9 Christmas Mantel Ideas From Plain To Full-On Festive

The mantel is the one spot in the house that gets looked at all December, mostly because it sits at eye level next to the sofa where everybody collapses after dinner. Some years I have done the full production up there, stockings and all. Other years I have laid down a single branch, lit a candle and called it done, and honestly, both looked right for the year they were in.

So these nine ideas run in order, quietest first, loudest last. They are not nine different mantels, exactly. They are one mantel at nine volumes, and every single one is built on the same little formula. Learn the formula once and you can stop at whichever number suits your December, your budget and your storage space.

The mantel formula I use every year

Here is the order I work in, and the order matters more than the stuff itself. First, an anchor in the middle: a mirror, a framed print, a wreath, something with enough size to hold the wall above the fireplace. Without it, everything underneath looks like it is queuing. Second, height at the sides: candlesticks, a vase, a small potted tree, anything that lifts the ends up towards the anchor. Third, a garland or drape running along the front, which ties the two ends together and hides the boring shelf edge. Fourth, light: candles, fairy lights, or both, because December decorating is really just an excuse for more light sources. Fifth, small filler: baubles, pinecones, oranges, the bits that fill gaps and add colour.

One thing to let go of early: the two sides do not have to match. A tall candlestick on the left and a low stack of books with a bauble on the right looks better than a pair of identical anythings, because your eye reads it as collected instead of purchased as a set. And stop a layer earlier than feels natural. A mantel looks finished roughly one step before it looks full, and that step is where most of us overdo it.

1. Plain greenery, nothing else

The quietest version, and some years my favourite. Take one garland, real fir if you can get it, decent faux if you cannot, and lay it along the mantel with the ends trailing a little further down one side than the other. That is the whole project. Mix two greens if you have them, fir with eucalyptus poked in along the top, because a single flat green can look like a hedge. No baubles, no lights, no ribbon. It reads calm and grown-up, it takes ten minutes, and it is the easiest of the nine to live with for a full month. After Christmas I sometimes leave a plainer winter version up through January and nobody has ever complained.

2. Greenery plus candles

Same garland, one step up: add candles at the ends and one lower group off-centre. Pillars in glass holders are the forgiving option, since the glass catches drips and stops the wax wandering into the greenery. Work in odd numbers and different heights, a tall one and a short one paired together rather than two soldiers standing to attention. This is the mantel that does its best work at about 6pm, when the room goes dim and the candles take over from the daylight. If your fireplace actually gets used, read the safety box further down before choosing real flames, because this is the idea where LED candles earn their keep.

3. Paper stars and paper honeycomb

The rental-friendly one, and the lightest thing you will ever hang. Paper stars and honeycomb balls weigh almost nothing, so they go up on removable adhesive hooks or a length of twine taped behind the mantel shelf. No nails, no holes, nothing for a landlord to find in January. Hang the stars at uneven heights above the mantel so they float over it, then sit two or three honeycomb balls along the shelf itself. White and blush look soft; kraft paper and red look like a school hall in the best possible way. The quiet bonus is storage: the whole display folds flat into one envelope, which matters if your Christmas box is already a negotiation.

4. Citrus and dried orange slices

Dried orange slices are the cheapest glamour in Christmas decorating. Slice oranges about half a centimetre thick, pat them dry, and bake them low and slow until they turn glassy and amber, then thread them onto twine with bay leaves or cinnamon sticks between. Drape that string along the front of the mantel over a plain garland, and add a small bowl of whole oranges or clementines at one end. In a warm room the slices give off the faintest real orange smell, which no candle has ever quite managed. They keep for years if you store them dry, although in my house the string gets shorter every season because someone always picks at it.

5. All white and wood

For the years when red feels like shouting. Build it from a pale or snowy garland, white pillar candles, white and clear glass baubles, and something wooden to stop it drifting into wedding territory: a bead garland, two small reindeer off a market stall, a stack of pale logs in the hearth. Texture does the work that colour usually does, so mix matte with shiny and soft with hard, a knitted white stocking against a smooth glass bauble. Keep the anchor white too, or bare wood, and let the whole thing glow rather than sparkle. It is the hardest of the nine to photograph and the easiest to sit in front of.

