Is Your Mantel Crying for a Seasonal Update?

Final­ly the weath­er is chang­ing and my over­all atti­tude is bet­ter. You cre­ative ones know what this means…it’s time for a redesign! I enjoyed the white ele­ments my man­tel had dur­ing the win­ter; it reflect­ed the snow out­side my win­dow. Now, my man­tel is cry­ing for some­thing fresh and vibrant. As inte­ri­or re-design­ers, we approach a small project just like we approach a larg­er space.

The Process:

1.) Remove all items from the man­tel: No cheat­ing, even the heavy items have to come down.

2.) Group all your options by col­or, tex­ture and type of item. (Can­dles, antlers, etc)

3.) Cre­ate the focal point or the largest piece was placed first. Keep in mind, you need to fill 2/3 of the space of the man­tel or it will be wimpy and we can’t have wimpy. (Try an asym­met­ri­cal arrange­ment by plac­ing the item off-center.)

4.) Fol­low your col­or sto­ry. In this case, the col­ors in the art­work told the col­or sto­ry. Bal­ance your col­or on each side. Even in asym­met­ri­cal arrange­ments there needs to be col­or balance.

5.) Give a vari­ety of tex­tures. Wood, glass, green­ery, horns, shine, met­als and bark are all exam­ples of ways to add inter­est to the design.

6.) Force your eye to move. How are you going to do that? With the ele­ments you have used through­out the arrange­ment. Not even sure why thats impor­tant? When your eye moves around the man­tel or the room it cre­ates, space, depth and inter­est. By plac­ing items high, low, for­ward and set back you demand atten­tion and interest.

7.) Stand back and ele­vate the design as you go along.

8.) Shop for miss­ing ele­ments. Don’t have the right item for the next lay­er? Go shop your home, your yard and even your clos­et. I have used belts, scarfs and jew­el­ry to alter the col­or, tex­ture or to and interest.

9.) Snap a pho­to. Inspire your­self. I keep an album with ideas just for my mantel.