WARMING TREND MAKE A FIREPLACE THE CENTER OF YOUR HOME.

Byline: Sandra Barrera Staff Writer

Fireplaces are not just for keeping the house warm anymore. These days, they're expressions in creativity.

Whether yours hangs from the ceiling or is decorated in an outcropping of stained concrete, glass tile or stainless steel, a fireplace anchors any room - inside or outside.

``When you walk into a room, that fireplace should stand out, it should pop out at you,'' says Kari Whitman, an interior designer who also hosts ``Dude Room,'' the Discovery Channel's home-improvement show for men. ``You want it to be a focal point.''

Some ideas?

--Re-create the rustic warmth of a ski lodge with a river-rock hearth and wood mantelpiece.

--Add a Southwestern flair to your room with a smooth, stucco-faced fireplace.

--Tile the fireplace to evoke the Arts and Crafts style of the late 19th century.

--Surround the fireplace in glass for unobstructed views.

No matter how you dress your fireplace, it should be as individual as the style of the room itself. So says Kelty Pike, an interior designer who works for the Home Depot in Las Vegas.

``If you have a very modern house, you might want to do something in glass or porcelain tiles,'' she says. ``You could do something in a high- polished granite or metal like a copper or a stainless steel.

``Again, stop and think that what you're doing is embellishing the front of the fireplace to say, 'Look at me, I'm special.' ''

Read on for more ideas:

In the mood

``Fire just creates instant romance or relaxation,'' says Whitman, who suggests one way to enjoy a fire's sensory effect is to install an open fireplace accessible from two rooms at once.

Between the dining room and kitchen is one of her favorite areas for installing a fireplace

``When you entertain, people usually congregate in the kitchen, and I think it's just really cool to have a fireplace in there,'' she says, adding ``at the top, you can put in a little pizza oven so you have an excuse to have it on even if it's hot outside.''

Gas fireplaces

The market for fireplaces has broadened from just the old wood burners everyone has come to know.

In particular, gas fireplaces are filling Southern California dwellings, with more than 1 million of the hearths sold nationwide last year alone.

A majority were direct-vent fireboxes like the kind manufactured by Town & Country Fireplaces, with its innovative ceramic glass panels that marked one of the greatest breakthroughs in fireplace technology when it was introduced in 2002.

``We call it the disappearing door,'' says Tom Pugh, an industry expert who chairs the government relations committee for the Hearth, Fireplace and Patio Association.

Direct-vent fireplaces are highly efficient because they take outside air into the combustion chamber and exhaust it without using any air from inside the room like wood-burning fireplaces.

``This is one of the more expensive fireplaces on the market, because the glass alone is $800 at the list price,'' says Pugh, who's also a spokesman for Town & Country Fireplaces. ``It's like anything else. Cadillacs cost more than Kias.''

A fire out back

More and more, homeowners are expanding their living spaces outdoors and adding weather-proof fireplaces, chimneys and fire pits to the patio.

``I always try to get my clients to put in an outdoor fireplace because I guarantee they will use it 100 times more than they'll use the indoor fireplace,'' Whitman says.

On a recent episode, she installed a fire pit in the back yard of actor Emilio Estevez's Malibu home. She filled the square, gas-powered pit with big rocks for radiating heat - especially on those chilly nights when Estevez is entertaining friends.

``I'm telling you, when he has a party, everybody is around that pit,'' Whitman says.

For a more reasonably priced alternative, try a pre-fab fire pit.

Sears carries the wood-burning Char-Broil Coffee Table Fire Bowl, which retails for $199.99, and is made of satin porcelain and sculpted cast iron.

Another option is the Central Park Outdoor Firepit, which retails for $149, and is available at Home Depot. The designer-embossed cast-iron pit burns wood, charcoal and artificial logs.

Vintage chic

For homes inspired by certain periods, Whitman suggests accessorizing the fireplace with antiques of the era.

``You want to make it look as old and authentic as you can, and if you can't, I suggest trying to find at least the wood holder and the tools, and the screen and the andirons at salvage yards,'' she says.

Los Angeles has a smattering of architectural antiques' dealers, one of which is Exquisite Surfaces.

The store, frequented by celebrity clientele like comedian Eddie Murphy, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sela Ward, sells - among other items - stone fireplaces salvaged from 15th- to 19th-century French estates and country homes.

``The people who want to do a Provence-style home or French-style home, or anything in that realm, they really want this stuff,'' says Gavin Carey, a marketing representative for Exquisite Surfaces.

Most fireplaces are used as fireplaces. But sometimes a mantel finds new life in the kitchen as a range hood, or the top piece of the fireplace becomes a back splash for a fountain.

As for Whitman, she's a purist.

She finds most of her antiques at Olde Good Things in Los Angeles, which specializes in fireplaces from turn-of-the-century and prewar structures.

``You can find beautiful antique wood fireplace mantels that go all the way around, or you can do what I did,'' Whitman says of the masonry fireplace she redesigned in the Spanish Revival home of a Manhattan Beach couple.

The couple couldn't spend a fortune on aged stone or other high-end material, so Whitman came up with an inspired-by painted on look.

She crafted a stencil based on a geometric design she found in a book about 17th- and 18th-century castles that she painted on the projecting fireplace wall.

The mantel was made from wrought-iron brackets and a piece of wood, aged through the process of distressing.

``I thought it turned out great,'' Whitman says. ``And it's a great way to save money.''

Floating flames

A traditional fireplace just wasn't good enough for the contemporary home that Chicago-based architect Doug Garofalo was working on.

He wanted to put a fireplace from out of this world in the vicinity of a giant glass wall.

``Wouldn't it be great to have a fire that's floating in the air?'' he thought.

And so Garofalo designed Fireorb, a wood-burning, bulb-shape fireplace made of steel - in black matte or stainless steel - that looks like something out of the animated cartoon series ``The Jetsons.''

The retro space-age-inspired fireplace is suspended from the ceiling by its long, skinny flue and can rotate 360 degrees.

``I think it works best when it's really free-floating,'' Garofalo says, explaining that ``a lot of folks still tend to install them near a wall or near a corner. But imagine it floating between a living and a dining room that doesn't have a wall divider; you can pivot it in any direction, depending on where you are.''

Sandra Barrera, [phone]

sandra.barrera(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

5 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Hot stuff

Today's fireplaces are expressions in creativity

Photo courtesy of Fireorb

(2 -- color) The wood-burning Char-Broil Coffee Table Fire Bowl, $199.99 at www.sears.com, is ideal on a patio.

Courtesy of Sears

(3 -- color) This gas fireplace from Town & Country Fireplaces features innovative ceramic glass panels that render the screen virtually invisible.

Courtesy of Town & Country Fireplaces

(4 -- 5 -- color) Exquisite Surfaces, a Los Angeles architectural antiques dealer, sells antique limestone fireplaces salvaged from 15th- to 19th-century French estates and country homes. Examples are top left and above.