See-through electric fireplaces

A true see-through electric fireplace has glass on the front and the back and is built into the wall between two rooms. It is genuinely rare: when we searched the current catalog, the only ones we could find on sale were Napoleon's CLEARion Elite in 50 and 60 inches, at roughly three thousand dollars. Almost everything else returned for those searches is either a three-sided unit, which is glass on the front and both ends, or an ordinary single-sided fireplace. If you want to see from one room into the next, that is the family. If you want flame visible from more than one angle in a single room, a three-sided unit costs a fraction as much.

The terms people type are not the terms manufacturers use, and the overlap is genuinely confusing rather than merely sloppy. "Double-sided", "2-sided", "multi-sided" and "see-through" all get typed by people who want different things, and listings use them interchangeably.

If what you actually want is flame visible from more than one angle in a single room, you want a three-sided unit and they are plentiful and inexpensive by comparison — we compare them on corner electric fireplaces. The rest of this page is about the format that genuinely is hard to find.

There is a mechanical reason, and understanding it explains both the scarcity and the price. An ordinary electric firebox puts its light engine against the back panel: LEDs, a reflector or a rotating rod, and the shaped surfaces that turn a strip of light into something that reads as flame. The heater and its blower usually sit there too. The back of the box is where the fireplace actually happens; the glass is just the window.

Take the back panel away and you have removed the place all of that lives. A see-through unit has to generate a convincing flame effect that looks right from both directions, with nowhere to hide the mechanism and no reflective surface behind it. That is a harder engineering problem than making a deeper box, and it is why the format commands a large premium rather than a small one. How the light engine works in a conventional unit is covered on flame technology explained.

Everywhere else on this site we make the same point: a 120-volt household circuit caps an electric fireplace at 1,500 watts, or about 5,118 BTU per hour, and every unit from the cheapest to the most expensive lands on that same ceiling. The CLEARion is the one exception we have found, and the exception proves the rule rather than breaking it.

It reaches 3,000 watts because it is direct-wired to 240 volts rather than plugged into an outlet, and because it has a heater for each room rather than one heater for both. That is not a loophole in the physics — it is simply a bigger supply. Wire the same fireplace to ordinary 120-volt power and Napoleon rates it at 1,450 watts and about 5,000 BTU per hour, which is to say exactly where everything else sits. The arithmetic behind the ceiling is on watts, amps and your circuit, and the wiring decision itself on plug-in vs hardwired.

The practical consequence is that the headline heat figure is conditional on an electrical job most buyers have not priced. If a 240-volt run to that wall is not already there, you are paying an electrician before the fireplace does anything a cheaper one would not.

Quick picks: what you can actually buy

Ranked. The running cost column is computed from each unit's rated wattage, not quoted from a manufacturer. Tap a row for the full write-up.

#	Product	Best for	Cost per hour	Price
1	Napoleon CLEARion Elite 60 See-Thru (NEFBD60HE)Glass front and back, a privacy setting that turns it opaque, and the only heat output on this site that passes 1,500 watts — on 240 volts, wired in by an electrician.	The only true see-through at full size	26.6¢1,450 W · 4,948 BTU	$3,089.00 · View on Amazon
2	Napoleon CLEARion Elite 50 See-Thru (NEFBD50HE)Ten inches narrower and a little cheaper, with the same 240-volt rating and the same privacy glass — and a thinner published specification.	The same idea, seventy-five pounds lighter	26.6¢1,450 W · 4,948 BTU	$2,779.00 · View on Amazon
3	LegendFlame 71" Built-In Insert, 1-2-3 Sided (EF423B)Configurable as three-sided, corner or single-sided at under half the CLEARion's price — and not see-through in any of those settings.	What "2-sided" usually means on a listing	27.5¢1,500 W · 5,118 BTU	$1,243.00 · View on Amazon
—	R.W.FLAME 60" Ultra-Thin Recessed & Wall-Mount FireplaceA competent single-sided wall fireplace that search engines keep returning for see-through queries. It has a solid back.Skip this one	Nothing, if you wanted to see through it	27.5¢1,500 W · 5,118 BTU	$254.99 · View on Amazon

#ad Buy links are affiliate links — we earn a commission on Amazon purchases at no extra cost to you, and it never changes the ranking. How this site is funded. Running cost is computed at 18.34¢/kWh; see what these actually cost to run.

The fireplace price is the beginning of this one, in a way that is not true of a wall-mounted unit you hang on two brackets. Four things sit on top of it, and none is optional.

1. A wall that can take it. Napoleon specifies framing into an 8-inch wall thickness, and the surround listing refers to a double 2x4 wall. If the wall between the two rooms is a standard single stud wall, it has to be rebuilt deeper before anything goes into it.
2. Two surrounds, not one. Napoleon sells the four-sided surround separately and states that a double-sided installation requires two of them — one finished face per room. Budget for the pair.
3. An electrician, if you want the headline heat. The 3,000-watt rating needs a 240-volt circuit. Without one you have bought a 1,450-watt fireplace at a see-through price.
4. A second finished room. Everything you do to the back of this wall is visible from somewhere, which is not the case for a recessed fireplace on an external wall. The drywall, paint and trim on the far side are part of the job.

None of that is a reason not to do it. It is a reason to price it properly before the fireplace arrives, because a see-through installation is the one format in this category you genuinely cannot reverse cheaply. For the more ordinary version of this decision, depth and clearance covers what recessing costs on a normal wall.

1. Decide whether you want two rooms or two angles. Two angles is a three-sided unit at a fraction of the cost; only two rooms needs see-through.
2. Measure the wall's depth, not just its face. An 8-inch finished thickness is the requirement, and a standard partition wall is nowhere near it.
3. Check what is already in that wall. Plumbing, ducting and structural studs are all likelier in an internal dividing wall than in the external wall most fireplaces go into.
4. Find out what a 240-volt run to that point would cost before you buy, not after. It is the difference between the advertised heat and half of it.
5. Remember the far side is a finished room too, and that the fire will be visible in it whether or not anyone in that room wanted a fireplace. The privacy glass exists because this is a real objection.