Beautiful Magnolia Home Inspired Holiday Mantel Ideas

Magnolia Home's signature style, made famous by Joanna Gaines, is rustic and nature-inspired, with plenty of weathered charm to round out the aesthetic. The results make your home feel warm and cozy any time of year. Putting together a holiday mantel with a Magnolia look isn't hard to achieve with the right amount of greenery, lighting, and muted colors.

While Gaines's hallmark design is also known for other features like metallic accents and rough finishes, the right dots of color and variety of materials are welcome additions to a mantel vignette without seeming off-brand. Borrow a bit of Magnolia's aesthetic and blend in a little of your own for a fireplace topper that unifies a gathering space. Evergreen garlands and candles are staples, but these base items can look fresh and personalized with twists on color, balance, and extra touches. A hearth decked out Magnolia-style for the winter holidays will draw more than just the eye to the warmth of your space.

For a room with understated, classic features akin to what you'd find in the Old World or New England, a classic holiday mantel arrangement with just the right amount of excess is just perfect. An evergreen garland draped symmetrically on the mantel but with enough overflow to pool on the ground at each side of the fireplace throws in a bit of imperfection to an otherwise traditional display. Quintessential Christmas colors show off on stockings and oversized bows, and brass candlesticks and a few other metallic accents along with candlelight round out the scene.

Although Gaines doesn't frequently cite Scandinavian decor as an inspiration, both Magnolia and Scandinavian style have commonalities like simple, natural ornamentation that's not over the top. Minimalism and Christmas are rarely uttered in the same sentence, but simplicity can be refreshing when contrasted to the sensory overload that comes with the season. A backdrop of fairy-lighted evergreen garland highlights rather than distracts the eye from a lone stocking and a painted rocking horse that hints at Swedish dala horses and is festive while maintaining a minimalist aesthetic.

A robust garland popping with colors like gold and blue looks perfectly appropriate for any winter holiday, but it does especially ring in Hanukkah spirit with its characteristic blue and white accessories. Intermingle them with a few ornaments in silver and gold tones and glittery branches next to fairy lights for an extra glow worthy of the Festival of Lights. Let pinecones, berries, and feathers contribute to textural interest.

Cream and warm gradients of brown are often part of Magnolia home decor favorites as are botanical elements. A profusion of evergreen foliage dotted with tiny points of lights anchor this pleasing Magnolia-style holiday mantel. White taper candles in varied heights take the eye up while pale stockings in touchable fabrics hang below to balance the tableau that's a well-layered, well-balanced nod to nature. Pull off a similarly lush look with this clever trick for a fuller looking garland on your mantel.

Just because Chip and Joanna Gaines practice Christianity doesn't mean the Magnolia aesthetic is limited to the Christmas holiday alone. Gaines's rustic, homey mantel ornamentation translates beautifully to a woodsy Hanukkah-themed mantel decorated with a layer of leafy green, a burnished metal menorah, and a homey hand-painted dreidel. Logs at the ready, gilded lanterns, illuminated wrapped gifts, and a glittery "Happy Hanukkah" bunting complete the look.

Wintertime walks through the woods might not bring you the same joy as ones filled with summer flowers and birdsong. Still, woodland finds in winter have a subtle, durable beauty that can help us get through the dormant season. Along with the ubiquitous Christmas evergreen boughs and pine cones, feathery grass seed heads, sprigs of leaves, and dried hydrangea heads put nature on center stage. Strings of lights artfully wound around the varied greenery and long, gold ribbons are the only man-made items in sight.

The extravagance of Christmas is part of the fun, but if its commercialism becomes too much of an assault on the senses, layering up some winter whites with touches of tan and gold will imbue your gathering space with warmth and coziness without overwhelm. Swapping the greenery for a garland of dried grasses and oversized faux flowers delivers on Magnolia style's penchant toward earthy elements, and candles, a lightly sequined stocking, and mini gifts wrapped in craft paper and string create a scene both simple and luxurious.

Evergreen garlands hung asymmetrically are having their moment, and even Joanna Gaines is getting in on the fad. A neat take on the trend is evening out the imbalance with a vertical feature at the opposite end of a single-sided mantel draping. An earthen pot stocked with cedar branches and berries lends diagonal appeal to the cascading garland on the other end of the mantel, and a shorter deer statue between the two ends staves off an awkward teeter-totter appearance. Burgundy velvet stockings and matching bow on the pot further tie together the two ends of the mantel.

Done correctly, the faux-frosty look can have Magnolia home vibes. Often synthetic-looking, frosted evergreen garlands complemented with snowy white accessories, silver sparkle, and plenty of lighting gives off Gaines's classy Christmas feels. Flesh out the potentially tacky image with white cable knit stockings, creamy tapers, and stark white ceramic trees. A statuesque silver deer at the center mirrors the sparkle from the lights and candles while breaking up the flatness of so much white.

Less can be more, especially if light is involved. Forgo both greenery and string lights in order to shift the focus to another Magnolia essential: weathered metal finishes. Homespun punched tin lanterns and stars bring to mind the New Mexico homesteads that first inspired Gaines's iconic farmhouse style. A surrounding of evergreen boughs wouldn't diminish the primitive beauty of the metal, but flickering light along with symbolic stars keep the composition from being too pared-down for a holiday display. An antique clock to add height and variety also pays homage to upcoming New Years' celebrations.

Joanna Gaines-inspired mantel decorating typically starts with plenty of well-illuminated greenery studded with pinecones. Go a step further with an added sprinkle of old-school holiday adornment; wheels of dried oranges and ruby-red berries mingling with cedar cuttings are as beautiful now as it would be a century or more ago. Fisherman-style knit stockings hanging from the rough wooden mantel look as though they were stitched up right in front of the fire, and a velvet bow around a vase of evergreens punctuates the horizontal earthiness of the setup.