to make our open fireplace look much nicer than before.
Electric fireplaces typically come in a black color, although like our electric fireplace stove, you can find some that come in different colors such as white.
Electric fireplace units themselves can’t typically be painted and so look for ways to be able to paint the furniture around it, whether it’s a surround, mantel or TV stand.
As electric fireplaces generally come in black, you can paint the furniture encasing it in a color that will compliment the black color of the fireplace.
We like the look of the black of an electric fireplace against the white of fireplace surround, and so for our kitchen electric fireplace this is the look that we’re going to go for.
Conclusion
To answer the question can you paint an electric fireplace:
- An electric fireplace unit itself cannot typically be painted.
- The furniture around an electric fireplace, such as surrounds, mantels and TV stands, can be painted to compliment both the décor of the room and the typically black color of an electric fireplace.
Further Reading
Electric Fireplace Buying Guides