Fake mantelpiece, have you got one?

[linspins]

In our new house, there's a chimney breast with no fireplace, and it's just flat plaster now. It would be difficult to fit any kind of opening, or fire, and as its our dining room, we don't really need a whole fireplace as a focal point. However, I would like to add some kind of mantel piece, maybe a shelf with pretty wooden brackets, or a beam..or...? It would be good to have something to put cards, candles, festive bits etc on, in the same way as a mantel piece. Has anyone got anything like this...what does it look like?

We have! It's an antique reclaimed pine one and we love it! We have a little nook that we currently put a case of flowers in but we do keep discussing a log burner for it....

Could you cut into the chimney breast to get recessed shelves? A fake mantelpiece just sounds a bit annoying tbh

We had one in our old place. There was no opening where the old fireplace was, the chimney breast was just plastered straight down.

We put up a distressed wooden beam floating shelf and it looked great. It made the room have a bit of a focal point.

In our current place we have the same problem but there's a gas fire attached to the wall. We have put up the same sort of shelf and it's made it look so much better.

My PILs have one in their living room. They have a mantelpiece and an electric fire that looks like gas coals. It even has a little reservoir of water in it that makes pretend smoke. It looks pretty realistic.

Thanks all. I googled 'faux fireplace' and got immersed In a world of Pinterest pictures. Dangerous!
But there were some good ideas there, I especially liked one where a bookshelf had been built inside a vintage fire surround, and it was fixed to the chimney breast. Almost like a medium set of shelves, with a very fancy board across the front and a mantelpiece space on top.
I'll be looking on eBay now for a nice surround.

I had a beautiful piece of green oak made into a rustic mantle in a cottage I refurbed it looked great and gave a nice focal point to the room , just sanded it well and used it instead of the tiles that were there originally

My dad has one, it looks like wood but is made of plastic. No idea where he got it from but it looks amazing, you'd not know it wasn't oak by looking at it.