Mid-Century Modern Fireplace Tile

Featured Image: Classic Limestone Combed Tile Fireplace Surround & Metalwood Carbonio Porcelain Tile Fireplace Hearth from Arizona Tile

The vast array of design styles makes for plentiful selections when you’re working with a new aesthetic, like traditional, modern, or mid-century modern. Mid-century modern (MCM for short) offers an iconic flair, incorporating modern touches and design elements from the middle of the last century to create a comfortable ambiance. In mid-century modern design, creating ambiance often draws on classic elements—like incorporating the warmth of a fireplace into the space.

Your fireplace can be a focal area designed to stand out or blend into its surroundings, regardless, it will offer the same peaceful, cozy aura. If mid-century modern is your design style of choice, complementing your fireplace with tile to accentuate it adds a marvelous touch. Unsure exactly what MCM includes? We want to tell you!

What is Mid-Century Modern?

MCM is an iconic style that developed between the 1940s and 1960s, featuring clean lines and minimalistic detail—a drastic shift from ornate features that once were the center of design. Within this minimalistic approach, MCM cut out unnecessary embellishments and focused on the essentials, often from German and Scandinavian influences. These influences focused on functionalism, simplicity, contrasting textures, and clean, organic lines, thus creating an uncluttered design that promoted a calming, less chaotic appeal. Along with such focus came the integration of nature through large windows, wood, and stone. MCM incorporates pops of color and geometric designs, but also neutral colors, and this balance shifted around a bit throughout the decades.

Image: Cementine Posa 2 Porcelain Patterned Tile Fireplace Surround from Arizona Tile

When thinking about a fireplace, there are creative ways to dress it up while falling into the mid-century modern design. This design style does remain popular to this day, so when choosing these design features, you can’t go wrong! With our natural stone and tile inventory, we have much to offer that will cater to MCM design, regardless of where in your home you intend to install or refurbish the face of your fireplace.  

Fireplaces in Mid-Century Modern Design Whether it’s a wood-burning, electric, or gas fireplace, there is something about the mood they create that makes them a desirable feature in a home. Of course, the heat they give off is a bonus to the cozy aesthetic, but fireplaces also present character and serve as a focal point that evokes togetherness, conversation, nostalgia, and relaxation.

Image: Negro Marquina Marble Fireplace Surround from Arizona Tile

The living room is the most common area for a fireplace, as this is where families typically gather to relax, but a dining room or sitting/reading room are also great options. When fireplaces were a main source of heat, however, it was common to see them throughout a home, including bedrooms. Today, there are so many areas of a home where a fireplace may be installed like:

• A primary bedroom for a romantic ambiance
• A living room for a relaxing area to unwind
• A dining room for an intimate dinner
• A sitting room to cozy up with a book
• An outdoor fireplace to gather and socialize around

Regardless of the space, a mid-century modern tile fireplace will be a focal point. And, depending on where in your home the fireplace is, you can design the surround to incorporate the MCM style you’re embellishing.

Fireplace Tile with Flair

Original mid-century modern tile displayed fun shapes, designs, and colors, while neutral offerings became more popular later. A living room and/or outdoor fireplace will likely be the most used for gathering. So, if you want these spaces to be a more fun, dramatic focal area for your friends and family to enjoy, patterned tile, geometric shape tile, and colorful tile will display an MCM aesthetic.

Cementine Posa and Cementine Black and White will transform a space with a lively design. Cementine Posa has muted colors and designs that provide the charm and elegance of a vintage effect and connects us to stylistic history. While Cementine Black and White has similar vintage charm, this series uses black, white, and grey to radiate a sophisticated touch. These black and white options offer more versatility to pair with many color schemes.

Image: Cementine B&W 3 Porcelain Patterned Tile Fireplace Surround from Arizona Tile

In the early part of the mid-century modern design period, bolder colors were definitely a thing. So, adding pops of color is a very practical approach, like with the Gem tile series. This series offers eight amazing colors from light to dark and can give you that touch of color you may desire, like with Cotto, Verde, or Vino. In addition to the color choices, Gem provides a textured appearance, adding to the contrasting materials’ appeal of mid-century modern. Be it bold color, neutral color, or texture, you can find it all here.

Image: Gem Bianco Fluted 2×16 Mesh Porcelain Textured Wall Tile from Arizona Tile

Black can also be viewed as a bolder choice. Metalwood is a porcelain tile series that has a metallic striation design on the face of the tile. Offered in more colors than black, this series touches on the contradictory materials component in MCM design. A metal-looking, black tile next to Classic Limestone Combed will truly solidify the dynamic of mixing and matching.

The Softer Side of Tile

In the late 1950s, there was a bit of a shift to neutral, earthy colors. If you’re someone who wants to err on the side of caution or simply prefer muted colors, this later version of MCM may suit you better. An outdoor fireplace is a great place to emphasize soft blues and greens because they will blend with the scenery, but you may choose the opposite: bringing these natural hues to your indoor fireplace will evoke the connection to natural materials that MCM embodies.

Image: Flash White 3×12 Ceramic Tile Fireplace Surround & Flash White 3/8×5 Pencil Bullnose Tile Edge from Arizona Tile

The Flash series offers eight colors that all draw on natural hues. To add to the visual appeal, this ceramic wall tile features gentle texture and soft glaze as it emulates hand-crafted tile. Glam is similar in its earthly color palette, but with a different texture/finish. In matte or glossy, Glam features a slightly undulating texture that adds a layer of dimension. Given its texture, this tile, along with the Flash series, will ignite your visual senses but also your sense of touch, as you may simply want to run your fingers along its surface.

Image: Glam Sage Matte 2-1/4×9-1/2 Porcelain Wall Tile from Arizona Tile

Natural stone will provide a similar effect, connecting you to natural elements. Negro Marquina is a distinctive black marble with varying amounts of white veining. This natural stone deeply exudes the dramatic feel of luxury and sophistication, wrapped up with a romantic edge, and may be perfect for your bedroom mid-century modern tile fireplace. With that said, a bedroom, dining room, or sitting room is typically a quieter space where rest, unwinding, and togetherness are the main focus; therefore, subtle, eloquent tile may fit the mood better. For a contrasting tile to pair with Negro Marquina, check out Castle Brick to truly enhance the comforting warmth tile can create.

Image: Castle Brick Grey Brick-Look Porcelain Tile Fireplace Surround from Arizona Tile

How Will You Incorporate MCM Fireplace Tile?

Now, knowing some main features of mid-century modern design and seeing some great tile options, hopefully, you have a better sense of how you’ll incorporate the style. For more porcelain and tile options, view our entire collection. For more natural stone ideas that will fit into a mid-century modern design, consider quartzite or granite slabs.

When you have some product ideas, try our Just Imagine Tile and Slab Visualizer to gain a better visual sense of where our tile and stone fit in your design. When you can, stop by an Arizona Tile showroom or slab yard to see materials, colors, and designs in person. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to send us a message!