DIY Wood Stove Wall Protection: Beautiful & Strong (2025)

Whether you’ve just been eyeing a wood-burning stove for your home, already have it installed, or both installed and used for a while (and the drywall behind it has gotten super hot!), at some point many of us ask ourselves: what do you put behind a wood stove to protect the wall?

The answer is always the same: for fire safety, use anything that’s non-combustible and leave an air gap between the wall and the protective heat shield you built.

Truly non-combustible materials include brick, stone, tile, ceramic, porcelain, pottery, metal, and glass. Some cement boards can also have the highest fire rating (the ones made of calcium silicate), but some don’t: fire-rated doesn’t necessarily mean the board is fully fireproof.

Once you know wood stove wall protection is what you need, how to choose the right option out of all the panels, boards, tiles, stone, or real stone veneer that stores have to offer?

That’s what I had to decide recently when we finally had our wood stove and chimney installed:

I began by excluding the ugliest wall protection options and asking myself how much effort I was willing to put into this project.

The answer to that lies below. I decided to DIY mine. I’ll show you the whole process and end result that you can use for inspiration or wall protection ideas of your own.

If you too decide to DIY the heat shield for your wood stove, the best part is you may be able to repurpose materials you already have and create something truly unique in your own style!

What to Put on a Wall Behind a Wood Stove?

To figure out what to put behind a wood-burning stove, clearance and/or local building codes are the perfect starting point: what is the required minimum distance between your stove and the back wall (that’s made of combustible materials, such as drywall)?

If your stove isn’t too close to any walls, you may find you don’t need anything behind or surrounding it. But in cases where you want the stove nearer a wall, the stove manual may call for twice or even thrice the clearance you originally had in mind.

That’s when wood stove wall protection makes the most sense: you absolutely want or have to reduce the required clearance.

As an example, my wood stove requires a clearance of 8.25 inches (21 cm) behind it, but if the back wall were made of brick or other non-flammable material, this requirement would drop to zero (a gap of couple inches is still recommended for cleaning purposes).

When we initially carried the stove inside and placed it as far from the drywall as the manufacturer instructed, that’s when I realized some sort of wall protection was needed. Otherwise the stove would have blocked the entrance in a way I couldn’t accept.

If you, too, find that you need wall protection, deciding on the materials will help you exclude options.

What Is the Best Material to Put Behind a Wood-Burning Stove?

Although any non-combustible materials ultimately work, heat storing materials, such as brick and stone, are often superior to materials that work just as heat shields, such as (corrugated) metal and glass.

Given that most people burn wood only during colder months, any extra heat you can get functions as an added benefit. If your wood stove backing were made of brick or stone instead of metal, it would give a mere log burner a fraction of the advantages of bigger fireplaces: stone mass that stays warm even after the fire is gone.

Also, if you need to reduce the minimum clearance, a thin sheet of metal (that can be as thin as 1 mm) obviously won’t reduce it like a thicker stone wall or several fireproof boards stacked on top of each other.

I’ve personally noticed this by comparing different sauna stoves: a thin metal sheet can reduce the required clearance by a third, as per manufacturer’s instructions, while more sturdy solutions can allow for reductions of two thirds or even more.

One last thing to think about regarding wall protection materials is their visual appeal. Bricks, stones, tiles, and the like usually have a cozier and more interesting look than plain metal or bland boards.

Since this time around I was building a wood stove wall shield for our house, not our sauna, I had my mind set on something more special. I wanted to create a mosaic-style stone wall utilizing rocks and seashells, some of which I had collected nearly 30 years ago.

This also meant I wanted my DIY stone wall to stand out instead of blending in with the background. That’s why I intentionally made the wall higher than it had to be, aligning it with the light switches on the drywall.

If you were to create something similar, below I’ll show you the materials and steps a project like this entails.

Materials You’ll Need for DIY Wood Stove Wall Protection + What I Used

• Suitable base (& support for stability)

Great options include sheet metal or any fireproof boards. Personally, I repurposed sheet metal cladding that I already had and that was originally meant for a chimney pass-through.

• Stones, tiles, seashells, pottery, (broken) glass, pieces of broken plates/mugs, jewelry, etc.

