Single-Sided Fireplaces in Open-Plan Living: Layout, Heat & Visual Impact

A fireplace can demarcate space the way a wall does, without the wall. Dezeen’s interiors coverage shows architects using exactly this device; in one Brazilian project, architect David Guerra used a suspended fireplace to subtly demarcate the sitting and dining areas of an open-plan living room. A single-sided unit set into a freestanding divider does the same work with a cleaner geometry: the framed flame face declares "this side is the lounge," while the blind side gives the dining zone a finished surface for shelving, art, or texture. The room stays open; the zones become legible.

Orient the flame face toward where people sit longest, then audit the secondary views. From the kitchen, the fire usually works best as a glimpse rather than a full elevation; a three-quarter view across the room keeps the cook connected to the gathering without the flame competing with task lighting. From the dining table, decide deliberately: either the fire is visible as a backdrop to conversation, or the divider screens it so the table holds its own atmosphere. What you want to avoid is the accidental version, where the fireplace ends up half-visible from everywhere and commanding from nowhere.

Because the single-sided fireplaces in the EcoSmart Fire range use a closed bioethanol combustion system, they need no flue, no chimney penetration, no gas line, and no electrical connection, and the heat the burner produces stays in the room rather than escaping up a vent. EcoSmart Fire, whose Flex range is specified by architects and designers across 75+ countries, builds the single-sided line to true zero-clearance construction, so the cavity can sit within standard framing rather than demanding masonry or fire-rated chases. That’s what makes the freestanding divider and island-back placements possible at all.

A flued unit must trace a vertical path to the roof, which chains it to the building’s structure; a flueless unit can occupy the middle of the floor plan, a partial-height partition, or a joinery wall, because nothing above it needs to exist. One practical note for divider installations: the framing above the appliance must be self-supporting rather than load-bearing, a detail worth resolving with your builder at the joinery stage. This article assumes a bioethanol unit throughout; the gas comparison is a separate decision with its own trade-offs around connections and venting.

A closed lounge holds its air. An open-plan room shares it, with the kitchen, the dining zone, the stair void, and often a double-height ceiling all drawing on the same volume. That shared volume is precisely why the sizing method changes: ASHRAE’s position on unvented combustion appliances identifies room volume and ventilation rate as the primary factors governing indoor air quality for this class of appliance, and the Flex single-sided range carries the UL 1370 listing ASHRAE recommends for the US market, alongside EN 16647 certification in Europe and the UK and compliance with ACCC standards in Australia. Independent research groups, including Fraunhofer WKI, reach the same practical conclusion from the air-quality side: flueless bioethanol units belong in large, very well-ventilated spaces. The useful reframe is that an open-plan home is exactly that. The generous connected volume that makes the room feel expansive is the same volume that gives the burner the air it’s designed for. Sizing variables worth listing before you choose:

• Total connected room volume, not just the lounge footprint

• Ceiling height, especially voids and rakes that add unseen cubic metres

• Width of the primary viewing area relative to the wall or divider

• Draught paths from large sliding doors and stair openings

That last point doubles as a placement check. EcoSmart Fire’s installation guidance calls for the fire to be protected from the draught effects of cross-ventilation, positioned out of traffic paths and away from anything that can move in moving air, such as curtains or foliage near large openings. In an open plan with full-width sliders, that means keeping the fireplace off the direct line between opposing openings. The draught audit is as important as the sightline audit, and the installation manual walks through both.

Here’s the detail most people miss: in the Flex single-sided range, flame width and heat output are separate decisions. The single-sided models share a constant viewing height of 502 mm [19.8 in] across the range while viewing widths run from 378 mm [14.9 in] up to 4,030 mm [158.7 in], and the same burner appears across very different chassis widths. The XL700 burner, for example, delivers its 4 kW (13,650 BTU/hr) inside several models of quite different widths. That matters because you can choose the flame window that suits the wall without being locked into a heat output that may be over- or under-specified for the room. At the top of the range, the widest models carry multiple XL-series burners, with combined output reaching 13 kW (45,870 BTU/hr) and minimum room volumes to match. Burner outputs across the single-sided range run from 2 kW (5,800 BTU/hr) at the compact end to that multi-burner figure at the architectural end, with each burner specifying its own minimum room volume. The practical sequence: size the heat to the volume first, then size the flame window to the wall, and let the range’s mix of burner and chassis combinations reconcile the two.

The key insight on proportion: the flame window should be scaled to the wall it occupies and the distance it’s viewed from, not to the sofa in front of it. Open-plan rooms are read from across the space, from the kitchen bench eight metres away as much as from the armchair two metres away, and a flame window that feels generous up close can read as a letterbox from the far zone. Because the single-sided range holds a constant viewing height and varies only in width, the proportional question simplifies to one ratio: flame width against wall length. On a long feature wall, a wider window keeps the fire from floating in empty render; on a divider, a window sized to the partition’s width makes the whole element read as designed rather than inserted. Ceiling height pushes the same direction, since taller volumes shrink everything in them.

The single-sided format’s visual discipline is its advantage. One framed elevation, one orientation, one zone that owns the view. The standard presentation across the range keeps that frame quiet: a black powder-coated steel surround, a stainless steel burner, an integrated fire screen sitting flush behind the frame, and black glass charcoal as the standard media bed, so the flame is the only element in motion. Surround treatment beyond the frame, the stone, timber, or rendered wall that carries it, deserves its own design conversation; the principle here is simply that the immediate surround zone should be built from non-combustible materials and styled to defer to the flame rather than compete with it. Proportion and placement converge at this point. A correctly sized flame window in the wrong position is still invisible from the seats that matter, and a perfectly placed unit that’s undersized still reads as an afterthought.