How Much Garland You Need for a Mantel (and How to Hang It Without Nails)

The first Christmas in our rental, I bought one 9 foot garland for the mantel, brought it home feeling very accomplished, and then stood there holding it while it did absolutely nothing. It just laid there. Flat. Like a sad green scarf on a shelf. I had measured the mantel (5 feet!) and figured 9 feet was plenty of extra, so what happened?

Here’s what happened: garland has to go somewhere. Every inch of drape you want in the middle, and every inch that hangs down the sides, comes out of that total length. It took me three seasons and honestly more garland-related money than I want to admit to land on a number that actually works, so I’m just going to hand it to you!

The formula (it’s double, and I’m sorry)

Take your mantel width and double it. That’s your minimum if you want the garland to look like garland and not like a draft stopper!

My mantel is 5 feet. Ten feet of garland gives me a gentle swag in the middle and a little tail on each end. Fifteen feet — three times the width — is what I use when I want that deep, heavy drape you see on Pinterest, with the ends pooling down the sides of the fireplace.

A few things I learned the expensive way:

• Garlands are sold in 6 and 9 foot lengths almost exclusively, so you’re rarely buying your exact number. For a 5 foot mantel, that means two 6 foot garlands. Just buy two!
• The 9 foot garlands are not always 9 feet of full garland. Some of them have a few bare inches at each end where the wire stem sticks out for connecting. Not a huge deal, but it’s not usable length.
• If you’re adding a big bow or a cluster of pinecones in the center, add another foot. That stuff eats drape!

If you’re on the fence between “enough” and “too much,” buy too much. Extra garland gets tucked, coiled at the ends, or clipped off and stuck in a vase. Not enough garland can’t be fixed.

1. The base layer: a cheap, plain garland

This is the trick that changed my mantel completely, and it costs almost nothing.

Buy one plain, boring, inexpensive pine garland and put it down first. The National Tree Company Norwood Fir garland is my go-to for this — it’s 9 feet, it’s unlit, it’s not especially exciting on its own, and that is exactly the point! It’s a body. It gives your mantel bulk and it fills in all the gaps that a single skinny garland leaves.

Nobody sees this layer. It just makes everything on top of it look twice as full!

2. The pretty layer: something soft on top

Then you lay the nice one over it. I like the real touch cedar style garlands because the tips are soft and they drape instead of sticking out at angles — this cedar garland comes as a 2 pack of 6 foot pieces, which is 12 feet total and covers a mantel up to about 6 feet perfectly.

Lay it on top of the base, offset it a little so the two aren’t lined up exactly (this is the whole secret — offset), and then wire them together in a few spots so they behave like one piece. Suddenly you have a garland with actual depth instead of a flat green line!

If you’d rather do one and done, the pre-lit Norwood Fir with a built-in timer is a solid single-garland option. It’s the one I recommend to people who tell me they don’t want a project.

3. Floral wire (the thing everyone skips)

Floral wire is under $5 and it is doing all the work! I use 22 gauge green paddle wire — thin enough to twist by hand, strong enough to hold. There’s also a 24 gauge if you want something even more bendable, though I find 22 is the sweet spot.

You’ll use it for three things: joining your two garlands end to end so the seam doesn’t gap, wiring the layers together, and — most importantly — tying the garland to the hooks so it can’t slide. Cut a 6 inch piece, wrap, twist twice, tuck the sharp ends into the greenery so nobody catches a finger on it. My daughter is at the age where everything gets grabbed, so I’m honestly pretty obsessive about tucking the wire ends.

4. Command hooks, on the underside

We’ve rented every place we’ve lived since Texas, so nails were never happening. Here’s exactly how I do it.

I use medium clear Command hooks stuck to the underside of the mantel shelf, about an inch back from the front edge, with the hook pointing down. Not on the front face of the mantel, and definitely not on the brick — the underside is almost always smooth finished wood, it’s the surface adhesive actually likes, and you can’t see a single hook from the couch!

Space them every 12 to 18 inches. For my 5 foot mantel that’s four hooks, plus one at each far end for the tails.

Three rules I break at my own peril:

1. Wipe the spot with rubbing alcohol first. Not a household cleaner, not a wipe. Anything with a conditioner or an oil in it and the strip will let go in the middle of the night. (Ask me how I know! It was 2am. The whole thing came down.)
2. Press for 30 seconds and then wait an hour before you hang anything. That hour is not optional. It’s when the adhesive actually grabs.
3. Don’t overload a hook. Medium hooks hold a couple of pounds each. Use more hooks rather than trusting one heroic one!

Then you lift the garland up, hang the wire loops over the hooks, and go down the line adding a twist of floral wire at each hook so it’s locked in place instead of just resting there. Ten minutes, tops!

5. Battery fairy lights with a timer

Cords are the thing that ruins an otherwise beautiful mantel, so I use battery lights woven through the greenery. These fairy lights have a 6 hour on / 18 hour off timer — you turn them on once at, say, 5pm and they come on at 5pm every day after that on their own, all season. It’s the single laziest and best decorating decision I make every year.

Weave the wire deep into the base layer (not the top layer) so you see the glow and not the wire, and tuck the battery pack up behind the greenery on top of the mantel.

If you do end up with a plug-in strand, Command cord bundlers will coil up the extra length and stick it out of sight behind the mantel leg. They also come off clean at the end of the season, which is the whole point of doing any of this.

Taking it down

Pull the Command tabs straight down, slow, don’t yank out from the wall. If a tab breaks off inside (it happens), warm the strip with a hair dryer for a few seconds and it’ll peel right off. I’ve never lost a security deposit over Christmas decor and I’d like to keep that streak alive!

That’s really it — buy double, layer a cheap one underneath, hook the underside, wire everything down. If you put up a mantel garland this year, please post it on Instagram and tag me @sugardesignco, because mantels are my favorite thing to look at and I want to see what y’all do with yours!

-Ciera

Made something with this? Tag me @sugardesignco — I love seeing them.