This is a great opportunity to use any non-flammable materials you have or want to get and that please your eye. If you happen to have some heirloom plates that you accidentally broke but didn’t throw the pieces away, now you can finally have use for them too.

• Cement, mortar, or putty: you glue the stones with this and also fill the seams once the stones are in place

The key is to choose a product that’s meant for fireplaces and adheres to metal (if you’re using sheet metal, for instance).

Possible options include Rutland Furnace Cement and Meeco’s Red Devil Furnace Cement & Mortar. I happened to find and use Bison’s fireplace sealant that provides “excellent adhesion to stone, metal and concrete” and resists heat up to 2280 F (1250 C).

What I used in the back for stabilization: a polyurethane board (pictured below) that’s also heat-resistant.

When you build wall protection on any sheet or board instead of directly on the solid wall in your house, your heat shield becomes portable: it means you can take it with you if you ever decide to move. Especially if laid with precious memories and heirloom pieces, it’s reassuring to know you don’t have to leave your wall shield behind.

DIY Stone Wall Behind Wood Stove – Step 1: Prep the Base

Here you can see what I had to work with:

This applies particularly if you’re working with sheet metal like I was:

1) First measure how big the base has to be and cut and/or drill and screw to desired size. If there’s a power outlet or something else your shield can’t cover on the drywall, cut a hole for it.

2) If your base is strong enough as is, you can skip this phase. But if you’re working with sheet metal roofing like I was, it’s far too floppy and flimsy for this project. I glued a heat resistant polyurethane board, topped with aluminum laminate, behind it with the same sealant I used throughout.

3) Now that the base is solid, sand or at least clean the metal surface. This ensures the sealant will adhere to the base as excellently as promised and that stones won’t later come off the wall. Since I worked with painted steel, I sanded it carefully and didn’t stop until I had a coarse surface.

4) Once the base and surface is fully prepped, start arranging the stones, tiles, seashells etc. in any way you want. Keep in mind the stove and chimney will block the view from most angles in the middle, so if you want certain pieces to stand out, be sure to place them in the side or top parts that will be most visible.

Step 2: Glue the Stones and Tiles in Place

Once you’re happy with the placement of each stone, you can glue them in place, using the fireplace sealant or mortar of your choice.

Stones and tiles are definitely much easier to glue than seashells. With the latter, you’re gluing the edges, not the middle, which requires better aim and still leads to bigger mess.

In my case, the instructions on the sealant tube said to dampen porous surfaces (= stones, tiles, etc.) for best adhesion, while metal surfaces had to be clean and dry. I used a wet dishrag to wipe each stone before gluing it.

I personally found that I had to fully arrange the stones first before adhering any of them; especially when arranging the stones rather tightly, creating a mosaic, it’s quite an exact science. Had I glued them already when arranging, most of them wouldn’t have fit the way I intended.

If you decide to arrange the stones more loosely, which is easier and saves time, you may be disappointed with that decision later on: the end result simply looks better when your wall protection has more stone than mortar in it.

Also, stones are cheaper than fireplace sealant. This means a loose stone arrangement not only brings you more gaps to fill and costs more but also leads to uglier results.

(Concerning wood stove wall protection cost in general, I paid around $25 for the stones, $100 for the sealant, and $15 for the polyurethane board. Everything else I already had.)

Step 3: Fill the Gaps (= Grouting)

This is a messy and time-consuming step, but has to be done.

I think the stones would actually stay in place even without filling the gaps, but the wall would undoubtedly look unfinished and also collect dust that would be hard to clean. The end result is much more legitimate when you don’t skip this step.

When the stones and other materials you use are arranged tightly, there unfortunately isn’t a clean way to fill the gaps. But having a bucket of water, sponge, and a dishrag right next to you makes all the difference.

Don’t fear using a lot of water and wiping the stones when grouting; I found those were the only things that allowed me to get a cleaner result faster as I went on. You simply don’t get a clean result unless you practically wash the excess sealant off.

What worked the best and quickest for me was to first use a sponge and once the result looked significantly cleaner, only then I wiped the edges of stones carefully with a dishrag.

Why use fireplace sealant/mortar that only comes in black or dark gray? Traditional grouts don’t necessarily adhere to metal, and even if some did, they don’t have the heat resisting properties needed for this kind of project.

