The holiday season brings with it a flurry of preparations, and home decoration is an important part of creating a festive atmosphere. One of the best ways to take your holiday decor up a notch is by designing a stunning holiday mantel that perfectly complements your stockings, tree, or overall theme. To help you create a mantel that stands out, we’ve gathered some expert advice. Whether you’re sprucing up your home in Seattle, Washington, or adding a festive touch to your rental home in Boston, Massachusetts, these tips will inspire you to create the perfect holiday setup.
Photo courtesy of Fig & Dove
1. Incorporate handmade items
Be crafty! Incorporating handmade objects into your mantle is a great way to customize and add something special to your holiday decor. Stop by your local hardware store to buy fresh pine branches and twine to make fragrant wreaths, or support independent artists by adding unique handmade elements to your holiday decor. – craft contemporary
2. Optimize every inch of your mantel
As the centerpiece of your home, changing your mantle decor seasonally is a great way to create a focused look without having to cover multiple rooms with seasonal decor. A strong mantle vignette uses all available space both horizontally and vertically to create depth and layers.
Start with three or four items you can keep on your mantle all year long. A neutral color palette of plants and family photos creates a consistent look. Vases and other containers are easy to update for each holiday with fresh fillers, pumpkins for Halloween, ornaments for Christmas, and seashells during the summer months. Build your look around these focal points
Add items and continue adding more items to the mantle until 75% of the available space is covered. With mantel decorations, overfilling the available space can make it look messy and unintentional. – Rocky Mountain Bliss
3. Add festive decorations while giving back to the community
Use the template to create and cut out 12 round ornaments to encourage giving during the season of giving. Each ornament includes ideas that kids and entire families can do together throughout the holiday season, from donating a toy to a toy drive to writing a kind letter to a teacher to baking cookies for a neighbor. Write down some simple and inspiring kindness ideas. Tuck these notes inside an evergreen wreath on your mantel, or string them onto a festive ribbon to create a gentle wreath on the front of your mantel. – Create kind children
4. Customize your mantel with personalized stockings
To create a great holiday cloak, it not only needs to have a festive feel, but it also needs to represent your family. Personalize with custom family signatures or stockings with everyone’s name on them. Hanging monogrammed ornaments with stockings is also a great option. This is a great DIY project to do using your Cricut cutting machine. Or you can find tons of unique holiday decorations on Etsy. Don’t forget your fur babies! – How to heat the press
5. Create a special place to introduce your family.
Develop a scene that incorporates your memories (ornaments, photos, stockings). Keep that theme throughout your holiday decorations so everything ties together. Place a strip of LED lighting along the top back edge of the mantel to create a soft glow. Add your memories and embed fresh greenery and flowers that easily change to a new look throughout the seasons. – Brick and mantel
6. Pay attention to seasonal colors
Magenta and blue seem to be the dominant colors this holiday season, but I’d like to point out something more important. Focusing on natural elements rather than colors and combining them with a wealth of elements that create a rich effect is frankly welcome and includes color (or combinations of colors) in the mix. With abundance in mind, create the perfect holiday mantel by combining greenery, wood, wreaths, candles, ribbons, miniature toys and statues, glass bowls, wrapped gifts, and more to add magic to any space. Add. – Perpetuum Designs
7. Start a DIY project that everyone can enjoy
A budget-friendly way to add some personality to your holiday mantel is to make stocking hangers from scrap wood. Use four 1x4s (two for each hanger) and paint them the color of your choice. Then add letters cut out of vinyl to spell out the word (I used PEACE for my family of 5), screw the two pieces together to form an upside-down T shape, and add hooks. Hang up your family’s stockings. – Leap of Faith Craft
Photo by Nicolette Capuano
8. Less is more on your holiday mantel.
Use garland: One of the easiest and most impactful ways to add some holiday cheer is to add garland to your mantelpiece. This adds texture and, when lights are added, creates an ambient glow at night.
Mix and match: Don’t be afraid to mix up your styles. As you can see above, traditional garlands are beautifully combined with geometric artwork, and the color palette ties the two together.
Keep it simple: Sometimes minimal design is the most impactful. Don’t feel like you need to put all the decorations you have there. Select some pieces to combine via color palette and place other pieces in different locations. Keeping it simple allows for a very clear and eye-catching focal point. – Abstract art by Nicolette Capuano
9. Make sure your decor complements your home’s interior.
The most important thing about holiday decorating is that the style and color scheme of your seasonal decor complements your home’s entire interior. I like to draw inspiration from the geographic location of a space and focus on incorporating unexpected objects, bold textures, and elements that stimulate all the senses. Large fragrant eucalyptus shoots, antique brass bells woven with burlap and silk tartan ribbons, pheasant feathers contrasting with glossy magnolia leaves, and warmed by a fire give the room a cheerful aroma. Fill with a generous group of dried or fresh citrus fruits. By creating a kind of collage with garlands and trimmings, you can design a very layered and unique cloak that will serve as a backdrop for the holiday season. – Daniel Rollins
10. Decorate your stockings to match your holiday spirit.
No holiday mantel is complete without stockings. Who says stockings should be left as plain as when they came from the store? With Siser® Heat Transfer Vinyl, you can customize your stockings with sparkly names, sparkling words, or even fuzzy numbers to express your unique holiday spirit. All you need to get started is a Siser® HTV, a vinyl cutter, and a household iron. Everyone can brighten up their holiday mantel this season. – Sizer®
11. Natural elements keep your home festive throughout the season
Because holiday time encompasses many traditions of different religions, our approach to the Holiday Mantle Scale is to emphasize the use of natural materials. The natural greenery of the various pine trees expresses a sense of winter festivity, rather than promising a specific holiday.
Natural pine cones and dried fruits such as oranges and pomegranates add a festive touch, while a mix of magnolia leaves adds volume to the base green and brings drama to the mantle landscape.
Use your imagination to add something natural and attractive to your eyes. – Michael Del Piero
Photo courtesy of Fig & Dove
12. Decorate by layering materials
There are a few things I like to incorporate when decorating my mantle for the holidays. First, I like to work in layers. First, place the stocking holders evenly spaced on the mantle. I typically buy cypress wreaths from local nurseries and layer them with other seasonal greenery to add texture, height, and color variation. For warmth (and safety) I layer in flameless LED lights. This year, I plan to add a different element by using sterling silver bells on the ornament stand. Finally, for a pop of color, add colored tassels to each stocking to match the color scheme you chose for the wrapping paper. – Figs and Pigeons
