Decorating A Neutral Christmas Mantel

I love decorating a neutral Winter or Christmas mantel each year. Neutral Christmas decor feels warm and cozy and makes the home feel less overwhelming during the holiday season. Neutral Christmas decorations stay in style forever and you can always add a pop of color if you’d like. Let me show you some basic neutral Christmas elements I used.

I wrote an entire post with a ton of different neutral Christmas decorating ideas to use throughout your home, but today we’re going to focus on decorating a neutral Christmas mantel.

I love to mix textures to create a pretty neutral Christmas mantel. This year I used a mix of yarn, metal, wood, and greenery. This mantel will carry you through the winter season, not just Christmas. You can buy neutral home decor at Pottery Barn, Hobby Lobby, Target, or just about anywhere.

I made the soft creamy yarn garland and I’d love to write a post about that someday. I don’t really know how to knit but I was able to make this garland myself. I have to be honest, it took me two days to make it! You can buy pretty yarn Christmas garlands and they aren’t expensive at all. If you love to crochet or knit, I used blanket yarn to make this garland.

I added some wooden beads and some simple yarn pom pom to the end. I have a post about how to make pom poms if you’re interested in learning how.

I couldn’t find a bell garland that I liked, so I ordered vintage-looking gold bells and just tied them to jute twine. The bells are really pretty and I was very happy with the price.

I love adding greenery to the mantel each Christmas. You can use the clippings from the bottom of your Christmas tree if you buy a real tree. Otherwise, there are several different styles of garlands available online to decorate a neutral Christmas mantel.

I also made the wooden bead garland for the Christmas mantel, but I paid about the same amount for the beads as you would pay to buy one. This wood bead garland is very reasonably priced.

For above the mantel, I used a piece of a vintage crib with some angel wings that I scored at TJMaxx a few years ago. There are other styles available so don’t get caught up with trying to find the exact same thing. They make galvanized angel wings and wood ones as well.

I made all of the cone Christmas trees and can read more about those in my DIY Cone Christmas Trees Tutorial.

I added some chunky candlesticks but instead of candles, I chose to display more of my DIY Christmas trees. This mantel is in my she shed and I love decorating it every year. Here is a picture from another season. Neutral again of course!

This year I chose to keep things simple but last year I added gold bead garland, pearl glass Christmas ornaments, clip-on birds, and even birds nests. You’ll notice that everything I chose fell in a neutral color palette.

As a tip for how to hang all of your garlands, use these removable hooks on the mantel to attach everything. I put them right on the top of the mantel and then hide them with garlands and greenery. If you like to layer garlands, these straps work great!

This year I plan to add some black into my mantel. I’ve been making book page ornaments and I think some black elements will work nicely with all of the book page crafts I’m making. I’m going to make paper ornaments with black cardstock and paint a wooden bead garland black.

Will you be decorating a neutral Christmas Mantel this year? I’m off to work on the tree now. Christmas seems to come faster each year. Enjoy your season my friends.

xoxo,

Denise