The Living Room at Our Franklin Contemporary Remodel

The living room in the Westhaven home is organized around a single decision: a fireplace wall designed to be the room's reason to enter. Every other material choice in the room exists in relationship to it, and the fireplace earns that authority through material specificity and scale that less committed designs avoid.

Essential Graphite 24 x 48 concrete-look porcelain tile covers the fireplace surround in a deep charcoal surface with the tonal variation and texture of actual concrete. At 24 x 48, the tile format minimizes visible grout and allows the surface to read as a continuous architectural plane rather than a tiled pattern. The dark ground provides the visual depth that a fireplace wall in an open-plan home needs to anchor the room from across a distance. Alder Nutmeg vertical wood slats on the adjacent wall surface or surround panel introduce the warmth that the graphite tile requires as its counterpoint: the same Nutmeg-stained Alder that appears in the kitchen cabinetry, connecting the two spaces through a shared material tone. The sleek wood mantle completes the fireplace composition in a profile that reads as architectural rather than decorative.

The Siberia White Leathered Mikado quartz hearth brings the same leathered quartz surface from the kitchen countertops into the living room at the fireplace base, connecting the two rooms through a material that is unusual enough to be recognized across the home. Schluter Jolly TSDA Dark Anthracite provides the metal trim at every tile edge transition, completing the installation in a finish that reads as part of the design rather than a construction detail.

A great living room fireplace does not require the room to explain itself. This one does not.