I personally would use a red.

A safe choice would be one of the colors in the bricks, which on my monitor appear to be shades of beige to orange. You could also match the color of the grout.

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I am with octoberdana and would suggest a red/burgundy. I wouldn't try to blend with the fireplace and think a red would be a good contrast for this, plus it always looks good for holidays lol...

I disagree with red. Too often the brick, which usually has a lot of brown, can clash if directly next to the brick. Since colors can vary on monitors, I would look at a color wheel, find the color that most goes with your brick color and start looking color schemes. If it's a red brick with heavy browns, try looking at greens with brown tones. If it's an orangy brick, look more toward blues.

It also depends on what your final goal is. Do you want the brick to "pop" or do you want it to "disappear".

What about your furniture? Are you going to keep the cream colored drapes or replace them? If I were you, I would hammer out the fabric and furniture first and pick your paint color last. I have done it backwards before, painted the color and then tried to get things to "go" with it, but I could never get it all just right.

Kathe

I went with soft yellow with a bit of brown in it. Red might be too similar or too clashing with the variety of red/orange in the bricks. Plus I want the fireplace to "pop" or stand out. A really good contrasting color for that might have been a gray with tinge of lavendar but I didn't want that on all my walls. If just on the wall with the fireplace I would need another color on the other walls and felt that would be too much variety. I also chose a soft yellow curtain to blend and not compete with the fireplace for attention. I considered plum for curtains but again that would have created too much variety. And for furniture, keeping the paint and curtains simple will allow me a lot of choices