Tips for Styling a Mantle

One of my favorite features of our home is our old, wood burning fireplace. It is a beautiful piece with lots of character. Our mantle, on the other hand, is super long, which can be hard to style. Today I want to give you a few tips that I’ve picked up along the way on how I style my mantle, regardless of length. Let’s get started on my tips for styling a mantle!

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Tip 1: Add a banner or garland

Especially for longer mantles, I recommend adding some sort of banner or garland. Doing this ensures that each part of your mantle will have an element on it, but you do not necessarily need to have items up top the whole way.

You can either use a season-specific garland or even a simple wood bead garland like this one. I love the texture of the wood beads and the spirit of a patriotic banner.

Tip 2: Start with a large item in the middle

You can probably see a theme progressing already. I love adding this black chalkboard to the middle and even drawing a seasonal picture on it. Find a similar board here. Having a large item in the middle will provide an anchor that draws the eye, especially when it’s dark in color.

Tip 3: Always add greenery

This tip should seem pretty obvious for every space in your home. Adding greenery is always a go-to when working on my fireplace decor. During most seasons I add faux greenery, and at Christmas time I add a lit garland. I love these faux tulips and this artificial boxwood, both from Amazon.

ICYMI: Super Easy Peanut Butter Cookies

Tip 4: Use varying heights of decor pieces

Do you see my hands in the pic above? Ha! Add varying heights to your mantle is important when it comes to the decor. Once again I started with my black chalkboard, which is one of my tallest decor pieces. Adding a smaller picture frame and an even smaller candle adds depth. Once you go out further to the sides, keep the height differences by grouping like items, with varying heights.

Another thing I like to do is have my large item anchoring in the middle, with smaller items in front of it. In the picture above you can see that I used my blue mason jars near the middle and flanked them with larger lanterns on the outside.

Tip 5: Have fun and use sentimental items

See those amber bottles above? Those were fun finds that my mom gave me. I love to use those each fall to add warmth to our white fireplace. Below you will see a group of old books in the middle. A few of those are also “finds” from my parents house. Two of those white candlesticks were also made for me by my aunt. I love using pieces that have special meaning to them.

Hopefully these five tips were helpful to you. Fireplace mantles are the hub of many homes, including ours. Growing up, my mom always made ours look festive for each season, and I try to keep that going for our small, but growing, family. Anyone have a favorite mantle of the ones above? Let me know in a comment!