Also, I wasn’t willing to risk it. Regular grout would naturally stick to all the stones and tiles used, and harden like it’s supposed to, but potentially not adhere to metal, and maybe crack under the radiating heat from the stove.

That would destroy the wall protection you built and leave the stones unfit for reuse, forcing you to get new materials and wasting all your hard work.

In addition, since I used more light-colored than dark stones, having the sealant being white or gray would’ve led to certain blandness I wanted to avoid from the very beginning. Using a darker sealant brings pleasant contrast without being too harsh.

Once you’re done with this step and the sealant is fully dry, you can use a strip of sandpaper to clean some of the edges or messiest spots. It won’t damage the rocks. It’s easy, surprisingly satisfying, and makes a real difference, which you can see below:

This is an optional step, but I added some jewelry to give my wall protection a little sparkle, and fiberglass gasket (heat resistant up to 1020 F (550 C)) as trim.

If you use jewelry, just make sure it’s 100% metal. “Pearls,” for instance, are rarely real but instead made of plastic that will fall off once the mortar dries and hardens.

Step 4: Mount Your Wood Stove Heat Shield on the Wall

This is luckily the easiest step.

We used six L-shaped brackets, three on both sides, measuring carefully so we could hide them under the wall protection I built. There was plenty of space for the brackets since the polyurethane board I used under the metal for stability was slightly smaller than the steel frame.

This also meant those air gaps manufacturers call for were easily achieved. As the polyurethane board was also slightly lower than the steel frame, the insides of the heat shield don’t touch the drywall even though the shield is mounted on it.

The brackets offer ample stability, as they only need to keep the wall protection standing and prevent it from falling; they don’t have to support the weight of the wall since it’s standing on the floor, on top of the hearth pad.

If your wood stove is anything like ours, meaning the fire chamber is higher while the bottom part has only the legs and room for firewood, then the bottom part of it and the wall protection won’t get hot or even that warm, so no air gap needed at floor level.

Having worked on the stone wall for so long with it laying flat on the floor, it was nice to see it standing for the first time. Carrying it was definitely a two-person job as it’s quite heavy, but I was happy to see it was so rigid and solid.

Final Thoughts + End Result Photos

Finally the wall protection is done! Hopefully you’re ready for the flood of end result photos.

Here my wall is, pictured from the left:

And from the right:

Many of the materials I used I already had and repurposed:

Nearly all the seashells that I used I picked up myself when on a family vacation in Spain when I was 11 years old.

The fairly large, gray, and slab-shaped rocks (one can be seen in the upper corner above) my mom brought me from the shores of the Arctic Ocean in 2000.

The tile pieces, many with rounded edges, were considered trash and thrown away. Some of them landed on dirt roads, and many more in the sea from where they washed up on the shore. I picked them up when vacationing in Greece in 2014.

I also repurposed some pottery that I had made myself when I was a teenager.

The round pebbles are the only rocks I had to buy. Otherwise I wouldn’t have had nearly enough rocks for this project.

One of my favorite spots regarding my stone work is around the power outlet:

Moving on to grander views:

All I can say is that this is the best heat shield for a wood stove I could’ve hoped for! The vision I had came to life and I wouldn’t do anything differently.

Every time I pass the stove, my eyes are drawn to the wall protection, it’s just so nice to look at. Our small house lacked personality before, so besides the stove and wall being essential, this change was visually very welcome, too.

I don’t allow any keys, wallet, or clutter on or around the stove, as everything like that disrespects the wall I built. That’s yet another advantage: create something you love so much that it forces you to keep the surrounding areas clean!

To report whether our wood stove wall protection is code compliant, the answer is yes. The only part of it that gets very warm after several hours of burning is the middle: the bottom part stays the coolest, the top and sides feel faintly warm, and even the hottest middle part you can run your hand over without it burning your fingers.

If you were to keep your hand there for longer, only then it would start feeling too hot. And like said, this stage is achieved only after several hours of use.

The metal sides don’t get warm at all.

The only thing I don’t appreciate is the awful fumes new wood stoves try to suffocate you with for the first times you use them! I still haven’t gotten that smell of smoke out of all my clothes.

But that’s, of course, the stove’s fault, not my beautiful wall’s!