6. Pink, berry and ribbon

This is the one that matches this site's colours, so of course it is my current favourite. Start with a plain green garland, then weave a deep pink velvet ribbon through it in loose loops, letting it dip lower at one corner where you tie the bow. Push in stems of red and pink berries, real holly if the birds have left you any, faux if not, and finish with blush and burgundy baubles clustered in twos and threes rather than spread out evenly. The pink keeps the red company without letting it take over, and the whole thing looks far more deliberate than the fifteen minutes it takes. Velvet ribbon is the spend here; everything else can be the plain basics.

7. Collected brass and vintage

The mantel for people who have been gathering bits for years and finally get to use all of them at once. Brass candlesticks in mismatched heights, the old frame with nothing in it, grandmother's baubles in a glass bowl, a mercury glass vase, maybe a small clock that no longer works and does not need to. Lay a modest garland underneath it all just to give the objects something to sit in, and let the brass be tarnished. Polishing every piece makes it look like a shop display; leaving the patina makes it look like a family. Charity shops in November are the best hunting ground, before everyone else remembers they want candlesticks too.

8. The kids' handmade mantel

Paper chains, salt dough shapes, a popcorn string that is mostly string by Christmas Eve. This mantel is not about taste and it helps nobody to pretend otherwise. It is about the afternoon you spent making it. Salt dough is only flour, salt and water rolled out and cut like biscuits, baked hard, then painted in every colour at once. Hang the chains across the front where a garland would go, peg the dough shapes along them, and give the children one end of the mantel to arrange entirely themselves. It will be wonky. There will be a gap where a link tore. Leave it. In ten years this is the version of the mantel everybody in your house will describe first.

9. Full-on festive: stockings, lights, everything

And here is the top of the scale, the one for the years when you want the room to feel like Christmas before anyone has sat down. Go thick on the garland, two strands twisted together with berries and cones already in it, and wind fairy lights through before anything else goes on, because threading them afterwards is a misery. Add the anchor, the tall candles, the filler, and finally the stockings, hung from weighted holders that sit on top of the mantel rather than anything hammered in. Layer until the shelf itself nearly disappears. It is too much, and that is precisely the point of it. Take the photo for next year's card while it still looks this good, which is to say before anyone touches anything.

Before the candles come out: the safety bit

None of this matters if the mantel is not safe, so here is the serious paragraph, and I would rather be blunt than pretty about it.

No mantel? No fireplace? Same formula

Plenty of houses have no mantel at all, including the flat I lived in for years, and the formula does not care. It works on any long, flat surface at roughly eye level: a shelf, a sideboard, the top of a bookcase, a console table in the hall, even a wide windowsill. The anchor becomes the picture or mirror already hanging above it. The garland drapes along the front edge. The candles and filler do exactly what they did on the fireplace. If anything, a sideboard is easier, because there is no heat to plan around and you can use every one of the nine ideas, including the paper stars, without a second thought. Pick the surface people see when they walk into the room and start there.

Three mantel mistakes I keep making

Everything the same height. A row of objects all standing at one level reads as a shelf in a shop, flat and a bit sad. The fix is always the same: raise one end, lower the middle, and let the heights step up and down like a skyline. The garland swallowing the artwork. A thick garland draped high will eat the bottom third of the picture or mirror above it, and the anchor you chose so carefully disappears. Drape the garland lower, along the shelf edge, or swap the picture for a wreath that can hold its own. The lights cable crossing the hearth. It looks messy, it is a trip hazard, and on a working fireplace it is sitting in the heat. Route it down the side, tuck it behind a log basket, or use battery lights and skip the cable entirely.

Questions I get asked about Christmas mantels

So, which number is your December this year? I am at a six, pink ribbon and all, with an eight scheduled for the weekend the grandchildren visit. Tell me in the comments where you land on the scale, and what always, always goes on your mantel. I read every one, usually with the candles lit and the safety box very much in mind.