The 10 Best Fireplace Inserts
Special Honors
Sutton GAL010 This charming insert from Sutton is made with polished cast iron, giving it a sophisticated look that will make it a stylish addition to a contemporary home. It’s quite compact, so it works best in a small fireplace, and it can be powered by gas as well as electricity. victorianfireplacestore.co.uk
Mountain Home Stove & Fireplae This Colorado-based company is a family-owned business with nearly 20 years experience. They offer all sorts of solutions for aspiring fireplace owners, including electric, wood-burning, gas-powered options. mountainhomestove.com
Editor's Notes
March 22, 2021:
Since we did away with the Ashley Signature and Regal Flame LW8033FLT due to availability issues, we had space to add a couple new options, but found that other than differences in shape – we put some serious thought into including a swanky-looking 60-inch insert, but ultimately decided that it wouldn’t be a viable option for many of our users – we found it difficult to decide on any new inserts that did a good job differentiating themselves from our existing selections. With that in mind, we determined that the best way to offer the most value to our audience was to include a couple selections at the bottom of our list that, while not necessarily qualifying for this list based on the strictest definition of “fireplace insert,” still presented interesting options to our users.
Our first new inclusion, the Comfort Zone CZFP1, is a small, freestanding space heater with an attractive fire-like display, not unlike those offered by many options in this category. It isn’t likely to be the way you want to go if you’re hoping for a fancy, permanent installation, but it is an affordable option worth considering for small spaces like offices and bedrooms. It’s also priced reasonably enough to make a justifiable trial purchase, giving you a chance to see how you like it before you make a major investment in an electric fireplace.
Our second new inclusion, the Enstver Entertainment, is an electric fireplace TV stand that measures 58 inches wide. We liked this one over comparable alternatives because we felt that its design was neutral enough to work with most decor, while a lot of others are limited by their classic aesthetic. It’s reasonably priced and available in five colors, too, which makes it even more likely that one will look good in your home.
Electric fireplaces and electric fireplace inserts are a great way to add to the atmosphere in a room, and they often help you dodge steep increases to your home insurance premiums, but there’s still something to be said about a good, old-fashioned, wood-burning fireplace. If you’ve got one of these presently, and you’re deciding whether to fill it with an insert, we won’t try to sway your decision either way, but if you do decide to stick with the wood burner, then you might be interested in some of our lists of accessories, including tongs, tool sets and grates.
February 13, 2020:
We replaced the ClassicFlame Quartz (which was no longer available) with the ClassicFlame Infrared. While it’s virtually the same in terms of heat output, the new version utilizes a patent-pending technology to give a three-dimensional effect to the flames. We also updated the listing for the Ashley Signature to the large size, as the small size is now only available in used condition.
Availability issues also led us to remove the AKDY Freestanding and Golden Vintage Stove. We determined while reviewing the Pleasant Hearth Natural that it’s one of the best values available, making it a nice alternative for those who’d prefer not to spend big on a high-end model. We gave it a slight upgrade in the rankings.
We added four new items to the list, ranging in size from 23 to 42 inches. People seem to enjoy the broad range of visual elements offered by the Homodex Black — it allows you to choose from nine flame colors to go with each ember setting (logs or crystal stones).
Cleaner, Safer Fire
Some fireplace inserts will utilize additional variables like water vapor to further distort the light, or even to create the appearance of smoke, though no smoke is present.
Tending a real fire is a messy, dangerous business. There's almost no end to the things that can go wrong, and any attempt at fixing a problem is almost guaranteed to get you covered in soot. You have to keep the space clean, maintain the flue, sweep the chimney, and guard against an attack from stray sparks or embers.
Fireplace inserts take just about all the hassle out of the experience with little to no sacrifice in the soothing experience of having a fire in your space. You almost have no choice but to make a little hot chocolate and grab a fluffy pair of slippers in their presence.
Interestingly, very few of the inserts on our list actually deal in real fire. The vast majority of them operates electronically, producing the illusion of a real flame through a variety of clever tricks. Any of the actual fire-bearing inserts on our list utilize small gas burners that are easily replaceable and that burn in and around flame-retardant logs made of resin.
The electric fireplace inserts on our list create the appearance of flames most often by utilizing refracted light. LED, halogen, or incandescent bulbs, usually orange or red in color, sit beneath an artificial log structure. The light they produce has its waves bent and slowed through three-dimensional panes of glass designed to creates the appearance of flames.
Some fireplace inserts will utilize additional variables like water vapor to further distort the light, or even to create the appearance of smoke, though no smoke is present. That's probably the most alluring thing about these fireplace inserts: there is no smoke, there are no fumes.
But what's a fire without the heat, right? Well, these fireplace inserts, in addition to creating the appearance of a fire, also contain metal coils that heat electrically. Behind those coils is a quiet fan that distributes the heat throughout a room, allowing your fireplace insert to double as a space heater. If you want the look of a fire on a hot summer night without the heat, you can simply disable the heat function, and enjoy the show.
Can The Fire Fit?
I recently moved into an apartment that has a lovely faux fireplace, and the first thing my girlfriend and I talked about when we saw it was setting up a fake fire there. The thing about that spot, however, is that it's mostly meant to be a decorative space so it's decidedly shallow.
As you look at all of the fireplace inserts on our list, you'll probably notice that they vary significantly in their depth, as well as their other dimensions. In a space like ours, the deeper fireplace inserts designed to fit into an otherwise fully functional fireplace would stick out and look incredibly strange to any guests.
The thing about that spot, however, is that it's mostly meant to be a decorative space so it's decidedly shallow.
The brick around our decorative mantle is all white, as well, so there's something just a little off about having an overtly traditional insert on display. In the end, we decided to go with one of the more modern designs, and we were delighted to find out that they worked as space heaters, as well, since there's not any heating infrastructure in the building.
So, as much as you will make your decision from a fundamentally aesthetic perspective, that perspective will inevitably be constrained by the practicality of your space. Take stringent measurements of the fireplace you intend to fill to begin your process of elimination.
Once you've whittled the list down that far, you can ask yourself the easiest question, which is whether you want an electric or a gas insert. Some gas inserts operate by connecting to existing gas lines, but the odds of one such line running to your fireplace are slim. Others utilize canisters, which you need to replace far more often than the bulbs in an electric fireplace.
If you do choose electric, the big balancing act exists between the look of the flames and the amount of heat produced. As you spend more money, you'll get a little more heat and a little more realism. In the mid-range, however, you'll likely have to prioritize one over the other.
Fire For Aeons
If you look around at anything in your house, you can thank fire for it. Without fire, or, more specifically, our burning of fossil fuels for energy, none of the electricity we've enjoyed all our lives would be present. Sure we have some infrastructure for wind, solar, and hydrodynamic power, but these industries still only account for a fraction of our energy consumption.
Without fire, or, more specifically, our burning of fossil fuels for energy, none of the electricity we've enjoyed all our lives would be present.
Fire's an old friend of ours, as well. According to archeological finds in Israel, as well as evidence of contact on flint tools before and after certain points in the carbon dating, most scientists believe early man–specifically hominins, a predecessor to mankind–used flint tools to create and control fire as many as 350,000 years ago.
The technology behind artificial, electric fire is much more recent. From about the late 1960s onward, the inherent dangers in live pyrotechnics led some concert organizers and stage designers to seek alternative methods of delivering the thrill of the flame to the audience without all the risk. Refracted light did the trick, and it looked alright from a distance, but rather cheap up close.
Advances in the physics of refraction, as well as an integration of multiple colors of LEDs, has given the market an artificial fire so convincing that it can live and work beautifully in the home.