Coastal Mantel Decor Ideas

Bring the beach home with you when you decorate with this coastal mantel decor. With it’s coastal accents and colors, it is perfect for summer decorating!

I am excited to share my coastal mantel decor with you today! Actually it is more than just mantel decor, it is more like coastal living room decor. 🙂 However, the main focus in my living room decorating is usually the mantel.

I absolutely love the color combination of this coastal mantel decor. There is something so soothing and relaxing about coastal colors, isn’t there? Maybe because it brings to mind the ocean and most people find the ocean calming. Just close your eyes and imagine an empty beach with the sound of waves rolling in, the call of sea gulls carried on the gentle breeze, the feel of the soft sand on your bare toes and the smell of the sea in the air. Aahh! Now I need a nap. 😉 Well, whatever it is, I love the soft blues and greens mixed with tans and whites.

I shared my ribbon wreath with you last week and now you get to see how it fits in with the rest of the mantel. 

Aren’t the colors of the ribbons perfect? I love how it ties everything together. And the DIY rope wreath fits in so well, right? I knew I had to use it for this mantel!

What kind of accent pieces to add to a coastal mantel

So obviously rope is an item that comes to mind when we think of coastal or nautical decor. Rope is a common item used on boats and in sailing so it is an element that I knew I wanted to add into my coastal mantel. The wreath was not the only item that I used though. It also ties into (pun intended) the rope coiled in the glass bowl.

You will see rope as a continued theme throughout my living room but besides rope, what other kind of elements should you use on your nautical mantel? Sea shells of course! Just like these seashells sitting next to the rope in the glass jar. Included in the sea shells category are starfish, like the one on my wreath and this one sitting next to this vintage lantern.

Lanterns are another great beach themed accent item. They remind me of light houses which you usually find on coasts. Both of these lanterns came from Hobby Lobby, I believe they still carry them. Isn’t this vintage looking lantern great though? It screams coastal decor to me! Can’t you just imagine some old fisherman in days gone by, coming home after the sun has gone down, carrying this candle lit lantern down the beach at night to light his way? No, well maybe it is just me then. 😉

The other lantern is full of some of the DIY glass fishing floats that I shared last week. If you read that post, then you will know why those are also ideal coastal accent pieces to use.

You have probably been noticing the sand dollar garland as well. I will be sharing a tutorial on this next week but I wanted to show it first with the rest of the coastal mantel decor. I was lucky enough to get a lot of sea shells and sand dollars from my MIL after they went to stay in South Padre Island for a couple months. She would walk the beach daily and collect some to bring home. If you don’t have a great MIL like me that brings you some, you could always buy some sand dollars. (affiliate link)

Obviously these are not the only nautical mantel decor ideas that you can use. Some other great ideas for coastal accent pieces that you could incorporate would be:

• Beach themed art
• Driftwood
• Sailboats
• Sea gulls
• Sand in a jar
• Lighthouses
• Sea creatures like fish, crabs, lobsters etc.
• Anchors

Use items that are coastal colored

In addition to the items listed above, you always have to option to just use items that are not related to the beach, but are similar in color. That is exactly what I have done here with these vintage electrical insulators. 

These insulators have nothing to do with nautical decor but the colors were perfect! So I had to use them. 

Another example of this is white pitcher full of natural colored stems. The stems themselves are not coastal themed but the colors fit in superbly.

Same premise with the wood beads around the pitcher, I found them at Hobby Lobby and knew I had to use them for two reasons. First of all, they coordinate so well with the wood beads on the sand dollar garland. Another thing they do is help to bring in the soft blue-green color to the left side of the mantel.

 

Additional coastal living room decor

Like I said earlier, I themed the whole living room decor to coordinate with my mantel. I found a couple pillow covers at Hobby Lobby that fit in great with the colors. You can see one of those above. I also styled a vignette for the coffee table.

While the items in the vignette are not all directly related to nautical decor, the colors all fit in, like we discussed earlier.

If you have been following my blog for a while, you may have recognized the DIY sea glass rope lantern in the background of the picture above. This was a fun project to make and remains one of my favorite DIY projects. It also happens to be one of my most popular posts! 🙂 Can you believe this started out as a pickle jar?!

I wasn’t kidding earlier when I said rope would be a continued theme around the whole room. Ha!

I also created a vignette on the side table using the bigger glass fishing floats that I made. These were originally glass globe light fixtures! I love taking ordinary things and turning them into beautiful decor.

I hope you enjoyed following along on my coastal mantel decor tour. It occurred to me when I was writing this post that over all the years of sharing my mantels, I have never shared exactly how to decorate a mantel. I actually started writing that into this post then realized that should be a post all on it’s own. So I will be sharing that next week. Hopefully it will help someone in their decorating. Have a great weekend!