Dimplex: Revillusion Black 36 Portrait

An electric fire that holds up to a second look.

Quick Facts

• Heating Capacity: 0–450 sq ft
• Viewing Area: 36″ wide, in a taller portrait format.
• Fuel: Electric.
• Controls: Remote with adjustable flame color and brightness, plus built-in touch controls.
• Fan: Included

Who It’s For

Most electric fireplaces give themselves away: a ribbon of flame looping across a mirrored back panel, with your own lamp reflected in the glass. It reads as a screen, not a fire. You need an electric fire that looks like wood burning, from every seat in the room. If you want a taller, portrait-style fire on a wall where wood and gas aren’t on the table, the Revillusion 36 Portrait in Black is the one. Choose a standard electric box instead and you’ll live with a flame effect you stopped noticing the week it went in.

What Makes It Special

The logs are handcrafted from real wood and lit from within, so they pulse with the glow of a fire that’s been burning a while. Dimplex’s patented flame effect plays across a partially frosted panel, which means you see flames rising from within the logs—and you can see through the fire to the black backer behind it, the way you can look through a real one. No mirror, and no reflection of your living room staring back at you.

When you want heat, the fan-forced heater warms up to 1,000 square feet on demand. When you don’t, run the flames on their own—a fire in July with the heat off. The remote adjusts the flame’s color and brightness, so the same firebox can read warm and traditional one night and cool and modern the next.

Possible Downsides

• Heat is fan-forced only—a fan runs whenever the heater is on; there is no fan-free radiant mode.
• The glow comes from LEDs, not combustion—no crackle and no wood smell.
• The black backer is fixed on this model; a different interior means a different version of the unit.

If you want an electric fire that guests have to study before they’re sure, the Revillusion 36 Portrait is the right decision. The room it’s in becomes the room the house lives in.

The same portrait firebox also comes with Herringbone, Neutral Brick, and Weathered Concrete backers, and the Revillusion line runs from 24″ to 42″ widths, so there’s a version for the wall you have in mind.